Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Songs to Enhance Language Learning and Skills in the Cypriot Primary EFL Classroom

Although the role of songs in the primary EFL classroom has attracted the interest of a number of researchers (Newham 1995; McMullen and Saffran 2004; Millington 2011), given the frequency with which songs are being used in English language teaching classrooms, it might have been expected that Cyprus would wish to play a role in extending research findings and applying them to its own educational setting. Yet the lack of research with young learners is particularly acute in the Cypriot Primary School EFL context where pupils have been working for the last 15 years with very outdated textbooks. Evidence of the effectiveness of using songs to learn English has come mainly from studies in other countries mainly with older pupils in middle and high schools, (Adkins 1997; Millington 2011; Fonseca-Mora et al. 2011). My research, therefore, aims to address this gap by attempting to find out whether songs could play an important role in learning a foreign language with Cypriot learners of 9-12, an age range that has not so far been addressed in the literature. In my study, I examine the potential of songs as a valuable pedagogical tool to help young pupils learn English. More specifically, I investigate the role of songs (1) in arousing positive emotions in the primary language classroom and (2) in determining whether and to what extent positive emotions can help to reinforce the grammatical structures being taught and aid vocabulary acquisition. Using an ethnographic case study framework, my study attempted, through the use of quantitative and qualitative methods, to assess the effectiveness of working with songs in the EFL classroom. The findings of this research revealed that the majority of pupils taking part in the study following the normal EFL curriculum which involved two 40-minute EFL lessons a week, showed considerable improvement in language learning after the use of songs. This suggested that the framework of EFL competence in Cyprus might also benefit from the implementation of songs into the current English language curriculum.
Understanding Resilient Outcomes: Adolescent Lives across Time and Generations.

Described is a new direction we are taking within our long-term longitudinal study of high and low risk adolescents. Through new questions and analytical approaches, we are addressing unexpected young adult outcomes: successful developmental adaptation despite serious prior risks and adversity. Our overarching goal here is gaining more complete understanding of how resilient development unfolds. Using a person-based follow-back design, we examine—through narrative analyses—previously recorded annual adolescent interviews with competent young adults who experienced significant misfortunes during their early and middle adolescent years. After briefly reviewing alternative ways of studying resilience, 3 aspects of our resilience project are presented: (a) how we identify the "competent" young adults from our high-risk adolescent sample, (b) our method for analyzing personal narratives embedded within the many hours of each competent (and average) outcome participant's interviews, and (c) our first results—8 .
Variable Colonization after Reciprocal Fecal Microbiota Transfer between Mice with Low and High Richness Microbiota

Several associations have been made between characteristics of the resident gut microbiota and human health and disease susceptibility. Animal models provide the means to test these correlations prospectively and evaluate causality. Experimental fecal microbiota transfer (FMT), or the intentional transplantation of gut microbes into recipient mice depleted of their autochthonous microbes with antibiotics, is a commonly used method of testing these relationships. The true completeness of microbial transfer through such procedures is poorly documented in the literature, particularly in the context of reciprocal transfer of microbes between recipient and donor mice harboring microbial populations of differing richness and diversity. Moreover, it is unclear whether the use of frozen fecal contents or cecal contents would confer any difference in the outcomes of transfer. Herein, groups of mice colonized with distinct gut microbiota of differing richness and composition were used in a reciprocal FMT study, with different groups receiving transfer of material prepared from fresh cecal contents, fresh feces, or frozen feces. Targeted 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing was used at intervals throughout the study to characterize the microbiota. Notably, despite comparable depletion of the microbiota in recipient mice prior to transfer, donor-specific taxa reliably colonized recipients only when relatively rich donor material was transferred to mice originally colonized with a simpler microbiota. It is unclear whether these differences were due to differences in the endogenous recipient microbiota or host factors induced in early life by microbial factors. These findings are of practical import for researchers using FMT to prospectively assess the influence of the gut microbiota in mouse models, and to those studying host-microbial interactions and their influence on gut barrier function.
Formulation and Evaluation of Aceclofenac Injection Made by Mixed Hydrotropic Solubilization Technique

Aceclofenac is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that exhibits analgesic, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory activities. It is practically insoluble in water. The effect of hydrotropes such as urea and sodium citrate and blends (urea + sodium citrate) on the solubility of aceclofenac was investigated. The enhancement in the solubility of aceclofenac was more than 5 and 25 folds in 30% sodium citrate solution and 30% urea solution, respectively, as compared to its solubility in distilled water. The enhancement in the solubility of aceclofenac in a mixed hydrotropic solution containing ≥ 20% urea and 10% sodium citrate solution was more than 250 folds (compared to its solubility in distilled water). This proved a synergistic enhancement in solubility of a poorly water- soluble drug due to mixed hydrotropy. Synergistic combination of hydrotropic agents can minimize the amount of hydrotropic agents employed, minimizing the chances of their toxicities. Aqueous injection of aceclofenac, using the mixed hydrotropic solubilization technique, was developed and by using the lyophilization method, the problem of inadequate stability of aceclofenac in aqueous solution was overcome. The developed formulation was studied for physical and chemical stability.
Photon Information Efficient Communication Through Atmospheric Turbulence–Part I: Channel Model and Propagation Statistics

Optical communication with high photon-efficiency (many bits/photon) and high spectral efficiency (SE) (many bits/s-Hz) cannot be achieved unless multiple spatial modes are employed. For vacuum propagation, it is known that achieving 10 bits/photon and 5 bits/s-Hz requires 189 low-loss spatial modes at the ultimate Holevo limit and 4500 such modes at the Shannon limit for on-off keying with direct detection. For terrestrial propagation paths, however, atmospheric turbulence corrupts multiple spatial-mode operation. This paper derives power-transmissivity bounds and average intermodal crosstalks for the turbulent channel that depend solely on the mutual coherence function of the atmospheric Green's function. These statistics are then evaluated for ~ 200 spatial-mode systems whose transmitters use either focused-beam, Hermite-Gaussian (HG), or Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes and whose receivers either do or do not employ adaptive optics. It is shown that: (1) adaptive optics are not necessary for achieving both high photon information efficiency (PIE) and high SE; (2) systems employing HG or LG modes achieve the same capacities through turbulence; and (3) the orbital angular momentum carried by LG modes does not provide turbulence immunity. In the companion paper [N. Chandrasekaran, J. H. Shapiro, and L. Wang, “Photon Information Efficient Communication Through Atmospheric Turbulence-Part II: Bounds on Ergodic Classical and Private Capacities,” J. Lightw. Technol. , vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 1088-1097, Mar. 2014], the transmissivity bounds are used to quantify the turbulence-induced loss in PIE versus SE performance for these mode sets.
Texture and shape attribute selection for plant disease monitoring in a mobile cloud-based environment

We focus on feature extraction and selection to best represent texture and shape properties of plant diseases in an image-based leaf monitoring system implemented in a mobile-cloud environment. A number of textural and region-based features are aggregated from previous studies; also we introduce mean and peak indices of histogram-of-shape as disease property representations along with the proposed and enhanced shape features based on diseased regions. A total of 260 colour-based attributes and 163 shape attributes are searched to find the best potential features based on different aspects: probability of feature error, correlation, targeted-class relevancy and the separability quality of a feature. Experimental results show that the best selected feature set which combines colour-based and shape features yields high classification accuracy on wheat disease images captured by a smartphone camera and also provides insights into potential sets of features to be further implemented as a lightweight standalone mobile application.
A large-scale system for annotating and querying quotations in news feeds

In this paper, we describe a system that automatically extracts quotations from news feeds, and allows efficient retrieval of the semantically annotated quotes. APIs for real-time querying of over 10 million quotes extracted from recent news feeds are publicly available. In addition, each day we add around 60 thousand new quotes extracted from around 50 thousand news articles or blogs. We apply computational linguistic techniques such as coreference resolution, entity recognition and disambiguation to improve both precision and recall of the quote detection. We support faceted search on both speakers and entities mentioned in the quotes.
The concept mapping method. An alternative to focus group inquiry in general practice.

BACKGROUND The concept mapping rationale and process are explained step by step. The concept mapping method produces a two dimensional conceptual map of ideas produced by the group which can be analysed at the level of individual statements, clusters of statements, and groups of similar clusters. An example of concept mapping conducted with four general practitioner (GP) groups from different practice types and demographic locations is provided. A total of 51 participating GPs were asked to complete an 'evaluation questionnaire' at the end of each group session. The majority of GP participants (68%) rated the method as highly useful. OBJECTIVE To describe the concept mapping method and its interpretation for use in general practice research. To report on its perceived usefulness and acceptability by general practitioners. DISCUSSION Concept mapping is a very useful method combining benefits from qualitative and quantitative approaches for exploring the breadth of a topic in its entirety, especially for abstract concepts. GPs found the concept mapping method to be efficient for group inquiry, rating it high on utility. There is scope to refine the method, reducing time spent in some stages of the session, and substituting more time on final analysis.
Using formal methods for security in the Xenon project

This paper reports on the Xenon project's use of formal methods. Xenon is a higher-assurance secure hypervisor based on re-engineering the Xen open-source hypervisor. The Xenon project used formal specifications both for assurance and as guides for security re-engineering. We formally modeled the fundamental definition of security, the hyper-call interface behavior, and the internal modular design. We used 3 formalisms: CSP, Z, and Circus for this work. Circus is a combination of Standard Z, CSP, with its semantics given in Hoare and He's unifying theories of programming. Circus is suited for both event-based and state-based modeling. In this extended abstract, we report our experiences with using these formalisms for assurance.
A ROM-friendly secure code update mechanism for WSNs using a stateful-verifier τ-time signature scheme

Several mechanisms have been proposed to efficiently authenticate multicast of finite data streams as needed for code image updates in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). They involve either a public-key digital signature or loose time synchronization between the sender and the receivers. What usually does not get any attention is the program memory (ROM) occupied by these mechanisms which do not fulfill the primary task of a sensor network. An optimized implementation of the elliptic curve digital signature scheme occupies up to 25% of the ROM of a TelosB node; the same or even more is needed for time synchronization schemes. Therefore, if sensor networks do not need public-key operations or time synchronization for their primary task, these SCU mechanism are not suitable for coexistence with the application code on the sensor nodes. This work contributes in two directions. Firstly, we propose a stateful-verifier T-time signature scheme based on Merkle's one-time signature. Secondly, we propose a protocol exploiting our signature scheme for securing existing code image update protocols for WSNs minimizing ROM overhead to 1% on TelosB motes.
Structure‐function relationships in rat brainstem subnucleus interpolaris. I. Vibrissa primary afferents

Intra‐axonal recording and horseradish peroxidase labelling techniques were used to examine structure‐function relationships for vibrissa‐sensitive primary afferent fibers (N = 40) in rat trigeminal brainstem subnucleus interpolaris (SpVi). All responded at short (mean‐0.42 ms) latencies to trigeminal ganglion shocks and to innocuous stimulation of an individual vibrissa in a slowly adapting type I, slowly adapting type IIa, slowly adapting type IIb, low‐velocity‐sensitive rapidly adapting, or high‐velocity‐sensitive rapidly adapting fashion. As in the medullary dorsal horn (Hayashi, '82; Jacquin et al., '86a), functionally distinct mystacial vibrissae‐related fibers were morphologically indistinguishable. Each gave rise to up to ten collaterals that entered interpolaris perpendicular to the long axis of the nucleus and often overlapped to form a densely packed, highly circumscribed, and largely continuous column of terminal arbors. While some morphological variability was observed both within and between individual axons, variance within a given functional class was no greater than that between classes. Nonmystacial vibrissae afferent arbors also formed similar ovoid, dense circumscribed terminal plexuses. Presumably, these individual arbors collectively form a longitudinal tubelike vibrissae representation in this and other components of the trigeminal brainstem nuclear complex.
Papillomavirus L1 capsids agglutinate mouse erythrocytes through a proteinaceous receptor

Virus-like particles (VLPs) composed of L1 derived from bovine papillomavirus type 1 (BPV-1), several human papillomavirus types, or cottontail rabbit papillomavirus (CRPV) agglutinated mouse but not human or rat erythrocytes. Treatment of mouse erythrocytes with trypsin prevented hemagglutination (HA) by BPV-1. Sera from rabbits immunized with native CRPV VLPs, which protect against experimental CRPV infection, exhibited high titers of antibodies that inhibited CRPV VLP HA activity, while sera from rabbits immunized with denatured CRPV VLPs or native BPV VLPs, which do not protect against CRPV infection, were not inhibitory. Testing for HA inhibition is a rapid and simple method for examining the serological relatedness of papillomaviruses and measuring protective antibody titers after VLP vaccination.
A Causal Approach for Modelling Spatial Dynamics A Preliminary Report

We propose a causal approach, involving events identified by their causes and effects, for the modelling of spatial dynamics. The suitability of situation calculus as a high-level formalism for representing and reasoning about spatial dynamics is explored and the causal framework is formalised using the same. A systematic illustration of the manner in which various aspects of axiomatic qualitative spatial calculi may be represented within the proposed causal framework is presented. The main advantage of this approach is that based on the structure and semantics of the calculus, computational tasks such as planning, projection and explanation can be directly exploited. Within the specialised spatial reasoning domain, these translate to spatial planning/re-configuration, simulation and causal explanation (i.e., inferring cause from observations). Furthermore, given the qualitative nature of the spatial theory and the non-monotonic reasoning capability within the formalism, the approach is also better suited at representing human-like abilities of common-sense reasoning with incomplete information. The main hypothesis underlying our approach is that an alternate causal perspective of existing qualitative spatial calculi using high-level tools such as the situation calculus is essential for their utilisation in diverse application domains such as intelligent systems, cognitive robotics and eventbased and Temporal-GIS.
Location Normalization for Information Extraction

Ambiguity is very high for location names. For example, there are 23 cities named 'Buffalo' in the U.S. Country names such as 'Canada', 'Brazil' and 'China' are also city names in the USA. Almost every city has a Main Street or Broadway. Such ambiguity needs to be handled before we can refer to location names for visualization of related extracted events. This paper presents a hybrid approach for location normalization which combines (i) lexical grammar driven by local context constraints, (ii) graph search for maximum spanning tree and (iii) integration of semi-automatically derived default senses. The focus is on resolving ambiguities for the following types of location names: island, town, city, province, and country. The results are promising with 93.8% accuracy on our test collections.
A novel neuronal messenger molecule in brain: The free radical, nitric oxide

Understanding of the organization and function of a newly identified neuronal messenger molecule, nitric oxide, has progressed rapidly. Nitric oxide synthase has been purified and molecularly cloned from brain. Its localization is exclusively neuronal and endothelial. The catalytic activity of nitric oxide synthase accounts for the NADPH diaphorase staining of neurons that are uniquely resistant ot toxic insults and neurodegenerative disorders. Nitric oxide has diverse functions. In platelets it inhibits their aggregation, in macrophages it mediates cytotoxicity, and in blood vessels it acts as a vasodilator. In the nervous system nitric oxide may be the retrograde transmitter in long‐term potentiation. It is the “neurotransmitter” of cerebral vasodilator nerves and the inhibitory “neurotransmitter” of the motor neurons of the intestines. Nitric oxide in situations of excessive production may function as neurotoxin, suggesting a role for nitric oxide in neurodegenerative disorders.
Stability in Subject-Verb Word Order: From Contemporary Arabian Peninsular Arabic to Biblical Aramaic

This article differs from traditional treatments of subject-verb word order in Semitic in two respects. First, we take as our point of departure a detailed study of word order in contemporary Arabian Peninsular Arabic, which shows that the respective order of the subject and verb in that variety is determined by morpholexical and by discourse-immanent factors. From this starting point, we work backwards, applying the same analytical framework to subject-verb word order in Biblical Aramaic. Secondly, we use corpus-based quantitative methods and regression analysis to determine the degree of similarity between Arabian Peninsular Arabic and Biblical Aramaic. It emerges that, for all intents and purposes, subject-verb word order in Arabian Peninsular Arabic and Biblical Aramaic are governed by an identical set of morpholexical and discourse constraints. Historical explanations for these results are discussed; it is emphasized that, whether the patterns are due to common inheritance or to diffusion, a complex pattern of word order determination is sustained over at least 2,500 years of chronological time.
Nutrition Considerations for Microbiota Health in Diabetes

Recently, it has become accepted that the tiny microbial cells harbored by the human gut play a significant role in health and in certain disease states, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Although many details remain unclear, new technologies have uncovered many of the physiological benefits the human microbiota provides the host. A healthy gut microbiota plays a role in health, but imbalances can become pathological, increasing inflammation and contributing to metabolic dysfunction. Diet plays a significant role in shaping the composition and function of the microbiota. Eating patterns high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes promote the abundance of healthier bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids and other health-promoting metabolites. This article reviews the functions of the microbiota, how it is formed, and nutritional strategies to improve gut health. The human body harbors >100 trillion organisms; these are mostly bacteria, but also include archaea, viruses, parasites, and fungi, which together make up the microbiota (1,2). In the human body, these tiny microbial cells outnumber human cells by 10 to 1 (2–5). The microbiome, which is the collective genome of the microbiota community living in our gut, outnumbers the human genome by 100- to 200-fold (2–5). New nonculture-dependent technologies have led to the identification of 1,000 species and >3 million microbial genes, providing evidence of the symbiotic relationship this “organ” has with the human host (1,2,4). Known functions of the microbiota include degradation of nondigestible polysaccharides, synthesis of vitamins, strengthening of the microvilli, and protection of the host from pathogens by maintaining healthy gut barrier integrity (3,5–7). The gut microbiota is instrumental in the normal development of innate and adaptive immunity (4). The composition of the human gut microbiota is highly individualized, with …
Spoken language identification using score vector modeling and support vector machine

The support vector machine (SVM) framework based on generalized linear discriminate sequence (GLDS) kernel has been shown effective and widely used in language identification tasks. In this paper, in order to compensate the distortions due to inter-speaker variability within the same language and solve the practical limitation of computer memory requested by large database training, multiple speaker group based discriminative classifiers are employed to map the cepstral features of speech utterances into discriminative language characterization score vectors (DLCSV). Furthermore, backend SVM classifiers are used to model the probability distribution of each target language in the DLCSV space and the output scores of backend classifiers are calibrated as the final language recognition scores by a pair-wise posterior probability estimation algorithm. The proposed SVM framework is evaluated on 2003 NIST Language Recognition Evaluation databases, achieving an equal error rate of 4.0% in 30-second tasks, which outperformed the state-of-art SVM system by more than 30% relative error reduction.