Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wealth Accumulation and Homeownership: Evidence for Low-Income Households

A primary motivation for promoting homeownership is the concept that owner-occupied housing can be an important means of wealth accumulation, particularly for those lower income and minority households that are able to purchase homes. With given data issues, however, it is difficult to assess the importance of housing and nonhousing sources of wealth accumulation. Examining this difficulty serves as the purpose of this article. The results of this analysis support public policies aimed at both increasing homeownership opportunities in general and those policies that focus on homeownership for lower income households. Even though homeownership is not a guarantee of successful wealth accumulation, household wealth generally appears to be positively affected by homeownership, a conclusion reinforced with comparisons to accumulation of nonhousing wealth. One troubling observation is that owners often make the transition back to renting and, particularly among low-income minority households, do not regain owner-occupied housing.
Probability Control Functions Settings in Continual Evolution Algorithm

The precise setting of all control parameters of evolutiona ry algorithms is very important because it affects time needed to find solution, quality of fin al solution or event the ability to find proper solution, and other technical parameters of computation (e .g. memory requirements), etc. In this paper we are presenting some experiences with settings of probabi lity control functions in continual evolution algorithm (CEA). Evolutionary algorithms are typical exam ples of nature inspired methods. We will show that the intuitive approach in exact parameters settin gs, based on our ideas about the nature processes, is not always the best one and we will show the modi fications of control functions in CEA algorithm.
Spatially inhomogeneous survivable communication networks with directed and non-directed graphs

Natural and Intentional Electromagnetic Interference (IEMI) on a network's communications nodes can cause combinations of short-term upset, long-term upset and permanent damage to equipment. In this paper we provide new theoretical principles based on random graph theory and percolation theory to evaluate the resilience of large random geometric ad-hoc networks formed with non-directed and directed graphs. By combining these graphical representations in a common theoretical framework we provide a theoretical basis for expanding the theory to inhomogeneous networks that are more closely connected to those found in nature and in the military. The proposed metric for survivability is the network's ability to remain radio-frequency connected with a suitable surviving fraction of nodes.
A novel clutter cancellation method based on sparse representation for passive radar

Utilizing the sparsity of the clutter time delay, a novel clutter cancellation method based on sparse representation is proposed to improve the cancellation performance when fractional time delay exists in the clutter of the surveillance signals. The proposed method performs the cancellation by transforming the clutter cancellation problem to the sparse signal reconstruction problem, in which the spectrum division technique is introduced to establish the signal model of the clutter time delay measurement. Taking advantage of the sparse representation theory, high estimation accuracy and resolution of the time delay are achieved in the proposed method. The simulation results prove that compared with the traditional methods, the proposed method improves the clutter cancellation and weak target detection performance when there exists clutter with fractional time delay at low signal-to-noise ratio.
Peer-supported collaborative inquiry in teacher education: exploring the influence of peer discussions on pre-service teachers’ levels of critical reflection

Scaffolding pre-service teachers to critically reflect on their practice remains a challenging goal. Exploring the extent to which peer discussion facilitates this critical reflection is the focus of this paper. Using a series of three linked tasks, pre-service teachers 1) reflected on a classroom incident from a vignette of practice, 2) shared and discussed their initial reflections with peers and 3) revisited their initial reflection in an attempt to unearth any assumptions they may have had. The study found that peer discussion broadened pre-service teachers’ perspectives beyond the initial ego-centric reflections, which were dominated by issues of pupil management, control and discipline. The peer discussion process supported pre-service teachers in identifying and questioning some of their preconceived assumptions. However, findings indicate that the process supported pre-service teachers in acquiring greater breadth rather than greater depth in reflective thinking. We would argue that rather than seeing peer engagement opportunities as a panacea, it should be viewed as a valuable scoping exercise to unearth alternative perspectives and to begin the process of ‘hunting assumptions’.
Procedural modeling facilities for hierarchical object generation

We modify a selection of interactive modeling tools for use in a procedural modeling environment. These tools are selection, extrusion, subdivision and curve shaping. We create human models to demonstrate that these tools are appropriate for use on hierarchical objects. Our tools support the main benefits of procedural modeling, which are: the use of parameterisation to control and very a model, varying levels of detail, increased model complexity, base shape independence and database amplification. We demonstrate scripts which provide each of these benefits.
Variability in potential to exploit different soil organic phosphorus compounds among tropical montane tree species

Summary We hypothesized that tropical plant species with different mycorrhizal associations reduce competition for soil phosphorus (P) by specializing to exploit different soil organic P compounds. We assayed the activity of root/mycorrhizal phosphatase enzymes of four tree species with contrasting root symbiotic relationships – arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) (angiosperm and conifer), ectomycorrhizal (EM) and non-mycorrhizal – collected from one of three soil sites within a montane tropical forest. We also measured growth and foliar P of these seedlings in an experiment with P provided exclusively as inorganic orthophosphate, a simple phosphomonoester (glucose phosphate), a phosphodiester (RNA), phytate (the sodium salt of myo-inositol hexakisphosphate) or a no-P control. The EM tree species expressed twice the phosphomonoesterase activity as the AM tree species, but had similar phosphodiesterase activity. The non-mycorrhizal Proteaceae tree had markedly greater activity of both enzymes than the mycorrhizal tree species, with root clusters expressing greater phosphomonoesterase activity than fine roots. Both the mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal tree species contained significantly greater foliar P than in no-P controls when limited to inorganic phosphate, glucose phosphate and RNA. The EM species did not perform better than the AM tree species when limited to organic P in any form. In contrast, the non-mycorrhizal Proteaceae tree was the only species capable of exploiting phytate, with nearly three times the leaf area and more than twice the foliar P of the no-P control. Our results suggest that AM and EM tree species exploit similar forms of P, despite differences in phosphomonoesterase activity. In contrast, the mycorrhizal tree species and non-mycorrhizal Proteaceae appear to differ in their ability to exploit phytate. We conclude that resource partitioning of soil P plays a coarse but potentially ecologically important role in fostering the coexistence of tree species in tropical montane forests.
Knowledge-based support for the user-interface design process

We started this 11/2 day workshop at C H I ' 9 5 with the purpose of exploring issues and challenges in integrating various existing techniques that have been developed to support user-interface design processes. The goal of the workshop was to develop a conceptual map for these techniques, which will guide user-interface designers to determine which support techniques are appropriate in which design situations, and how they can be integrated. The focus during the construction of this map was on finding suitable classification schemes for the various techniques.
Investigation on Quality of Service Provided by Third Tier Internet Service Providers in Nigeria: Akure Cybercafés as case study

—This paper presents an investigation into the quality of service (QoS) of cybercafés networks in Nigeria using five different cybercafés in Akure metropolis as a case study. The study was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, Distributed Internet Traffic Generator (D-ITG V. 2.4) was used to measure the QoS metrics such as packet loss, average jitter, bandwidth and delay standard deviation on the five cybercafés networks investigated. The second stage, involves the administering of questionnaires to users of studied cybercafés in order to obtain primary data on some of the users’ QoS metrics such as reliability and efficiency of the networks. The final stage involves visitation to the cybercafés considered to obtain onsite data on specifications of computers using for browsing in the cybercafés. The result of the study shows that all the networks considered were inefficiency, congested and unprotected. It was also found from the study that, there is direct correlation between the bandwidth, number of terminals and the efficiency of the network. The paper was concluded with suggestions on how to improve the QoS of internet cybercafés in Nigeria in order to enhance teaching and research through internet facility in the country.
OGLE-TR-3: A possible new transiting planet ?

Recently, 59 low-luminosity object transits were reported from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE). Our follow-up low-resolution spectroscopy of 16 candidates provided two objects, OGLE-TR-3 and OGLE-TR-10, which have companions with radii compatible with those of gas-giant planets. Further high-resolution spectroscopy revealed a very low velocity variation (<500 m s 1 ) of the host star OGLE-TR-3 which may be caused by its unseen companion. An analysis of the radial velocity and light curve results in M< 2:5 MJup, R< 1:6 RJup, and an orbital separation of about 5 R, which makes it the planet with the shortest period known. This allows to identify the low-luminosity companion of OGLE-TR-3 as a possible new gas-giant planet. If confirmed, this makes OGLE-TR-3 together with OGLE-TR-56 the first extrasolar planets detected via their transit light curves.
An Empirical Study on the Integrated Framework of e-CRM in Online Shopping: Evaluating the Relationships Among Perceived Value, Satisfaction, and Trust Based on Customers' Perspectives

Based on customer cognitive, affective and conative experiences in Internet online shopping, this study, from customersâ€™ perspectives, develops a conceptual framework for e-CRM to explain the psychological process that customers maintain a long-term exchange relationship with specific online retailer. The conceptual framework proposes a series of causal linkages among the key variables affecting customer commitment to specific online retailer, such as perceived value (as cognitive belief), satisfaction (as affective experience) and trust (as conative relationship intention). Three key exogenous variables affecting Internet online shopping experiences, such as perceived service quality, perceived product quality, and perceived price fairness, are integrated into the framework. This study empirically tested and supported a large part of the proposed framework and the causal linkages within it. The empirical results highlight some managerial implications for successfully developing and implementing a strategy for e-CRM.
Chapter 1 Agent Toolkits 1.1 Introduction

Agent-based applications need a significant amount of enabling infrastructure before even one message is exchanged between agents. There is a large set of supporting services that must be made available throughout the agent-based system before the application developer can move on to focus on the actual application domain, be it eBusiness, Grid computing or Ambient Environments. These services range from basic communication to discovery, coordination, security, and so on. The sum of these services come together to provide an environment that can support an agent-based system, and as such can be considered as providing the operating system for agents. Furthermore, there are issues that cross the bridge between domain-independent infrastructural services and application specific services. These relate to the architecture of individual agents within the environment and specific coordination mechanisms that deal with issues such as negotiations [31, 2] or the creation of agent teams [36] and organisations [37, 20, 46]. Crucially, mainstream development would not be able to practically adopt agent-based approaches if the underlying operating systems had to be rewritten each time or if new agent architec-tures and complex coordination mechanisms designed for every new application. It is widely accepted that if agent technologies would move from research labs to mainstream development, as part of the application developer's set of technologies for designing and developing distributed applications, appropriate toolkits were required that would provide the necessary support for developing agents and deploying the infrastructure required to support agent applications [10, 45]. As a result, the past years have seen significant efforts being undertaken into the development of appropriate infrastructure for agent-based systems as well as debate on what are the appropriate concepts to support the development of agent-based infrastructure [1]. Furthermore, such development efforts often do more than just designing and developing the enabling infrastructure. They also provide the necessary tools to aid in the development of applications that operate using that infrastructure. Such tools range from graphical development environments to management and monitoring services.
System Dynamics Modelling for the Management of Long Term Software Evolution Processes

An approach and basic concepts for the study of the system dynamics of long-term software evolution processes is presented. The approach provides a generic context and framework that supports at least three crucial process areas requiring management decision, resource allocation, release planning, and process performance monitoring. The report exemplifies the approach with an executable model. The latter reflects the global software process at a high level of abstraction and includes phenomenological observations derived from the laws of software evolution and the behaviours thereby implied. It incorporates concepts such as progressive (e.g., functional enhancement) and anti-regressive (e.g., complexity control) activities and enables the study of policies of human resource allocation to classes of activities. The example shows how the model permits assessment of the impact of alternative policies on various evolutionary attributes. It is part of and exemplifies the methods for software process modelling being developed and applied in the FEAST projects.
Axial contraction and short-range compaction of chromatin synergistically promote mitotic chromosome condensation

The segregation of eukaryotic chromosomes during mitosis requires their extensive folding into units of manageable size for the mitotic spindle. Here, we report on how phosphorylation at serine 10 of histone H3 (H3 S10) contributes to this process. Using a fluorescence-based assay to study local compaction of the chromatin fiber in living yeast cells, we show that chromosome condensation entails two temporally and mechanistically distinct processes. Initially, nucleosome-nucleosome interaction triggered by H3 S10 phosphorylation and deacetylation of histone H4 promote short-range compaction of chromatin during early anaphase. Independently, condensin mediates the axial contraction of chromosome arms, a process peaking later in anaphase. Whereas defects in chromatin compaction have no observable effect on axial contraction and condensin inactivation does not affect short-range chromatin compaction, inactivation of both pathways causes synergistic defects in chromosome segregation and cell viability. Furthermore, both pathways rely at least partially on the deacetylase Hst2, suggesting that this protein helps coordinating chromatin compaction and axial contraction to properly shape mitotic chromosomes. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.10396. 001
Power gating in FinFET Adiabatic circuits

In this paper, we have implemented power gating in FinFET based Adiabatic circuits. Power gating is a low power design technique used in circuits having standby/sleep mode. Again adiabatic logic has very low switching power dissipation than compared to CMOS logic, also when FinFET devices are used in place of MOSFET then power dissipation can be further reduced. So we have used the combination of all these techniques to design low power digital circuits. For validating our idea we designed two power gated adiabatic circuits, first one is IPFAL Inverter and the second one is IPFAL 2:1 Multiplexer using PTM 45nm technology node for bulk MOSFET as well as FinFET.
Multiagent reinforcement learning using OLAP-based association rules mining

In this paper, we propose a novel multiagent learning approach, which is based on online analytical processing (OLAP) data mining. First, we describe a data cube OLAP architecture which facilitates effective storage and processing of the state information reported by agents. This way, the action of the other agent, even not in the visual environment of the agent under consideration, can simply be estimated by extracting online association rules from the constructed data cube. Then, we present a new action selection model which is also based on association rules mining. Finally, we generalize states which are not experienced sufficiently by mining multiple-levels association rules from the proposed data cube. Experiments conducted on a well-known pursuit domain show the effectiveness of the proposed learning approach.
Interactions between Bacillus anthracis and Plants May Promote Anthrax Transmission

Environmental reservoirs are essential in the maintenance and transmission of anthrax but are poorly characterized. The anthrax agent, Bacillus anthracis was long considered an obligate pathogen that is dormant and passively transmitted in the environment. However, a growing number of laboratory studies indicate that, like some of its close relatives, B. anthracis has some activity outside of its vertebrate hosts. Here we show in the field that B. anthracis has significant interactions with a grass that could promote anthrax spore transmission to grazing hosts. Using a local, virulent strain of B. anthracis, we performed a field experiment in an enclosure within a grassland savanna. We found that B. anthracis increased the rate of establishment of a native grass (Enneapogon desvauxii) by 50% and that grass seeds exposed to blood reached heights that were 45% taller than controls. Further we detected significant effects of E. desvauxii, B. anthracis, and their interaction on soil bacterial taxa richness and community composition. We did not find any evidence for multiplication or increased longevity of B. anthracis in bulk soil associated with grass compared to controls. Instead interactions between B. anthracis and plants may result in increased host grazing and subsequently increased transmission to hosts.
Therapeutic approaches to slowing the progression of diabetic nephropathy – is less best?

Objective: Angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are known to reduce proteinuria and have been the first-line agents in the management of diabetic nephropathy for the past 20 years. This review covers recent studies that compare the benefit of additional blockage of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system through combination therapy with an ACE inhibitor and ARB, or a direct renin inhibitor (DRI), to monotherapy. Design: Primary and review articles that addressed the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and therapeutic options for attenuating the progression of diabetic nephropathy were retrieved through a MEDLINE search (January 1990 to December 2012) and the bibliographies of identified articles were reviewed. English language sources were searched using the following search terms: diabetes mellitus, nephropathy, proteinuria, ACE inhibitors, ARBs, and DRIs. Setting: Randomized, placebo-controlled, short- and long-term studies published in peer-reviewed journals that were determined to be methodologically sound, with appropriate statistical analysis of the results, were selected for inclusion in this review. Participants: Adult (≥18 years) patients with diabetic nephropathy. Measurements: Serum creatinine level was used to estimate glomerular filtration rate (GFR). GFR was calculated using the four-variable Modification of Diet in Renal Disease formula. The urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio was measured at baseline and at the conclusion of each study. A value between 3.4 mg/mmol and below 33.9 mg/mmol was defined as microalbuminuria. A value of 33.9 mg/mmol or more (approximately 300 mg/g creatinine) was defined as macroalbuminuria. Results: ACE inhibitors and ARBs are now the mainstay of treatment for diabetic nephropathy. However, combination therapy with an ACE inhibitor and an ARB, or DRI, has not been found to be more effective than monotherapy with an ACE inhibitor or ARB, and may increase the risk of hyperkalemia or acute kidney injury. Conclusion: Both ACE inhibitors and ARBs remain the first-line agents in attenuating the progression of diabetic nephropathy; however, recent studies suggest that combining an ACE inhibitor with an ARB, or combining a DRI with an ACE inhibitor or ARB, may increase adverse events without clinical benefits to offset them.
Learning in unlabeled networks - An active learning and inference approach

The task of determining labels of all network nodes based on the knowledge about network structure and labels of some training subset of nodes is called the within-network classification. It may happen that none of the labels of the nodes is known and additionally there is no information about number of classes to which nodes can be assigned. In such a case a subset of nodes has to be selected for initial label acquisition. The question that arises is: "labels of which nodes should be collected and used for learning in order to provide the best classification accuracy for the whole network? ". Active learning and inference is a practical framework to study this problem. A set of methods for active learning and inference for within network classification is proposed and validated. The utility score calculation for each node based on network structure is the first step in the process. The scores enable to rank the nodes. Based on the ranking, a set of nodes, for which the labels are acquired, is selected (e.g. by taking top or bottom N from the ranking). The new measure-neighbour methods proposed in the paper suggest not obtaining labels of nodes from the ranking but rather acquiring labels of their neighbours. The paper examines 29 distinct formulations of utility score and selection methods reporting their impact on the results of two collective classification algorithms: Iterative Classification Algorithm and Loopy Belief Propagation. We advocate that the accuracy of presented methods depends on the structural properties of the examined network. We claim that measure-neighbour methods will work better than the regular methods for networks with higher clustering coefficient and worse than regular methods for networks with low clustering coefficient. According to our hypothesis, based on clustering coefficient we are able to recommend appropriate active learning and inference method.