Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lessons learned from an open-source university project

Open-source software development has become a widespread trend within the software engineering community and has begun to attract the attention of other disciplines as well. To help students understand the practices used within the open-source movement and to initiate an effort for logging all aspects of the software development process, our Laboratory has set up an open-source project targeting undergraduate and postgraduate computer science students. The main aim of the project is to systematically record architecture and code related information as well as "soft" issues related to the individuals that take part in the development. The paper discusses results and conclusions drawn from this project.
Task Differences as Moderators of Aptitude Test Validity in Selection: A Red Herring

This article describes results of two studies, based on a total sample size of nearly 400,000, examining the traditional belief that between-job task differences cause aptitude tests to be valid for some jobs but not for others. Results indicate that aptitude tests are valid across jobs. The moderating effect of tasks is negligible even when jobs differ grossly in task makeup and is probably nonexistent when task differences are less extreme. These results have important implications for validity generalization, for the use of task-oriented job analysis in selection research, for criterion construction, for moderator research, and for proper interpretation of the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. The philosophy of science and methodological assumptions historically underlying belief in the hypothesis that tasks are important moderators of test validities are examined and critiqued. It is concluded that the belief in this hypothesis can be traced to behaviorist assumptions introduced into personnel psychology in the early 1960s and that, in retrospect, these assumptions can be seen to be false.
Safety of MF59-Adjuvanted Influenza Vaccination in the Elderly: Results of a Comparative Study of MF59-Adjuvanted Vaccine Versus Nonadjuvanted Influenza Vaccine in Northern Italy

MF59-adjuvanted trivalent influenza vaccine (Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Siena, Italy) has been shown to be more effective than nonadjuvanted vaccine in the elderly population. Here we present results from a large-scale, observational, noninterventional, prospective postlicensure study that evaluated the safety of MF59-adjuvanted vaccine in elderly subjects aged 65 years or more. The study was performed in 5 northern Italian health districts during the 2006–2007, 2007–2008, and 2008–2009 influenza seasons. The choice of vaccine—either adjuvanted vaccine or a nonadjuvanted influenza vaccine—was determined by individual providers on the basis of local influenza vaccination policy. Hospitalizations for potential adverse events of special interest (AESIs) were identified from hospital databases and then reviewed against recognized case definitions to identify confirmed cases of AESI. Cumulative incidences were calculated for AESIs in predefined biologically plausible time windows, as well as in a 6-month window following vaccination. During the 3-year study period, 170,988 vaccine doses were administered to a total of 107,661 persons. Despite the large study size, cases of AESI resulting in hospitalization were rare, and risks of AESI were similar in both the MF59-adjuvanted and nonadjuvanted vaccination groups. In conclusion, similar safety profiles were observed for both nonadjuvanted and MF59-adjuvanted seasonal influenza vaccines in elderly recipients.
Public-Private Convergence and the Special Case of Voucher-Receiving Schools.

Many arguments in favour of school voucher programs are based upon libertarian free agency principles. Viewed at the organizational level, allowing persons to exercise choice in education would seem to offer incentives for all educational organizations within that framework to improve overall product quality and thus more effectively obtain the education good for both individual and society. However, analysis from the transcending institutional level shows that supra -organizational forces will progressively reduce choice and quality as both private and public organizations relinquish their distinctive curricula and philosophies as a de facto requirement for participation within the broader educational institution or ‘market’. Acknowledging the costs of, and designing policy to maintain, particular information are both essential to effectively producing the education good within a competitive institutional structure.
Operationalizing value importance in cross‐cultural research: Comparing direct and indirect measures

This research compared direct and indirect operationalizations of work value importance across 25 nations using data from the Work Orientations II Module of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Respondents provided direct ratings of the extent to which each of seven work goals was subjectively important to them. They also rated their satisfaction with each of the same work goals and with their jobs overall. Thus, an indirect operationalization of work value importance was formed from the empirical relationships between satisfaction with each work goal and overall job satisfaction. As expected, results showed that conclusions drawn about cross-cultural differences depended on the method used for operationalizing work values. Implications of the results for the interpretation of cross-cultural differences are discussed.
Design of a trustworthy service broker and dependence-based progressive group testing

To address the challenges of dynamic, distributed and collaborative Web Services (WS) testing, this paper proposes a trustworthy service broker architecture and a dependence-based progressive group testing technique. The new architecture extends the traditional Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) service broker by introducing the check-in and check-out testing interfaces, which are associated with a set of automated tools. The design objectives of the trustworthy service broker are to perform rigorous testing and evaluation effectively and to ensure that only quality WS can be registered and released to the public. A group testing technique is applied to reduce the test cost by using a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated test scripts, which progressively rules out low quality WS. WS are further ranked based on the group testing results using ranking criteria. Experiments show that this approach can effectively test and choose WS in an open environment and in reduced number of tests.
Gifted learning disabled students

Abstract Up to 30 per cent of gifted students display a learning disability, with 10 per cent reading at two or more years below their grade level. They are referred to as being ‐gifted learning disabled’ or as having the dual exceptionalities of giftedness and learning disabilities. For these students, their learning disability is more likely to be recognised and targeted in teaching than their gifted ability. The present study reviews their learning characteristics and explains these in terms of an information processing model of learning. Nine characteristics are addressed: their superior general intellectual ability in at least some domains of knowledge, a global wholistic preference in thinking, a negative academic self‐concept, low resilience in learning, patterns in motivation to learn orientation, their use of metacognifion, their ability to show what they know, their uneven rates of development, their high standards and goals, and the quality of their interpersonal interactions. The paper uses these characteristics to recommend a set of procedures for identifying these students. It examines the influence that a learning disability can have on the display of gifted knowledge and describes how dynamic assessment procedures can be used to obtain a more accurate diagnosis. It describes the two main types of general ability profiles that emerge. Procedures for assessing creativity and divergent thinking, a learning disability, aptitude in particular areas, an intrinsic motivation to learn, self‐concept, metacognition and self management of learning are discussed. To his teachers, Adam was a conundrum. He was a very quick thinker, but not in the ways that would help him excel academically. He had excellent knowledge of a range of subjects but this didn't seem to help him achieve academic success. His answers to questions were unexpected, although, when analysed, creative. On excursions he could be relied on to see ways around obstacles that arose; his teachers valued his ‘native intelligence’ on these occasions. It was less valued in classroom contexts in which they were developing a topic with a group and Adam would interject with ideas and questions that were either ‘marginally relevant’ or ‘further down the track’. They wished he would put his energy more into improving his spelling and writing ability, that were extremely low, and bis recall of the times tables. Ann, an eight year old, was also perplexing to her teachers. In class she was ‘off task’ and daydreamed a lot. She did not finish most tasks, frequently lost her place and made many careless errors. Her distractability meant that she was frequently disruptive. As a consequence, her level of academic achievement was low. Her teacher interpreted her inattention and impulsivity as a lack of interest in learning and her preference to avoid tasks. As well, however, her teacher noticed her comparatively high level reading ability and her advanced oral language capacity and had difficulty reconciling the two sets of observations.
Google-bombing - Manipulating the PageRank Algorithm

With the growth of the Internet, the field of Information Retrieval (IR) has gained increasing importance. Quick, easy, and accurate information access is the deciding factor between successful search companies and their rivals. Likewise, the manipulation of IR systems for ulterior motives, known as adversarial IR, is just as important, as it can turn the successes of a search strategy against itself, at the expense of the general user. In this paper, a specific form of adversarial IR known as Google-bombing is examined, regarding its implementation and the different means by which it can be combatted.
Student representation in Western Europe: introduction to the special issue

Abstract This article introduces the special issue of European Journal of Higher Education dedicated to the cross-national comparison of student representation in Western Europe. Student representative organisations, whose primary aim is to represent and defend the interests of the collective student body, are core participants in European higher education (HE) governance. Yet, these organisations are strikingly absent in scholarly literature. This special issue is guided by the question of how students as a collective body are organised, and how their interests are aggregated, articulated and intermediated into the national policy processes. The article develops the conceptual framework guiding the investigation of national student associations and systems of student representation and interest intermediation; and it introduces the five empirically-driven articles on student representation in Norway, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy compared, and Spain.
Proceedings of the FREENIX Track: 2004 USENIX Annual Technical Conference

With the increasing use of clusters in different domains, efﬁcient and ﬂexible security has now become an essential requirement for clusters, though many security mechanisms exist, there is a need to develop more ﬂex-ible and coherent security mechanisms for large distributed applications. In this paper, we present the need for a uniﬁed cluster wide security space for large distributed applications. Based on these needs, we propose a new security model that implements security zones inside the cluster. The model is an extension to Mandatory Access Control (MAC) mechanisms used at node level to the whole cluster with processes as basic security entities. We designed this model with clustered Linux servers running carrier-grade applications in mind but this model can be used in any domain that needs Linux clusters running large distributed applications continuously with no interruptions. We prove the feasibility of this approach through an open source implementation of the concept [1].
Liberation of a mouse uterus-specific protein in the serum during uterine carcinogenesis.

Summary An alkaline phosphatase that exhibited immunological specificity towards the mouse uterus was liberated in the serum during uterine carcinogenesis induced by dimethylbenzanthracene. A correlation was observed between the presence of neoplastic lesions and the appearance of this alkaline phosphatase in the serum. This specific protein, which was immunohistochemically localized in the endometrial epithelium of normal mice, was found in the tumor cells exhibiting keratinization. Diagnostic value of these findings has been implicated.
Geographic Concentration Of Home-Based Medical Care Providers.

The United States faces a shortage of providers who care for homebound patients. About 5,000 primary care providers made 1.7 million home visits to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in 2013, accounting for 70 percent of all home-based medical visits. Nine percent of these providers performed 44 percent of visits. However, most homebound people live more than thirty miles from a high-volume provider.
A UHF rectifier with one octave bandwidth based on a non-uniform transmission line

Ambient RF energy especially in urban settings is suitable for scavenging and harvesting scenarios provided one is able to collect signals from a large number of frequency bands and consequently spanning a large aggregate bandwidth. In this work a broadband rectifier is designed capable of harvesting RF energy in the 400 MHz - 1 GHz range, which includes the analog and digital TV bands and the UHF ISM 900 MHz band. In order to obtain a sufficiently large rectifier bandwidth, a matching network based on a non-uniform transmission line is considered. A charge pump rectifier is used and the number of diodes in the circuit is optimized in order to facilitate impedance matching based on the Bode-Fano limit. A prototype is fabricated and characterized. The rectifier has a measured efficiency above 5% from 470 MHz to 990 MHz at -20 dBm input power, which increases above 60% at 10 dBm input power over a band from 470 MHz to 860 MHz.
The African American Student's Guide to Surviving Graduate School

Graduate School Is. Making the Right Choice about Where To Go to Graduate School and Getting in with Money Developing a Master Plan Staying in the Game - with Robert Brandau Know When to Leave the Party A Handbook for Mastering the Moves Selecting and Managing Your Major Professor and Advisory Committee Getting Through the Thesis or Dissertation Surviving the Defense Looking Back and Moving Forward - With Donna Walter and L Denise Edwards When Racism Rears Its Ugly Head
Comparison between different illumination independent change detection techniques

Due to a large number of applications in various disciplines, including surveillance, remote sensing, medical diagnosis and treatment, measurement of crop development and land erosion, civil infrastructure, and underwater sensing, there is a wide spread interest in detecting regions of change in multiple images of the same scene taken at different times. This paper presents a systematic survey on modern change detection algorithms, including background subtraction, shading model and circular shift moments. We also compare the performance of various algorithms based on computational cost, time varying illumination and noisy environment as the real world images are very much affective to these conditions.
Assessment and analysis of phthalate esters, in Lake Pontchartrain, by SPME combining with GC-MS

This study for the first time reports a quantitative analysis of phthalates and spatial distribution of phthalates in Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, USA using solid phase micro-extraction (SPME) coupled with gas chromatography mass spectroscopy (GC-MS). During 2008–2009, di-n-butylphthalate (DnBP) along with its congener (DiBP) and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) were detected in Lake Pontchartrain. Concentrations of these phthalates in the lake were monitored in different areas before and after the opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway that occurred from April to May in 2008. The concentration of Σ3PAEs (DnBP, DiBP and DEHP) ranged from 0 to 20 μg/L in the surface water of the lake from March 2008 to June 2009. The distribution of the three phthalates varied with locations in the lake. An increase trend of Σ3PAEs was observed after the opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway in the central lake area. The observed increase of the phthalates could be correlated to the opening of the spillway. The SPME followed by GC-MS employed in this study has been proved to be a rapid, sensitive and practical method to quantitatively analyse and evaluate phthalate concentrations in salt lake waters.
Bioinformatics Applications Note Systems Biology Htsanalyzer: an R/bioconductor Package for Integrated Network Analysis of High-throughput Screens

Motivation: High-throughput screens (HTS) by RNAi or small molecules are among the most promising tools in functional genomics. They enable researchers to observe detailed reactions to experimental perturbations on a genome-wide scale. While there is a core set of computational approaches used in many publications to analyze these data, a specialized software combining them and making them easily accessible has so far been missing. Results: Here we describe HTSanalyzeR, a flexible software to build integrated analysis pipelines for HTS data that contains over-representation analysis, gene set enrichment analysis, comparative gene set analysis and rich sub-network identification. HTSanalyzeR interfaces with commonly used pre-processing packages for HTS data and presents its results as HTML pages and network plots. Availability: Our software is written in the R language and freely available via the Bioconductor project at http://www.bioconductor . org.
Characterization of time variation on 1.9 GHz fixed wireless channels in suburban macrocell environments

We observed temporal fading on 1.9 GHz fixed wireless channels during short-term measurements at 107 different locations in a suburban macrocell environment characterized by flat terrain and heavy foliage in order to determine how the rate of fading varies with average wind speed and distance. For each location, we estimated: (1) the Ricean K-factor using a moment-based estimator and (2) an equivalent Doppler frequency which is related to the maximum Doppler frequency by a factor that depends upon the shape of the Doppler spectrum. We did so by fitting the measured level crossing rate (LCR) and average fade duration (AFD) distributions to expressions normally justified for mobile wireless links using a method recently proposed by Feick, Valenzuela and Ahumada (2007). As has been observed at other sites, the Ricean K-factor decreased with both average wind speed and distance. However, we found that the equivalent Doppler frequency was effectively uncorrelated with wind speed and noticeably increased with distance. Similar measurements at other sites will be required to determine the extent to which these trends are affected by foliage density and tower height.
Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Research Opportunities

The aerospace community is planning for growth in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) funding and research opportunities. The premise that UAS will revolutionize aerospace appears to be unfolding based on current trends. There is also an anticipation of an increasing number of new platforms and research investment, which is likely but must be analysed carefully to determine where the opportunities lie. This paper draws on the state of technology, history and systems engineering. We explore what aspects of UAS will be the result of aerospace science advances and what aspects will be incremental engineering and systems integration. It becomes apparent that, for academia, the largest opportunities may exist in small and micro UAS domain due to the novelty of aerospace engineering on a small scale.
Dynamic Cloud Pricing for Revenue Maximization

In cloud computing, a provider leases its computing resources in the form of virtual machines to users, and a price is charged for the period they are used. Though static pricing is the dominant pricing strategy in today's market, intuitively price ought to be dynamically updated to improve revenue. The fundamental challenge is to design an optimal dynamic pricing policy, with the presence of stochastic demand and perishable resources, so that the expected long-term revenue is maximized. In this paper, we make three contributions in addressing this question. First, we conduct an empirical study of the spot price history of Amazon, and find that surprisingly, the spot price is unlikely to be set according to market demand. This has important implications on understanding the current market, and motivates us to develop and analyze market-driven dynamic pricing mechanisms. Second, we adopt a revenue management framework from economics, and formulate the revenue maximization problem with dynamic pricing as a stochastic dynamic program. We characterize its optimality conditions, and prove important structural results. Finally, we extend to consider a nonhomogeneous demand model.
Effective stratification for low selectivity queries on deep web data sources

We study the problem of estimating the result of an aggregation query with low selectivity when a data source only supports limited data accesses. Existing stratified sampling techniques cannot be applied to such a problem since either it is very hard, if not impossible, to gather certain critical statistics from such a data source, or more importantly, the selective attribute of the query may not be queriable on the data source. In such cases, we need an effective mechanism to stratify the data and form homogeneous strata with respect to the selective attribute of the query, despite not being able to query the data source with the selective attribute. This paper presents and evaluates a stratification method for this problem utilizing a queriable auxiliary attribute. The breaking points for the stratification are computed based on a novel Bayesian Adaptive Harmony Search algorithm. This method derives from the existing Harmony search method, but includes novel objective function, and introduces a technique for dynamically adapting key parameters of this method. Our experiments show that the estimation accuracy achieved using our method is consistently higher than 95% even for 0.01% selectivity query, even when there is only a low correlation between the auxiliary attribute and the selective attribute. Furthermore, our method achieves at least a five fold reduction in estimation error over three other methods, for the same sampling cost.