Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mapping Sport for Development and Peace as Bourdieu’s Field

Abstract Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of sport and other forms of physical activity to reach development goals and to support peace-building and peace-keeping processes. The sport for development and peace (SDP) sector is continuously growing in terms of the types of stakeholders involved and the number of projects implemented. This paper examines the SDP sector using Bourdieu’s field theory and his concept of habitus and capital. For this, a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 10 people involved in SDP was used. Their perception of the stakeholders in the field and the connections between them are analyzed through the lens of field theory. The analysis particularly focuses on the perceived role of the former United Nations Office of Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP), which was closed during the data analysis.
The Rate of Return to Schooling in Canada.

article appearing in this Journal in 199 1,1 Jerry Paquette gues that the private rates of return to schooling in Canada during the early to mid 1980s were small or negative, except for those completing a bachelor's degree or higher. Paquette relies on Canadian Census data for his computations. The purpose of this paper is to: (1) show that his own data actually indicate quite different results, (2) survey a few recent studies on this topic, and (3) provide more recent rates of return to schooling in Canada that confirm the hypothesis that private returns to schooling in Canada have been substantial.
The determination of optimal design plan of the Sha-He aqueduct

In this paper, Genetic Algorithms (GA) is adopted as the global searching methods, and the direct search method of mixed discrete variables as the local searching method. Then the GA is improved and the hybrid GA (HGA) is formed. Based on the HGA, the optimal design programs for aqueduct are developed, and used to optimize the Sha-He aqueduct. Four aqueduct design plans are obtained: 2-line double U-sectioned, 2-line U-sectioned, 2-line double Rectangle-sectioned, 2-line Rectangle-sectioned. Finally the 2-line double U-sectioned aqueduct is chosen as the best design. Optimization results show that U-sectioned aqueduct is superior to Rectangle-sectioned aqueduct in economic and safety aspects, and GA is an effective optimal design method worth of application and dissemination.
The Politics of Public Management: Exploring the Importance of Environmental Support

The Politics of Public Management: Exploring the Importance of Environmental Support. (May 2011) Erin Kelly Melton, B.A., Lincoln University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Kenneth J. Meier The machinations of the political environments of public organizations present interesting questions for scholars and practitioners alike. Moving beyond simply recognition of the inherent role of politics in the administrative process, I uncover specific causal mechanisms from the external environment to assess their influence on public administration. To investigate this phenomenon, I utilize data from the public education sector, one of the most common areas of public service delivery. This dissertation utilizes data from over 1000 Texas school districts. Given the heterogeneous nature of the state, these data are applicable to similarly structured organizations while the theories tested are tractable to other types of public policy. Unique to this project is the conceptualization of the role race plays for public organizations. Literature abounds with respect to how race affects clientele-agency relationships, but fails to address the effects of race and ethnicity at the upper echelons of public management. This research endeavor approximates reality in a meaningful way as our nation – and therefore our public organizations – becomes increasingly diverse in nature.
Automatic detection of antinuclear autoantibodies cells in indirect immunofluorescence images

Indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) with HEp-2 cells is used for the detection of antinuclear autoantibodies (ANAs) in systemic autoimmune diseases. The ANA testing allows to scan a broad range of autoantibody entities and to describe them by distinct fluorescence patterns. The identification of patterns has recently by a human inspecting the slides with a microscope. The lacking automation of this technique has resulted in the development of alternative techniques based on chemical reactions, which have not the discrimination power of the ANA testing. An automatic system would pave the way for a wider use of ANA testing. An automatic inspection system for ANA testing can be divided into HEp-2 cell detection, fluorescence pattern classification and computer-aided diagnosis phases. This study focused on the first phase of cell detection that utilized the circle Hough transformation to separate connected cell in IIF images. The proposed method evaluated 7614 cells with six distinct fluorescence patterns from 113 images. Such a method provided a robust and fast automatic segmentation of HEp-2 fluorescent patterns in ANA testing.
Hybrid denoising algorithm of NSCT and improved NL-means method to SAR images

To efficiently preserve tiny details and sharpness information of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images while clearly remove the speckles, a despeckling method is proposed in this letter. Firstly, the SAR image is creatively separated to two parts: the texture region and flat region by using the decomposition with non-subsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) and mask estimation iteration algorithm. secondly, in the texture region, a new method of integrating the non-local means (NL-means) with block matching is used to preserve the sharpness and tiny details of SAR images; finally, a big searching window is utilized only in the flat region to remove the noise to a great extent. The experimental results show that both the visual quality and evaluation index of the proposed method outperform the traditional three methods: enhance Lee filtering (ELF), the bilateral Filtering (BF) and the improved NL-means.
iNOS expression and osteocyte apoptosis in idiopathic, non-traumatic osteonecrosis

Background and purpose — Non-traumatic osteonecrosis is a progressive disease with multiple etiologies. It affects younger individuals more and more, often leading to total hip arthroplasty. We investigated whether there is a correlation between inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) expression and osteocyte apoptosis in non-traumatic osteonecrosis. Patients and methods — We collected and studied 20 human idiopathic, non-traumatic osteonecrosis femoral heads. Subchondral bone samples in the non-sclerotic region (n = 30), collected from osteoarthritis patients, were used as controls. Spontaneously hypertensive rats were used as a model for osteonecrosis in the study. We used scanning electron microscopy, TUNEL assay, and immunohistochemical staining to study osteocyte changes and apoptosis. Results — The morphology of osteocytes in the areas close to the necrotic region changed and the number of apoptotic osteocytes increased in comparison with the same region in control groups. The expression of iNOS and cytochrome C in osteocytes increased while Bax expression was not detectable in osteonecrosis samples. Using spontaneously hypertensive rats, we found a positive correlation between iNOS expression and osteocyte apoptosis in the osteonecrotic region. iNOS inhibitor (aminoguanidine) added to the drinking water for 5 weeks reduced the production of iNOS and osteonecrosis compared to a control group without aminoguanidine. Interpretation — Our findings show that increased iNOS expression can lead to osteocyte apopotosis in idiopathic, non-traumatic osteonecrosis and that an iNOS inhibitor may prevent the progression of the disease.
Comparison of ECC and RSA algorithm in multipurpose smart card application

The main role of encryption algorithms is to keep devises safe from attack. Using the best and more efficient algorithm for a device according to its storage and amount of data transfer is the most important part. This paper compares Elliptical Curve Cryptography algorithm (ECC) with RSA algorithm on a multipurpose smart card. There are three applications in our multipurpose smart card which is named health, credit and passport card. ECC is compared with 160 bit key size and RSA with 1024 bit key size. The result of comparison is described in the final section.
Augmented assembly using a mobile phone

We present a mobile phone based augmented reality (AR) assembly system that enable users to view complex models on their mobile phones. It is based on a client-server architecture, where complex model information is located on a PC, and a mobile phone with the camera is used as a thin client access device to this information. With this system users are able to see an AR view that provides step by step guidance for a real world assembly task. We also present results from a pilot user study evaluating the system, showing that people felt the interface was intuitive and very helpful in supporting the assembly task.
Comparative analysis of rigidity across protein families

We present a comparative study in which ‘pebble game’ rigidity analysis is applied to multiple protein crystal structures, for each of six different protein families. We find that the main-chain rigidity of a protein structure at a given hydrogen bond energy cutoff is quite sensitive to small structural variations, and conclude that the hydrogen bond constraints in rigidity analysis should be chosen so as to form and test specific hypotheses about the rigidity of a particular protein. Our comparative approach highlights two different characteristic patterns (‘sudden’ or ‘gradual’) for protein rigidity loss as constraints are removed, in line with recent results on the rigidity transitions of glassy networks.
The Murchison Widefield Array: The Square Kilometre Array Precursor at Low Radio Frequencies

Abstract The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is one of three Square Kilometre Array Precursor telescopes and is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Murchison Shire of the mid-west of Western Australia, a location chosen for its extremely low levels of radio frequency interference. The MWA operates at low radio frequencies, 80–300 MHz, with a processed bandwidth of 30.72 MHz for both linear polarisations, and consists of 128 aperture arrays (known as tiles) distributed over a ~3-km diameter area. Novel hybrid hardware/software correlation and a real-time imaging and calibration systems comprise the MWA signal processing backend. In this paper, the as-built MWA is described both at a system and sub-system level, the expected performance of the array is presented, and the science goals of the instrument are summarised.
Decentralized Multi-sink Data Transfer Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a multi-sink data transfer protocol for wireless sensor networks, called negotiation-based multi-sink data transfer (NMDT). NMDT is based on the packet flooding method, but the direction of packet flooding in each sensor node is dynamically controlled, taking into consideration the network traffic around the sensor node. Thus, stable sensed data transfer and collection can be performed without packet collisions. After explaining NMDT in detail, we present some evaluation results. According to the evaluation results, NMDT can aggregate sensed data from the sensor nodes by more than 25% as compared to the ordinary flooding method.
Alu Elements as Novel Regulators of Gene Expression in Type 1 Diabetes Susceptibility Genes?

Despite numerous studies implicating Alu repeat elements in various diseases, there is sparse information available with respect to the potential functional and biological roles of the repeat elements in Type 1 diabetes (T1D). Therefore, we performed a genome-wide sequence analysis of T1D candidate genes to identify embedded Alu elements within these genes. We observed significant enrichment of Alu elements within the T1D genes (p-value < 10e−16), which highlights their importance in T1D. Functional annotation of T1D genes harboring Alus revealed significant enrichment for immune-mediated processes (p-value < 10e−6). We also identified eight T1D genes harboring inverted Alus (IRAlus) within their 3' untranslated regions (UTRs) that are known to regulate the expression of host mRNAs by generating double stranded RNA duplexes. Our in silico analysis predicted the formation of duplex structures by IRAlus within the 3'UTRs of T1D genes. We propose that IRAlus might be involved in regulating the expression levels of the host T1D genes.
Acoustic and word lattice based algorithms for confidence scores

Word conﬁdence scores are crucial for unsupervised learning in automatic speech recognition. In the last decade there has been a ﬂourish of work on two fundamentally different approaches to compute conﬁdence scores. The ﬁrst paradigm is acoustic and the second is based on word lattices. The ﬁrst approach is data-intensive and it requires to explicitly model the acoustic channel. The second approach is suitable for on-line (unsupervised) learning and requires no training. In this paper we present a comparative analysis of off-the-shelf and new algorithms for computing conﬁ-dence scores, following the acoustic and lattice-based paradigms. We compare the performance of these algorithms across three tasks for small, medium and large vocabulary speech recognition tasks and for two languages (Italian and English). We show that word-lattice based algorithm provides consistent and effective performance across automatic speech recognition tasks.
Search for Familiar and Dangerous: Not Seeing Gopnik in the Crowd

Subcultures frequently tend to have some distinct fashion style, which eventually becomes their “trademark” and drifts to the common knowledge of one culture or another. However, to what extent can these characteristics of certain groups be intervened with vast cultural heritage? We examined the influence of specific features of “gopnik” fashion on visual search performance. We conducted two experiments to investigate familiarity and threatening effects of these objects in visual search. Overall, our results demonstrate visual search asymmetry for man-like and gopnik-like objects, which could not be explained by basic features differences of these stimuli. We suggest that nowadays in Russia gopniks are represented as familiar group, rather than dangerous
Active click: tactile feedback for touch panels

"Active Click" is a new interface mechanism for addling tactile feedback to touch panels. A small actuator is attached to a body of PDA or the backside of a touch panel. The tactile feedback, created by driving the actuator with a short pulse, is perceived by the grasping hand or tapping finger-tip when the panel is tapped. Active Click is effective in improving the input speed of touch panel operation especially in noisy situations. Active click is also useful for large touch panel devices such as public information terminals or ATMs.
ADIOS: Architectures Deep In Output Space

Multi-label classification is a generalization of binary classification where the task consists in predicting sets of labels. With the availability of ever larger datasets, the multi-label setting has become a natural one in many applications, and the interest in solving multi-label problems has grown significantly. As expected, deep learning approaches are now yielding state-of-the-art performance for this class of problems. Unfortunately, they usually do not take into account the often unknown but nevertheless rich relationships between labels. In this paper, we propose to make use of this underlying structure by learning to partition the labels into a Markov Blanket Chain and then applying a novel deep architecture that exploits the partition. Experiments on several popular and large multi-label datasets demonstrate that our approach not only yields significant improvements, but also helps to overcome trade-offs specific to the multi-label classification setting.
Clustering Based Image Denoising Using SURE-LET

In this paper, we proposed a novel image denoising method based on clustering using SURE-LET. This method divides the images into several clusters and minimize the Steins unbiased risk estimator (SURE) of each cluster independently, which makes different clusters of pixels were denoised by different threshold functions in the image domain. The proposed method included the traditional SURE-LET as its special case, when the clusters reduced to one. Being more flexible, the proposed method results in smaller SURE and MSE. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective.
Evaluating Elementary Students' Response to Intervention in Written Expression

Data-based individualization (DBI) is increasingly recognized as an effective service delivery framework to improve outcomes for students with or at risk of learning disabilities. To implement DBI, efficient and repeatable assessments of academic skills, with evidence of reliability and validity, are needed to determine when to modify academic interventions to improve student outcomes. Although such assessments are readily available in reading, developing similar assessments for written expression has been challenging. In this presentation, we will present an overview of findings from three studies addressing (a) the number and duration of writing samples that are needed for reliable estimation of student writing skill and (b) the potential for automated text evaluation to improve scoring feasibility and the convergent validity of student skill estimates. Two studies are based on writing samples from elementary students without learning disabilities in grades 2 through 5, and the third study is based on writing samples from students with learning disabilities in grades 1 through 12. Collectively, the findings provide preliminary information on writing sample assessment and scoring procedures that can give teachers good enough data to make defensible decisions about student progress.
Synaptogenesis and FOS Expression in the Motor Cortex of the Adult Rat after Motor Skill Learning

Recent work has suggested that changes in synapse number as well as changes in the expression of the Fos protein may occur within the motor cortex in association with motor learning. The number of synapses per neuron and the percentage of Fos-positive neurons within layer II/III of the rat motor cortex was measured after training on a complex motor learning task. Adult female rats were allocated randomly to either an acrobatic condition (AC), a motor control condition (MC), or an inactive control condition (IC). AC animals were trained to traverse a complex series of obstacles, and each AC animal was pair matched with an MC animal that traversed an obstacle-free runway. IC animals received no motor training. Animals from each condition were killed at various points during training, and unbiased stereological techniques were used to estimate the number of synapses per neuron and the percentage of Fos-positive cells within layer II/III of the motor cortex. AC animals exhibited an overall increase in the number of synapses per neuron in comparison to MC and IC animals at later stages of training. AC animals also had a significantly higher overall percentage of Fos-positive cells in comparison to both controls, with a trend for the increase to be greater during the acquisition versus the maintenance phase. These data suggest that Fos may be involved in the biochemical processes underlying skill acquisition and that motor learning, as opposed to motor activity, leads to increases in synapse number in the motor cortex.
Effects of host plant on life-history traits in the polyphagous spider mite Tetranychus urticae

Studying antagonistic coevolution between host plants and herbivores is particularly relevant for polyphagous species that can experience a great diversity of host plants with a large range of defenses. Here, we performed experimental evolution with the polyphagous spider mite Tetranychus urticae to detect how mites can exploit host plants. We thus compared on a same host the performance of replicated populations from an ancestral one reared for hundreds of generations on cucumber plants that were shifted to either tomato or cucumber plants. We controlled for maternal effects by rearing females from all replicated populations on either tomato or cucumber leaves, crossing this factor with the host plant in a factorial design. About 24 generations after the host shift and for all individual mites, we measured the following fitness components on tomato leaf fragments: survival at all stages, acceptance of the host plant by juvenile and adult mites, longevity, and female fecundity. The host plant on which mite populations had evolved did not affect the performance of the mites, but only affected their sex ratio. Females that lived on tomato plants for circa 24 generations produced a higher proportion of daughters than did females that lived on cucumber plants. In contrast, maternal effects influenced juvenile survival, acceptance of the host plant by adult mites and female fecundity. Independently of the host plant species on which their population had evolved, females reared on the tomato maternal environment produced offspring that survived better on tomato as juveniles, but accepted less this host plant as adults and had a lower fecundity than did females reared on the cucumber maternal environment. We also found that temporal blocks affected mite dispersal and both female longevity and fecundity. Taken together, our results show that the host plant species can affect critical parameters of population dynamics, and most importantly that maternal and environmental conditions can facilitate colonization and exploitation of a novel host in the polyphagous T. urticae, by affecting dispersal behavior (host acceptance) and female fecundity.
Simplified SNR degradation under the combined effect of imperfections parameters in OFDM system

In this paper, we provide a simple closed-form expression of the effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) performance under the combined effect of synchronization errors (i.e. phase noise, carrier frequency offset, Doppler spread, sampling frequency offset, and timing jitter), transmitter I/Q imbalance, receiver I/Q imbalance, and amplifier nonlinearity of the high power amplifier (HPA). This formula describes explicitly the various parameters with the system performance. SNR degradation factor is plotted versus SNR for different combinations of these imperfections. This degradation measure reflects the proper parameters selection to specify OFDM system.
Radon transform based uniform and non-uniform motion blur parameter estimation

Restoration of a single degraded image from uniform velocity motion blurring is recently being studied in number of machine vision based applications including astronomy, medical imaging, consumer level photography, microscopy etc. Identification of motion blur parameters from single blurred image is truly an ill-posed problem, as there results multiple solutions in terms of estimated blur kernel and blurred image combinations, amongst which actual combination is hardly any, that will result into a faithful quality of restored image. The quality of restoration is also highly dependent on the accuracy of point spread function (PSF) kernel estimation. In this paper, we present a Radon transform based motion blur parameter estimation method under both spatial-invariant and variant blur consideration. The experiments performed on simulated motion blurred images show that taking Radon transform of the spectral gradients of blurred images improve estimation accuracy even in presence of noise. Compared with already existing Radon transform based PSF estimation schemes, our method successfully performs PSF estimation even for typical non-uniform motion blurred imagery.