Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Temporality of sense-making in narrative interactions

Abstract Human experience is inherently temporal and involves placing events, symbols, and actions in a temporal scheme. This article deals with a specific aspect of temporal experience as it relates to reading and experiencing narrative fiction. Within an enactive understanding of human cognition, we propose a view of literary reading as a process of participatory sense-making between a reader and a storyteller. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making maintains that agents, by enacting their own sense-making, directly and partially constitute the sense-making of other agents. Sense-makers in interaction navigate two orders of normativity: their own and that of the interaction itself. Linguistic sense-making (languaging) opens up further possibilities for understanding complex spatially and temporally distributed forms of social interactions such as narrative interactions. Reading a narrative is one such example of mutually constituted navigation between an interaction dynamic and interactors’ sense-making. The reader completes and co-authors emergent textual meaning and a textually emerging storyteller guides and anticipates the multiple temporal displacements, realized linguistically, that a reader has to experience in the process of reading. We explore the participatory structure of a narrative through its temporal unfolding and the specific, non-linear nature of the temporal dynamics of interacting with a storytelling agency. In particular, narrative interactions are seen as modulations in the pacing of a given narrative’s unfolding. It is suggested that the reader’s enactment of such temporally realized pacings constitutes a better description of narrative immersion than its traditional understanding as a simulation of spatial situatedness.
Grandparenting and adolescent well-being: evidence from the UK and Israel

ABSTRACT This article reviews the major findings of two large-scale studies on adolescent–grandparent relationship conducted in the UK and in Israel. The Israeli study followed the UK study, deepening the investigation of some of the major themes uncovered in the British study. Both studies reveal that grandmothers and grandfathers are highly involved in adolescents’ lives and that this involvement is associated with increased adolescent well-being. The studies focus on the role of grandparents in times of parental divorce and other stressful events, as well as the weaker status of the paternal grandparents in post-divorce families and the correlates of the adolescent’s relationship with the paternal grandmother. Both studies highlight the role of intergenerational relationships, including parent–grandparent and parent–adolescent bonds, in the adolescent–grandparent relationship, in line with the intergenerational solidarity model. The Israeli study deepens our understanding of the possible contributions of cultural affiliation to the child–grandparent relationship by comparing Arab and Jewish adolescents’ self-reports of their relationships with their grandparents. These studies bring to light the possible positive role of grandparent involvement. Family psychology should pay greater attention to this role and its contribution, especially in times of transition and distress in adolescents’ lives.
MapTable: a tactical command and control interface

This paper describes a novel tabletop interface, MapTable, which can be used as a tactical command and control interface. It is designed and implemented to explore more intelligent and intuitive interaction in a distributed environment that can support remote collaboration. MapTable offers a common space for planners to work, which retains the intuitive feel of a "sandbox" around which discussion can take place and plans easily displayed, whilst the automated navigation command system means that both planning and the issuing of directions can effectively be merged into a single activity using a single user interface that embeds the tasks into the interaction. Empirical studies were conducted to test this tactical interface in a remote searching task environment. Compared to the traditional desktop command and control interface, MapTable can lead to significant differences in performance. This fusion of planning, command and control means that planners can be expected have a high level of situational awareness with regard to where those they are directing are, where they will be and what others in the team are doing.
A Reliable Watermarking Algorithm Based on Wavelet Transform for Satellite Images

According to the need for having a confident and secure communication of satellite images with minimum tolerable delay, a novel method is presented here as a design and simulation of contemporary techniques. This paper turns around modern algorithms, building systems with higher grade-of-service using multi-resolution decomposition. We used Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) as a basic tool along by watermarking of satellite images. Choosing the best area to hide the watermark is distinguished from others in excellence as exposed in the last results. This is due to the fact that DWT supports features like progressive image transmission.
Intestinal Malrotation: A Rare Cause of Small Intestinal Obstruction

Background. The diagnosis of intestinal malrotation is established by the age of 1 year in most cases, and the condition is seldom seen in adults. In this paper, a patient with small intestinal malrotation-type intraperitoneal hernia who underwent surgery at an older age because of intestinal obstruction is presented. Case. A 73-year-old patient who presented with acute intestinal obstruction underwent surgery as treatment. Distended jejunum and ileum loops surrounded by a peritoneal sac and located between the stomach and transverse colon were determined. The terminal ileum had entered into the transverse mesocolon from the right lower part, resulting in kinking and subsequent segmentary obstruction. The obstruction was relieved, and the small intestines were placed into their normal position in the abdominal cavity. Conclusion. Small intestinal malrotations are rare causes of intestinal obstructions in adults. The appropriate treatment in these patients is placement of the intestines in their normal positions.
Privacy by design: a formal framework for the analysis of architectural choices

The privacy by design approach has already been applied in different areas. We believe that the next challenge in this area today is to go beyond individual cases and to provide methodologies to explore the design space in a systematic way. As a first step in this direction, we focus in this paper on the data minimization principle and consider different options using decentralized architectures in which actors do not necessarily trust each other. We propose a framework to express the parameters to be taken into account (the service to be performed, the actors involved, their respective requirements, etc.) and an inference system to derive properties such as the possibility for an actor to detect potential errors (or frauds) in the computation of a variable. This inference system can be used in the design phase to check if an architecture meets the requirements of the parties or to point out conflicting requirements.
The Information Cube: Using Transparency in 3D Information Visualization

In this paper, we propose a new 3D visualization technique for hierarchical information. This technique is based on the nested box metaphor, a familiar concept for any users. By using semi-transparent rendering, the system controls the complexity of the information presented to the user. With several 3D interaction techniques provided by the system, the user can recognize and inspect the information structure intuitively. Nor-mally, the user puts on the VR equipment to use the system, but the system is also accessible through a conventional CRT display.
Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies

The consequences of global warming and the UK’s commitments to achieving targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is increasing the urgency for the UK to move towards a more sustainable future. One aspect of this is to improve the sustainability of the existing housing stock. Our housing stock as a whole is ageing because current demolition and new-build rates cannot meet everincreasing demand. It is estimated that 800,000 people reside in 4000 high-rise tower blocks. Refurbishment of these existing buildings needs to be a high priority. PBA have been commissioned to provide Structural, Mechanical and Electrical consultancy services in support of Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, West Midlands in their refurbishment of 44 tower blocks to ‘Decent Homes Standard’. This paper will aim to examine the sustainable value of refurbishment by assessing a ‘typical’ case study and reviewing the environmental and economic impact when compared to new-build.
Predicting FTSE 100 close price using hybrid model

Prediction financial time series (stock index price) is the most challenging task. Support vector regression (SVR), Support vector machine (SVM) and back propagation neural network (BPNN) are the most popular data mining techniques in prediction financial time series. In this paper a hybrid combination model is introduced to combine the three models and to be most beneficial of them all. Quantization factor is used in this paper for the first time to improve the single SVM and SVR prediction output. And also genetic algorithm (GA) used to determine the weights of the proposed model. FTSE100 daily index closing price is used to evaluate the proposed model performance. The proposed hybrid model numerical results shows the outperform result over all other single model and the traditional simple average combiner.
Precipitation Time Series Predicting of the Chaotic Characters Using Support Vector Machines

Based on the powerful nonlinear mapping ability of support vector machines, the predicting model of support vector machines in combination with Takens' delay coordinate phase reconstruction of chaotic time series has been established. Yearly precipitation time series is of the chaotic characters, thus this model is used to try predicting the precipitation. Because of the peculiarity of precipitation time series, the mean-square-error is used as the criterion to choose the embedding dimension and model parameters. Case study proved the precise of this model to predicting the precipitation. Besides, this result also shows that support vector machines is one of tools to study chaotic time series.
Curcumin accelerates reendothelialization and ameliorates intimal hyperplasia in balloon-injured rat carotid artery via the upregulation of endothelial cell autophagy

Delayed reendothelialization and intimal hyperplasia (IH) contribute to the failure of vascular interventions. Curcumin (Cur) has been used for various types of diseases with antioxidant, antiproliferative and anti-inflammatory effects. However, investigations involving the application of Cur in inhibiting IH are limited. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the potential therapeutic effects of Cur and its underlying mechanisms on a rat model of carotid artery (CA) intimal injury. In vitro, an endothelial cell (EC) migration assay was conducted using cultured primary human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) that were exposed to Cur. In vivo, CA angioplasty injury was used to generate a rat model of intimal injury. CAs were collected at 3 days, and 1 and 4 weeks after injury, respectively, for western blot analysis and double-immunofluorescence analyses, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end-labeling staining, oxidative stress indicator analysis and hematoxylin and eosin staining of the neointima. In vivo, Cur significantly enhanced the migration and healing of HUVECs and simultaneously promoted microtubule-associated protein light chain 3-II (LC3-II) expression when HUVECs were subjected to an artificial scratch. In vitro, endangium from the Cur-treated rats exhibited a significantly reduced number of apoptotic ECs and oxidative stress level compared to that of the sham group. In addition, Cur treatment markedly improved quantification of the LC3-II concomitant with the downregulation of p62 in the injured CA. At 1 week following injury, sizable neointimal lesions had developed, although prominent intima thickening was not observed. At 4 weeks, apparent hemadostenosis occurred resulting from the exorbitance IH. Cur treatment markedly reduced the thickness of the neointimal lesion. It is noteworthy that high-dose Cur may have exerted more significant effects than low-dose Cur. Cur can potentially become a therapeutic drug for angiostenosis by imparting a protective effect that accelerates reendothelialization and ameliorates IH and was mediated by its pro-autophagic effect.
Haptic exploration of unknown surfaces with discontinuities

This work presents an approach for exploring unknown surfaces with discontinuities using only force/torque information. The motivation is to build an information map of an unknown object or environment by performing a fully-autonomous haptic exploration. Examples of discontinuities considered here are contours with sharp turns (such as wall corners) and abrupt dips (such as cliffs). Compliant motion control using force information has the ability to conform to unknown, smooth surfaces but not to discontinuous surfaces. This paper investigates solutions to address the limitation in compliant motion control over discontinuities while maintaining a desired normal force along the surface. We propose two methods to address the problem: (1) superposition of motion and force control and (2) rotation of axes for force and motion control. The theoretical principles are discussed and experimental results with a KUKA lightweight arm moving in 2D space are presented. Both approaches successfully negotiate objects with sharp 90-degree and 120-degree turns while still maintaining good tracking of the desired force.
A Novel Function for Foxm1 in Interkinetic Nuclear Migration in the Developing Telencephalon and Anxiety-Related Behavior

Interkinetic nuclear migration (INM) is a key feature of cortical neurogenesis. INM functions to maximize the output of the neuroepithelium, and more importantly, balance the self-renewal and differentiation of the progenitors. Although INM has been reported to be highly correlated with the cell cycle, little is known about the effects of cell cycle regulators on INM. In this study, by crossing Foxm1fl/fl mice with Emx1-Cre line, we report that a conditional disruption of forkhead transcription factor M1 (Foxm1) in dorsal telencephalon results in abnormal cell cycle progression, leading to impaired INM through the downregulation of Cyclin b1 and Cdc25b. The impairment of INM disturbs the synchronization of apical progenitors (APs) and promotes the transition from APs to basal progenitors (BPs) in a cell-autonomous fashion. Moreover, ablation of Foxm1 causes anxiety-related behaviors in adulthood. Thus, this study provides evidence of linkages among the cell cycle regulator Foxm1, INM, and adult behavior.
The Role of Plan-Based Approaches in Organizing Agile Companies

The paper presents the results of a survey performed in 23 Agile companies. The survey focuses on the identification of the non-agile practices used in the organization of their development process. Even if the companies considered in the study are using Agile approaches to develop their products, the organization and the planning of the work is deeply affected by the approaches used in Plan-Based companies. Understanding which are the most used non-agile techniques and why managers are still so linked to them can identify potential weaknesses in the actual implementation of the Agile Methods.
A COMPARISON OF ENGLISH VERSUS ARABIC FOR A SOFTWARE PIRACY INSTRUMENT

As part of a broader research project directed toward development of a more comprehensive software piracy model, the authors collected two sets of data from students at the Kuwait University. The software piracy instrument was translated from English to Arabic. Then, both the English version and the Arabic version were administered to college of business undergraduate students at Kuwait University during different semesters. This paper presents a comparison of the two samples from Kuwait students in light of a proposed equity software piracy model. The Kuwait samples will be analyzed first to determine if there are significant differences between the students in the two samples and then using factor analysis to determine if language differences significantly impacted the results. Because English is not well spoken in all Arabic countries, a case can be made that the instrument translated in Arabic may be useful for data collection in other Arabic countries if there are no significant differences. These results will prove helpful in an attempt to incorporate a cultural factor into software piracy models to make them more generalizable.
SAT-LHUC: Speaker adaptive training for learning hidden unit contributions

This paper extends learning hidden unit contributions (LHUC) unsupervised speaker adaptation with speaker adaptive training (SAT). Contrary to other SAT approaches, the proposed technique does not require speaker-dependent features, the generation of auxiliary generative models to estimate or extract speaker-dependent information, or any changes to the speaker-independent model structure. SAT-LHUC is directly integrated into the objective and jointly learns speaker-independent and speaker-dependent representations. We demonstrate that the SAT-LHUC technique can match feature-space regression transforms for matched narrow-band data and outperform it on wide-band data when the runtime distribution differs significantly from training one. We have obtained 6.5%, 10% and 18.5% relative word error rate reductions compared to speaker-independent models on Switchboard, AMI meetings and TED lectures, respectively. This corresponds to relative gains of 2%, 4% and 6% compared with non-SAT LHUC adaptation. SAT-LHUC was also found to be complementary to SAT with feature-space maximum likelihood linear regression transforms.
A New Approach of Mesh Watermarking Based on Maximally Stable Meshes Detection

Watermarking 3D meshes is very important in many areas of activity including digital cinematography, virtual reality as well as in CAD design. Due to the complexity of 3D meshes, mesh watermarking schemes are far from the maturity of watermarking algorithms dedicated to audio, image or video watermarking. According to our knowledge, no existing scheme is robust against all attacks. To verify a good trade-off between invisibility and robustness, a new approach of 3D mesh watermarking algorithm based on MSMs detection is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm, only invariant regions are marked. These invariant regions are called Maximally Stable Meshes (MSMs) and they present an extension of the well-known Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) detected for 2D images. First, an efficient way to detect MSMs in 3D meshes by using curvature measures of vertices is presented. Then, obtained MSMs are marked with a geometric watermarking scheme. The experimentations show that this new watermarking is robust against numerous attacks including rotation, zooming, translation, cropping, simplification, and remeshing. Moreover, it gives a good invisibility and a blind extraction.
Generalized cross-validation as a method for choosing a good ridge parameter

Consider the ridge estimate (λ) for β in the model unknown, (λ) = (X T X + nλI)−1 X T y. We study the method of generalized cross-validation (GCV) for choosing a good value for λ from the data. The estimate is the minimizer of V(λ) given by where A(λ) = X(X T X + nλI)−1 X T . This estimate is a rotation-invariant version of Allen's PRESS, or ordinary cross-validation. This estimate behaves like a risk improvement estimator, but does not require an estimate of σ2, so can be used when n − p is small, or even if p ≥ 2 n in certain cases. The GCV method can also be used in subset selection and singular value truncation methods for regression, and even to choose from among mixtures of these methods.
A new system partitioning method under performance and physical constraints for multi-chip modules

In this paper, we propose a new and the first MCM system partitioning method considering chip-to-chip delays, chip areas and I/O pins constraints. The proposed method consists of two steps, a clustering step considering the three constraints and an iterative improvement step with mathematical programming. In the first step, we apply two clustering algorithms considering the three constraints and reduce the size of the large MCM system partitioning problem so as to get a solution within a practical computation time. Next, it generates an initial partitioning with 0-1 integer linear programming (ILP) so as to minimize the total wire length. Since there may exist constraint violations in the initial solution, in the second step, we formulate the partitioning problem as a LP problem selecting a maximal independent set and improve it until the total number of cuts is not decreased and the three constraints are satisfied. We also showed that the number of the timing constraints can be reduced by deleting redundant timing constraints. Experimental results showed that the proposed method is able to produce partitions satisfying the three constraints and improves the number of cuts by a 27% on an average and a 30% in maximum over the conventional method [15] considering only two constrains.
State History Tree: An Incremental Disk-Based Data Structure for Very Large Interval Data

In this paper, we propose the State History Tree, a disk-based data structure to manage large streaming interval data. The State History Tree provides an efficient way to store interval data on permanent storage with a logarithmic access time. The disk-based structure ensures that extremely large data sets can be accommodated. The State History Tree stores intervals in blocks on disk in a tree organization. Unlike other interval management data structures like R-Trees, our solution avoids re-balancing the nodes, speeding up the tree construction. The proposed method is implemented in Java, and evaluated using large data sets (up to one terabyte). Those data sets were obtained from the state intervals computed from system events traced with the LTTng kernel tracer. The evaluation results demonstrate the performance and efficiency of the method, as compared with other solutions to managing huge interval data sets.
Visual Functions in Post-Concussion Syndrome

iii Acknowledgements . v Dedication . vi List of Figures. xii List of Tables . xvii Introduction . 1 1.1 Concussion definition . 1 1.2 Concussion pathology . 1 1.3 Concussion by the numbers . 2 1.4 Concussion in sport. 2 1.5 Concussion diagnosis . 3 1.6 Concussion recovery. 3 1.7 Post-Concussion Syndrome (PCS) . 3 1.8 Visual function in concussion and PCS . 6 1.9 Overall objective . 8 1.9. 1 Research objectives . 8 1.9. 2 Research hypotheses. 8