Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interest groups in the European community: Newly emerging dynamics and forms

Case studies of EC/interest group relationships can reveal a range of organisational formats and reciprocal influences. Yet in recent literature, there has been a tendency to characterise such relationships as a whole, often involving application of the ‘pluralist’ label. Neither neo‐pluralism nor neo‐corporatism are however system‐level theories, and both by nature defy the drawing of generalisations beyond domains to which these images can be applied. Application of the ‘pluralist’ label appears to originate from a prevailing view of Euro‐interest associations as weak ‘federations of national federations’, often unable to agree and act upon meaningful common positions. Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry suggests that such a blanket generalisation cannot be sustained, not least because of the commonality of regulatory experiences across member states, and prior experience of the industry in transnational political action. These have been reproduced at the EC level to the point of a Euro‐private in.
CyberCities: Visual Perception in the Age of Electronic Communication (review)

From the Publisher: Noted urban historian M. Christine Boyer turns to the new frontier - cybercities - in this important and compelling new book. Boyer argues that the computer is to contemporary society what the machine was to modernism, and that this new metaphor profoundly affects the way we think, imagine, and ultimately grasp reality. But there is, she believes, an inherent danger here: that as cyberspace pulls us into its electronic grasp, we withdraw from the world. Transferred, plugged in, and down-loaded, reality becomes increasingly immaterial. Frozen to one side of our terminal's screen, Boyer concludes, we risk becoming incapable of action in a real city plagued by crime, hatred, disease, unemployment, and under-education.
University Entrance Exam as a Guiding Test for Artificial Intelligence

In this paper, we propose using an University Entrance Exam (the Exame Nacional do Ensido Médio) as a proper test of success of artificial intelligence techniques, thus replacing the famous Turing Test. We argue that more importantly than measuring the ability of a system in replicating human competence, the so-called ENEM test can serve as a driver of development of new techniques. Additionally, we describe how we produced a machine-readable database of questions from previous exams, which can be used for comparing techniques for natural language processing, image processing and knowledge representation and reasoning. We then present some preliminaries to serve as baseline that are based on information retrieval techniques and Word2Vec. Experiments with previous exams show that in questions concerning Humanities and Languages these baseline methods perform in average slightly better than random guessing.
Understanding the Picture Exchange Communication System and Its Application in Physical Education

This article presents the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and its applications in physical education. The PECS is an appropriate communication intervention for students with autism who lack functional communication skills. It is often confused with other visual support strategies, so the authors delineate the six phases of PECS and illustrate each phase within the physical education environment. This article also provides recommendations for implementing PECS in physical education.
Scientific Discourse on the Semantic Web : A Survey of Models and Enabling Technologies

The desired outcome of all scientific endeavour is to advance the the body of accumulated knowledge in a materially verifiable way. This knowledge is communicated through the research literature, which presents scientific claims and their justifications through forms of discourse, expressed in document genres legitimated by a given research community. The study of the rhetorical and argumentative characteristics of such discourse has long-standing traditions, the results of which also provide insights into how scientific publishing, search and debate might take new forms on the social-semantic web. This article surveys, for a general readership, the growing body of work that models scientific discourse for social-semantic web applications, and offers a framework highlighting key features to help compare the various models. Secondly, we present examples of tools based on discourse models, which facilitate semantic navigation, structured debate, human and machine annotation of scientific texts, and literature analysis/alerting services. Finally, we identify some of the open research challenges confronting the field, and summarise the ways in which they are being tackled.
Differential Expression of Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase in Rat and Human Islets

The GABA synthesizing enzyme GAD is a prominent islet cell autoantigen in type I diabetes. The two forms of GAD (GAD64 and GAD67) are encoded by different genes in both rats and humans. By in situ hybridization analysis of rat and human pancreases, expression of both genes was detected in rat islets, whereas only GAD64 mRNA was detected in human islets. Immunocytochemical analysis of rat and human pancreatic sections or isolated islets with antibodies to GAD64 and GAD67 in combination with antibodies to insulin, glucagon, or SRIF confirmed that a GAD64 and GAD67 expression were β-cell specific in rat islets. In contrast, only GAD64 was detected in human islets and was, in addition to β-cells, also surprisingly localized to some α-cells, δ-cells, and PP-cells. In long-term (4 wk) monolayer cultures of newborn rat islet cells, GAD64 expression remained β-cell specific as observed in vivo, whereas GAD67 was localized not only to the β-cells but also in the α-cells and δ-cells. A small but distinct fraction of GAD positive cells in these monolayer cultures did not accumulate GABA immunoreactivity, which may indicate cellular heterogeneity with respect to GABA catabolism or GAD enzyme activity. In a rat insulinoma cell line (NHI-6F) producing both glucagon and insulin depending on the culture conditions, GAD64 expression was detected only in cultures in which the insulin producing phenotype dominated. In conclusion, these data demonstrate that the two GAD isoforms are differentially expressed in rat and human islets but also that the expression differs according to culture conditions. These findings emphasize the need to consider both the species and culture conditions of islets.
La innovación educativa, subestimada: Análisis de la importancia que le otorgan los estudiantes de Periodismo

This research examines the attitudes of Journalism students towards educational innovation with a cross-national survey in seven countries. The goal is to observe the importance given by students to the educational innovation among a set of tasks, which professors have to develop in their academic work. The Spanish Journalism students underestimated the relevance of educational innovation. Women gave more importance to innovation in education than men. No differences were found among five Spanish universities.
LR-parser-driven Viterbi search with hypotheses merging mechanism using context-dependent phone models

Describes a Viterbi search algorithm for continuous speech recognition using context-dependent phone models under the constraint defined by a context-free grammar (CFG). It is based on a frame-synchronous LR parser which dynamically generates a finite state network (FSN) from the CFG with an efficient path merging mechanism. Full context dependency (intra- and inter-word context) is taken into account in the likelihood calculation process. This paper first describes the algorithm and the processing mechanism, then compares the experimental results of our algorithm and the conventional tree-based HMM-LR speech recognition algorithm which uses HMMs and an LR parser in phone-synchronous processing. The experiments show that our algorithm runs faster than the conventional HMM-LR algorithm with an equivalent recognition accuracy.
Germany’s system of vocational education and training: challenges and modernisation issues

Abstract The German education system has recently come under fire with the publication of various international studies on student performance (OECD 2000; 2003). And in the first national ‘Education Report’ (Bildungsbericht) published in October 2003 (Avenarius et ah 2003), the German ministers of education point out serious deficiencies in the country’s school system, with too many drop-outs, too few achievers of higher education entrance qualifications and too little support for students coming from poorer families. However, in a remarkable common press declaration released on 17 September 2003, the ministers of education in Austria, Switzerland and the three southern federal states1 deplored the fact that studies such as the recent OECD paper (OECD 2003) tend to neglect or completely ignore the overall significance of formal apprenticeships, which are not only the most striking common educational feature of the three German-speaking countries, but are also the learning pathway for the ‘ordinary school leaver’. The ministers claimed that the ‘Dual System’ with its apprenticeship focus, offers viable and well-accepted routes into skilled employment and modes of socialisation without being part of the formal education system, and they eventually appealed to the OECD to ‘accept and investigate the status of vocational education’. This debate, which is also fostered by the announcement of the German Federal Government’s determination to substantially increase the number of students entering higher education, brings into focus the tendency in Germany to stick to established modes and practices by valueing ‘continuance of tradition’ (Phillips 1995, p. 61). It also throws new light on both the firmly rooted three-tier approach in the country’s secondary school system (Ertl 2000) and on the country’s vocational pathways that have for decades been considered to be reliable and successful especially in international terms. One of the outstanding examples of a clear disinclination to reform is the Dual System of apprenticeship training. Although it may be argued that Germany’s high educational participation in post-compulsory secondary education is mainly due to the apprenticeship system (83% of 25–64 year-olds have reached this level)2, both the apprenticeship system and the full-time vocational schools now face challenges that have a national and an international dimension. Besides globalisation and the changing nature of industrial work organisation (Baethge & Baethge-Kinsky 1998), Germany’s re-unification and a slackening economy continue to put strain on the national budget, on the labour market and on the education and training system (Miller Idriss 2002). Against this background, modernisation issues have emerged which touch the relationship between full-time and part-time VET as well as the nature of apprenticeships.
A solar mean field dynamo benchmark

Context. The solar magnetic activity and cycle are linked to an internal dynamo. Numerical simulations are an e cient and accurate tool to investigate such intricate dynamical processes. Aims. We present the results of an international numerical benchmark study based on two-dimensional axisymmetric mean field solar dynamo models in spherical geometry. The purpose of this work is to provide the scientific community with reference cases that can be analyzed in detail and that can help in further development and validation of numerical codes that solve such problems. Methods. The results of eight numerical codes solving the induction equation in the framework of mean field theory are compared for three increasingly computationally intensive models of the solar dynamo: an dynamo with constant magnetic di usivity, an dynamo with magnetic di usivity sharply varying with depth and an example of a flux-transport Babcock-Leighton dynamo which includes a non-local source term and one large single cell of meridional circulation per hemisphere. All cases include a realistic profile of di erential rotation and thus a sharp tachocline. Results. The most important finding of this study is that all codes agree quantitatively to within less than a percent for the dynamo cases and within a few percents for the flux-transport case. Both the critical dynamo numbers for the onset of dynamo action and the corresponding cycle periods are reasonably well recovered by all codes. Detailed comparisons of butterfly diagrams and specific cuts of both toroidal and poloidal fields at given latitude and radius confirm the good quantitative agreement. Conclusions. We believe that such a benchmark study will be a very useful tool for the scientific community since it provides detailed standard cases for comparison and reference.
Improvement of Open Source Software Usability: An Empirical Evaluation from Developers' Perspective

User satisfaction has always been important for software success whether it is Open Source Software (OSS) or closed proprietary software. Even though we do not presume that OSS always has poor usability, as there are examples of good usable open source software, it would still be agreed that OSS usability has room for further improvement. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the impact of some key factors on OSS usability from developers' points of view. This is one of the series of four studies that we are conducting regarding improvement of OSS usability from OSS developers, users, contributors, and industry perspectives. The research model of this empirical investigation studies and establishes the relationship between the key usability factors from developers' perspective and OSS usability. A data set of 106 OSS developers from 18 open source projects of varied size has been used to study the research model. The results of this study provide empirical evidence that the studied key factors play a significant role in improving OSS usability.
Types of gambling and levels of harm: A UK study to assess severity of presentation in a treatment-seeking population

Background and aim Previous international research emphasized that some forms of gambling are more “addictive” than others. More recently, research has shown that we should shift our attention from the type of gambling activity to the level of involvement in a number of different gambling activities. The aim of our study was to verify whether a higher Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) score was associated with particular gambling activities and evaluate the impact of involvement on gambling behavior. Methods A total of 736 treatment-seeking individuals with gambling disorder were assessed at the National Problem Gambling Clinic in London. First, the independent two-sample t-test and the Mann–Whitney test were used to verify if the PGSI score changed significantly according to the gambling activity at a bivariate level. Second, we conducted a cluster analysis and finally, we fitted a linear regression model in order to verify if some variables are useful to predict gambling addiction severity. Results The PGSI score was significantly higher for lower stakes gaming machine gamblers (1% significance level) and for fixed-odds betting terminal (FOBT) gamblers (5% significance level) at a bivariate level. Moreover, such finding was confirmed by cluster and linear regression analyses. Conclusions The results of this study indicated that gambling addiction severity was related to gambling involvement and, for a given level of gambling involvement, gambling addiction severity may vary according to gambling type, with a particularly significant increase for FOBT and gaming machine gambling.
Fate of Mutation Rate Depends on agr Locus Expression during Oxacillin-Mediated Heterogeneous-Homogeneous Selection in Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Clinical Strains

ABSTRACT Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains are characterized by a heterogeneous expression of resistance. We have previously shown in clinical oxacillin-susceptible, mecA-positive MRSA strains that selection from a very heterogeneous (HeR) to highly homogeneous (HoR) resistant phenotype was mediated by acquisition of mutations through an oxacillin-induced SOS response. In the present study, we used a spotted DNA microarray to evaluate differential gene expression during HeR-HoR selection and found increased expression of the agr two-component regulatory system. We hypothesized that increased expression of agr represents a mechanistically relevant component of this process. We demonstrated that inactivation of agr during the HeR-HoR selection process results in a significant increase in mutation rate; these effects were reversed by complementing the agr mutant. Furthermore, we found that extemporal ectopic expression of agr and, more specifically, RNAII in agr-null mutant HeR cells suppressed mutation frequency and the capacity of these cells to undergo the HeR-HoR selection. These findings sustain the concept that increased expression of agr during HeR-HoR selection plays a critical role in regulating the β-lactam-induced increased mutation rate in very heterogeneous MRSA strains. Moreover, they indicate that a temporally controlled increase in agr expression is required to tightly modulate SOS-mediated mutation rates, which then allows for full expression of oxacillin homogeneous resistance in very heterogeneous clinical MRSA strains.
Small Steps Lead to Quality Assurance and Enhancement in Qatar University

Abstract This paper presents a brief overview of Qatar University’s history since it was started in 1973. Its primary focus is on the various small, but important, steps taken by the University to address the needs of quality assurance and enhancement. The Qatar University Reform Plan is described in detail. Its aims are to continually improve the quality of instructional and educational services, and promote administrative efficiency at the University. The paper also discusses changes made following the report of the University’s participation in the United Nations Development Programme/Regional Bureau for Arab States review of the Graduate Diploma in Special Education in the College of Education.
Regularization Through Feature Knock Out

Abstract : In this paper, we present and analyze a novel regularization technique based on enhancing our dataset with corrupted copies of the original data. The motivation is that since the learning algorithm lacks information about which parts of the data are reliable, it has to produce more robust classification functions. We then demonstrate how this regularization leads to redundancy in the resulting classifiers, which is somewhat in contrast to the common interpretations of the Occam's razor principle. Using this framework, we propose a simple addition to the gentle boosting algorithm which enables it to work with only a few examples. We test this new algorithm on a variety of datasets and show convincing results.
Filter bank based multi-mode multiple access scheme for wireless uplink

This paper investigates the potential of filter bank (FB) processing in the context of uplink multi-user access. First, a FB based scheme, conceptually similar to the single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) developed by 3GPP for uplink in the Long Term Evolution of UMTS, is analyzed. Specifically, a method for synthesizing spectrally well-localized uplink waveforms with low peak-to-average power ratio, using FB based multicarrier (FBMC) modulation in combination with FB spreading, is introduced. Secondly, the superior frequency selectivity of the FB approach, when combined with frequency sampling -designed subchannel/subband processing, is found to enable flexible and bandwidth efficient multi-mode uplink transmission with relaxed constraints on inter-user timing synchronization. The proposed concept allows different mobile terminals to operate in the reverse link simultaneously in multicarrier, SC-FDMA, or conventional single carrier mode according to attributes such as the required transmission power.
Implementing a distributed sensing and actuation system: The CAMBADA robots case study

The use of distributed computing architectures has become commonplace in complex embedded systems with potential advantages, for example, in terms of scalability, dependability and maintainability. One particular area in which that trend can be witnessed is mobile autonomous robotics in which several sensors and actuators are interconnected by means of a control network. In this paper we address one case study concerning the CAMBADA robots that were developed at the University of Aveiro for the Robocup Middle Size League. These robots have a distributed architecture with two layers, a coordination layer responsible for the global behaviors and a distributed sensing and actuating layer that conveys internal state information and executes coordination commands. This paper focuses on the latter layer, which is based on the FTT-CAN protocol, following a network-centric approach that provides an efficient framework for the synchronization of all systems activities. We describe the computing and communication requirements, the robot architecture, the system design and implementation, and finally we provide experimental results that show advantages with respect to a non-synchronized distributed approach
Dying for independence: proactive investigations into the 12 November 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, Timor Leste

While there have been numerous violent events in Timor Leste the one act that holds significant political and social meaning for the local population is a massacre that occurred in Dili on the 12 November 1991 at the Santa Cruz cemetery. Following a brief summary of the mechanisms in place to investigate human rights abuses in Timor Leste, this paper focuses on efforts to investigate the Santa Cruz massacre. While the number of people killed in or directly following the massacre is unconfirmed, there were numerous rumours about burial sites which, until recently, had not been substantiated. In 2008 a proactive investigation into the Santa Cruz massacre was undertaken by the International Forensic Team (IFT). Details about the consultation process with government authorities and families of victims are provided, followed by information about the archaeological investigations undertaken at Tibar and Hera. The laboratory analyses including results of the anthropological, property, DNA, ballistic and hair analyses are summarised. The work of the IFT provides for the first time physical evidence, including 11 positively identified individuals, which confirms a link between individuals recovered from the cemetery at Hera and the 12 November 1991 Santa Cruz massacre. The paper concludes with a discussion about the meaning of this evidence in terms of future questions of truth and justice.