Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ASSESSMENT OF A BOUSSINESQ WAVE MODEL FOR THE DESIGN OF A HARBOUR

Over the years, a number of numerical models have been implemented with the original or equivalent forms of the Boussinesq wave equations. Their veriications however, have been carried out mainly for one dimensional conditions and with experiments of speciic wave phenomena. Two dimensional model veriications of real wourld problems are rare and usually done for simple conditions. In this paper a Boussinesq wave model under development at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics in Hannover was veriied with physical model measurements carried out for a complex harbour entrance in northern Germany with shallow and deep water regions and steep bottom slopes. The domain of interest was described by nite diierence grids with up to 500,000 nodes. The results of the simulations showed that the model is capable of capturing the wave transformation phenomena and suggest that applications of Boussinesq wave models for the design of harbours are within reach. In the simulations, the discrepancies between computed and measured wave heights are more signiicant in locations close to the highly irregular boundaries near the marina and ferry terminal. The smoothing approach applied to damp out the numerical noise in that vicinity, the grid resolution which cannot properly account for all the irregularities and the uncertainties regarding the reeection coeecients are the reasons for the lack of agreement.
The Use of Poster Sessions to Develop Professionalism, Domain Five of the Ecuadorian National English Teachers' Standards.

This study describes the presence of professional skills found in poster session proposals in order to consider the use of poster sessions for developing the skills required by the 2012 Ecuadorian Standards for English teachers, specifically related to the fifth domain professionalism. Thirteen poster session proposals for a national English teacher conference were analyzed to identify professional skills using the International Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference rubric to describe their academic quality, and Halleck and Connor’s Coding Scheme Checklist to describe the TESOL proposal genre characteristics. The results provided evidence of the skills related to the Ecuadorian national standards for English teachers as well as their academic strengths and weaknesses. The poster session can be an effective strategy to help teachers become more proactive and autonomous in growing professionally. This study can be useful for English teachers working to meet the national standards and institutions wanting to explore new strategies to develop and implement the English Teachers’ Standards.
Quantitative assessment with using ticket driven development for teaching scrum framework

Developing software by teams which adopted the agile development methodology such as Scrum seems totally natural in industry. On the other hand, students belonging to graduate schools of information science who have some experience on the agile team software development are rare. In the initial education on the Scrum, there exists some challenges. The first one is a concept of self-organization. In the Scrum project, members of the team determine how best to accomplish the tasks by themselves. However, it is challenging for students with less experience on team software development to cultivate the self-organizing team by themselves. The 2nd one is inequality on task assignment. In the Scrum project, each member pulls tasks to perform, and do not wait to be assigned by Project Manager. The assignment behavior may cause inequality on task assignment. As a result, such inequality may also cause inequality on learning opportunities to acquire skills and knowledge on the process and the product. In this paper, we propose quantitative assessment methods for the Scrum project with using TiDD(Ticket Driven Development) for the initial education on the Scrum framework and web application production. We report on our basic PBL(Project-Based Learning) course which involved 49 students. The use of quantitative criteria enabled students and teachers to assess the Scrum projects in the viewpoints of quality, assignment, and delivery of projects.
SULT1A1 Arg213His Polymorphism is Associated with Bladder Cancer Risk: A Meta-Analysis

Background The evidence of an association between the Sulfotransferase 1A1 (SULT1A1) Arg213His polymorphism (rs9282861) and bladder cancer risk is still conflicting. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the association between this polymorphism and bladder cancer risk. Material/Methods PubMed, EMBASE, HuGE Navigator, and Web of Science databases were searched for correlative articles. The risk (odds ratio, OR) was used to estimate the association between SULT1A1 Arg213His polymorphism and bladder cancer risk. All of the studies used either fixed-effects or random-effects models. For assessing the credibility of an association, we applied the Venice criteria. Results Seven published case-control studies with 1688 cases and 2842 controls were included in this meta-analysis. There were 5 studies of Caucasians and 2 studies of Asians. Four studies reported data on smoking behavior. The percentage of Arg/Arg was higher in Asians and non-smokers than that in Caucasians and smokers, respectively. A significant association of this polymorphism with bladder cancer was found (OR=1.45, 95% CI 1.18–1.78, P=0.0004). In the subgroup analysis by ethnicity, a significant association was found among Caucasians (OR=1.43, 95% CI 1.16–1.77, P=0.0008) but not among Asians (OR=1.89, 95% CI 0.68–5.26, P=0.22). In the subgroup analysis by smoking behavior, increased bladder cancer risk was found in the smokers (OR=1.39, 95% CI 1.01–1.91, P=0.04) and non-smokers (OR=1.74, 95% CI 1.24–2.43, P=0.001). Conclusions In conclusion, this meta-analysis indicated that SULT1A1 Arg213His polymorphism is associated with bladder cancer risk.
Towards u-health: An indoor 6LoWPAN based platform for real-time healthcare monitoring

Ubiquitous healthcare is the key to handle the challenges of the growing population around the world. A variety of u-healthcare systems have been developed using various short-range technologies and proprietary protocols which include Zigbee and bluetooth. With all these protocols, interoperability of smart devices remains a challenge. 6LoWPAN as an open standard has recently evolved to provide one common platform on the top of IEEE802.15. 4 for low power devices and to mitigate this interoperability problem. In this paper, we present a novel 6LoWPAN based communication platform for next-generation u-healthcare system. The system integrates three nodes forwarding data to an edge router in order to provide real-time monitoring of the patient's ECG, temperature, and acceleration. A PC connected to the edge router acts as a two-directional Gateway between 6LoWPAN and internet. A new gateway application, listening to UDP packets from the 6LoWPAN nodes via the edge router along with any TCP client request from the internet, is developed. Thereby, any remote PC can connect to the gateway using TCP/IP by just connecting to the IP address and dedicated port of the gateway, fostering then ubiquity as well as Internet of Things. Nevertheless, the user can send instructions to any node where the application running on the gateway translates the command to a particular node. In our case, we used a Labview program to provide this connectivity. The whole system was tested successfully for different ECG rates using an ECG simulator. The received waveforms were found identical to those shown by a high-resolution scope wired to the ECG signals.
Investigating Non-Linearities in the Relationship Between Real Exchange Rate Volatility and Agricultural Trade

The article analyzes production and marketing lags in agri-food supply chains that force competitive producers and processors to commit to output targets before prices and exchange rates are realized. We show that export markets act as put options for exporters and an increase in the volatility of the real exchange rate will generally increase exports. Relaxing the assumptions about the real exchange rate distribution and risk preferences of producers and/or processors can introduce non-linearities in the relationship between exports and real exchange rate volatility. This relationship is investigated using the flexible non-linear inference framework of Hamilton (2001). Bilateral export equations for Canadian pork exports to the U.S. and Japan are specified. The empirical model shows that real exchange rate volatility has statistically significant non-linear effects on aggregate pork exports. Moreover, bilateral pork exports are less sensitive to country- specific variables than aggregate volatility in the real exchange rate.
STIS and GHRS Observations of Warm and Hot Gas Overlying the Scutum Supershell (GS 018–04+44)

We present Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) observations of interstellar UV absorption toward HD 177989, a B0 III star at 4.9 kpc in the direction l = 17. °8, b = -11. °9. The line of sight passes through the high-latitude ejecta of the Scutum supershell (GS 018-06+44), which is ~5° in diameter extending ~7° below the Galactic plane at a kinematic distance of ~3.5 kpc in the Scutum spiral arm. The observations with the STIS E140H and GHRS echelle B gratings provide far- and middle-UV spectra at resolutions (FWHM) of ~3 km s-1 and a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of ~20:1 to 50:1. The observations reveal strong and broad absorption in the lines of Si IV and C IV centered on LSR velocities of +18 and +42 km s-1 and weaker absorption from these ions near -50 and -13 km s-1. Weak absorption by N V extends over the full velocity range traced by Si IV and C IV. The +18 km s-1 high-ionization absorption likely occurs in gas ~400 pc below the Sagittarius spiral arm, while the extremely strong +42 km s-1 absorption occurs in highly ionized gas in the Scutum supershell at a distance of ~700 pc below the Galactic plane. The properties of the highly ionized gas associated with the Scutum supershell are similar to the gas found in radio loops I and IV; in both cases there is a strong enhancement in the column density of C IV without a corresponding increase in the column density of N V, which causes N(C IV)/N(N V) to be among the largest measured in the interstellar medium. The low-ionization absorption lines of N I, S II, Si II, and Fe II produce narrow absorption features at +37, +40 km s-1 and +55, +60 km s-1. The strength and kinematic properties of these absorption features bear no resemblance to those expected for the high-latitude neutral cloud seen in the H I 21 cm line. This may be due to the relatively low angular resolution (FWHM ~21′) of the 21 cm observations. The kinematic relationships among the high-ionization and low-ionization absorption lines observed in the UV suggest a related origin in a hot-warm gas interface region. We are possibly seeing the warm gas in the swept-up shell surrounding a region where hot gas is being vented into the halo. In the warm gas, N(N I)/N(S II) ~0.01 solar, which implies a similar value for N(H0)/[N(H0) + N(H+)]. The warm neutral and ionized gas in the matter overlying the Scutum supershell has values of Si /S and Fe /S roughly similar to those found in the warm neutral medium of the Galactic disk in the vicinity of the Sun. While there has been grain processing in the ejecta of the Scutum supershell, the processing has not been complete. Based on observations of interstellar C IV and Si IV at high S/N and high resolution toward four very distant stars, we determine that highly ionized gas absorption components occur at a frequency of ~1 component kpc-1. The strongest components are associated with lines of sight that pass over or under spiral arms or that pass though Galactic supershells.
MODIFIED MFCC METHODS BASED ON KL-TRANSFORM AND POWER LAW FOR ROBUST SPEECH RECOGNITION 1

This paper presents robust feature extraction techniques, called Mel Power Karhunen Loeve Transform Coefficients (MPKC), Mel Power Coefficients (MPC) for an isolated digit recognition. This hybrid method involves Stevens’ Power Law of Hearing and Karhunen Loeve(KL) Transform to improve noise robustness. We have evaluated the proposed methods on a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based isolated digit recognition system with TIDIGITS data for clean speech and also with noisy speech data. An increase in the recognition accuracy rate is observed with the proposed methods compared to conventional Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) technique.
Analyzing Turkish E-government Websites by Eye Tracking

Usability studies provide essential information about users' views and perceptions of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of given online services. Nowadays, e-government web sites become popular. Therefore, there is a need for usability testing to specify the usability problems and to make the services of the e-government more usable. The purpose of this study is to investigate usability of some Turkish e-government services. The study examined usability of five Turkish e-government web sites: Ministry of National Education - Student Information System (e-okul), Ministry of Justice - National Judicial Network Project (UYAP), Turkish National Police: Vehicle Search System, Social Security Institute: Service Details and General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre. It was conducted with nine participants. This study is a case study with mixed design methodology, in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed and combined. Quantitative data were collected through an eye-tracker, a pre-test questionnaire of participants' demographics and previous utilization of e-government web sites and a post-test questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected through both semi-structured individual interviews and observation during test. The study results identify the usability problems encountered while using government services. The study concludes with specific recommendations for improvement of e-government services in Turkey.
Non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium Model of NGC 6543’s Central Star and Its Relation to the Surrounding Planetary Nebula

We analyze the chemical composition of the central star of the planetary nebula NGC 6543 based on a detailed NLTE model of its stellar wind. The logarithmic abundances by number are H = 12.00, He = 11.00, C = 9.03, N = 8.36, O = 9.02, Si = 8.19, P = 5.53, S = 7.57, and Fe = 7.24. Compared with the solar abundances, most of the elements have solar composition with respect to hydrogen, except C, which is overabundant by 0.28 dex, and Fe, which is depleted by ~0.2 dex. Contrary to most previous work, we find that the star is not H-poor and has a normal He composition. These abundances are compared with those found in the diffuse X-ray plasma and the nebular gas. Compared to the plasma emitting in diffuse X-rays, the stellar wind is much less depleted in iron. Since the iron depletions in the nebular gas and X-ray plasma are similar, we conclude that the plasma emitting diffuse X-rays is derived from the nebular gas rather than the stellar wind. Excellent agreement is obtained between the abundances in the stellar wind and the nebular recombination line abundances for He, C, and O relative to H. On the other hand, the derived stellar N abundance is smaller than the nebular N abundance derived from recombination lines and agrees with the abundance found from collisionally excited lines. The mean temperature variation determined by five different methods indicates that the difference in the nebular abundances between the recombination lines and collisionally excited lines can be explained as due to the temperature variations in a chemically homogeneous medium.
Automated Scoring of Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Hypopnea Events Using Short-Term Electrocardiogram Recordings

Obstructive sleep apnea or hypopnea causes a pause or reduction in airflow with continuous breathing effort. The aim of this study is to identify individual apnea and hypopnea events from normal breathing events using wavelet-based features of 5-s ECG signals (sampling rate = 250 Hz) and estimate the surrogate apnea index (AI)/hypopnea index (HI) (AHI). Total 82 535 ECG epochs (each of 5-s duration) from normal breathing during sleep, 1638 ECG epochs from 689 hypopnea events, and 3151 ECG epochs from 1862 apnea events were collected from 17 patients in the training set. Two-staged feedforward neural network model was trained using features from ECG signals with leave-one-patient-out cross-validation technique. At the first stage of classification, events (apnea and hypopnea) were classified from normal breathing events, and at the second stage, hypopneas were identified from apnea. Independent test was performed on 16 subjects' ECGs containing 483 hypopnea and 1352 apnea events. The cross-validation and independent test accuracies of apnea and hypopnea detection were found to be 94.84% and 76.82%, respectively, for training set, and 94.72% and 79.77%, respectively, for test set. The Bland-Altman plots showed unbiased estimations with standard deviations of plusmn 2.19, plusmn 2.16, and plusmn 3.64 events/h for AI, HI, and AHI, respectively. Results indicate the possibility of recognizing apnea/hypopnea events based on shorter segments of ECG signals.
An introduction to Heegaard Floer homology

Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Heegaard decompositions and diagrams 2 3. Morse functions and Heegaard diagrams 7 4. Symmetric products and totally real tori 8 5. Disks in symmetric products 10 6. Spin c-structures 13 7. Holomorphic disks 15 8. The Floer chain complexes 17 9. A few examples 20 10. Knot Floer homology 21 11. Kauffman states 24 12. Kauffman states and Heegaard diagrams 26 13. A combinatorial formula 27 14. More computations 29 References 30
Effects of human vascular endothelial growth factor on reparative dentin formation

It is a challenge for dentists to save dental pulp in patients with pulp disease without resorting to root canal therapy. Formation of tertiary dentin to maintain pulp vitality is a key odontoblast response to dental pulp injury. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is the most potent angiogenic and vasculogenic factor involved in tertiary dentin formation. It was hypothesized that VEGF may be used to treat pulp diseases such as pulpitis. To explore this hypothesis, the first step was to assess whether VEGF affects dental pulp cells to promote reparative dentin formation. In the current study, an AdCMV-hVEGF vector was constructed to deliver hVEGF into dental pulp cells of exfoliated deciduous teeth (hDPCs) in vitro and dental pulp cells in a rat model in vivo. The collected data clearly demonstrated that hVEGF increased alkaline phosphatase and mineralization by enzymatic activity. RT-qPCR data demonstrated that hVEGF significantly increased the expression levels of genes commonly involved in osteogenesis/odontogenesis. Data from the in vivo assays indicated that hVEGF enhanced pulp cell proliferation and neovascularization, and markedly increased formation of reparative dentin in dental pulp. The in vitro and in vivo data suggest that hVEGF may have potential clinical applications, thus may aid in the development of novel treatment strategies for dental pulpitis.
Evaluating liveness by face images and the structure tensor

A technique evaluating liveness in short face image sequences is presented The intended purpose of the proposed system is to assist in a biometric authentication framework, by adding liveness awareness in a non-intrusive manner. Analyzing the trajectories of single parts of a live face reveal valuable information to discriminate it against a spoofed one. The proposed system uses a lightweight novel optical flow, which is especially applicable in face motion estimation based on the structure tensor and a few frames. It uses a model-based local Gabor decomposition and SVM experts for face part detection. An alternative approach for face pan detection using optical flow pattern matching is introduced as well. Experimental results on the proposed system are presented.
Evaluation of various unit types in the unit selection approach for the Czech language using the Festival system

The present paper focuses on the utilization of concatenative speech synthesis, aiming to determine and compare the influence on the synthesized speech quality when various unit types are used in the unit selection approach. There are several unit types which can be used for this purpose. This work deals with those most widely used, i.e. halfphones, diphones, phones, triphones and syllables. Speech was synthesized using these unit types and the outcome was listened to a by number of listeners, whose task was to evaluate the quality of synthetic speech. The result of the listening test performed for the Czech language is presented.
Regulation of CYP26 (cytochrome P450RAI) mRNA expression and retinoic acid metabolism by retinoids and dietary vitamin A in liver of mice and rats

Retinoic acid (RA), through nuclear retinoid receptors, regulates the expression of numerous genes. However, little is known of the biochemical mechanisms that regulate RA concentration in vivo. CYP26 (P450RAI), a novel cytochrome P450, is expressed during embryonic development, induced by all‐trans RA, and capable of catalyzing the oxidation of [3H]RA to polar retinoids including 4‐oxo‐RA. Here we report that CYP26 expression in adult liver is regulated by all‐trans RA and dietary vitamin A, and is correlated with the metabolism of all‐trans RA to polar metabolites. In normal mouse and rat liver, CYP26 mRNA was barely detectable; however, after acute treatment with all‐trans RA CYP26 mRNA and RA metabolism by liver microsomes were significantly induced. Aqueous‐soluble RA metabolites were detected, but their formation was not induced. The expression of retinoid receptors, RAR‐γ and RXR‐α, was not changed after RA treatment in vivo. In a model of chronic vitamin A ingestion during aging, CYP26 mRNA expression, determined by Northern blot and RT‐PCR analysis, increased progressively with dietary vitamin A (P< 0.0001; marginal < control < supplemented) and age (P< 0.003). The relative expression of CYP26 mRNA was positively correlated with liver total retinol (log10), ranging from undetectable CYP26 expression at liver retinol concentrations below ~20 nmol/g to a three‐ to fourfold elevation at concentrations > 10,000 nmol/g (r=0.90, P< 0.0001). We conclude that CYP26 expression and RA metabolism are regulated in adult liver not only acutely by RA administration, as may be relevant to retinoid therapy, but under chronic dietary conditions relevant to vitamin A nutrition in humans. —Yamamoto, Y. , Zolfaghari, R. , Ross, A. C. Regulation of CYP26 (cytochrome P450RAI) mRNA expression and retinoic acid metabolism by retinoids and dietary vitamin A in liver of mice and rats. FASEB J. 14, 2119–2127 (2000)