Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring the Betrothed Lovers

We present the ongoing activities and the first results achieved in a research project concerning the understanding of narrative in the high school. Students and teachers experimented with new ways to learn linguistic and digital skills, by using a collaborative learning environment built around the novel I Promessi Sposi. We analyzed the literary text, extracting social networks of characters and other fundamental narrative elements (sequences, locations, etc.), in order to provide the students with appropriate tools and resources to conduct their own inquiries on the novel.
Toxicity of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid - molecular mechanisms

dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) is a herbicide commonly used in agriculture. The residues of 2,4-D are present in air, water, soil and edibles. It constitutes a real hazard for human and animal health as numerous accidents of poisoning deaths caused by this herbicide have been reported. However, the molecu - lar mechanism of its action is still unknown. The point of view concerning the toxic action of 2,4-dichloro - phenoxyacetic acid has been evolving from decades and now it is considered that 2,4-D also induces free radical reactions that lead to numerous unbeneficial changes in tissues. The increases of free radical levels cause DNA damage and thus cell death (in apoptotic process). It is also suggested that 2,4-D causes cell apoptosis as the result of change of membrane potential in mitochondria and initiates caspase-dependent re- actions. For many years the discussion has been continuing concerning the mutagenicity of 2,4-D and now many documented investigations that have been performed from 2000 unequivocally proved its mutagenic action. The mutagenicity of 2,4-D concerns homologous recombination, A G mutation, chromosome ab - errations, sister chromatid exchange and DNA damage, and also an increase in the frequency of DNA strand breaks. This paper presents literature data (especially the newest that have been published since 2000) that refer to peroxidative capacity of 2,4-D, free radical formation, induction of apoptosis, genotoxic activity and adaptation of the cells and organisms to its action.
Using a kayak paddle power-meter in the sport of whitewater slalom

The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate the use of a kayak-paddle power-meter to enhance scientific understanding, quantification of athlete assessment and training prescription in slalom kayaking. Data was collected from a continental-championship race, in addition to the author’s work, which included testing and prescribing training for elite athletes preparing for national and international competition. Results indicate that work rate varies considerably over a competition run (CV=74.4-80.5 %). Intra-athlete performance between two competition runs of one of the leading competitors differed by 1.1% or 0.94 s, while power output decreased by 9.0 % for the fastest run due to an increase in number of steering strokes (11 vs 3). Turning strokes had greater impulse (208 vs 94 N∙s), peak force (362 vs 321 N), and a lower rate of peak force development (810 vs 1925 N∙s-1). Methods to identify biomechanical/technical issues via analysis of force profiles per stroke exhibit bilateral comparisons of strength, while quantification of physical and physiological capability is determined through power output. Training zones are categorised into seven zones (Easy, Threshold, Critical Power, Speed Endurance, Speed and Strength) enabling coaches and athletes to implement specific training programmes targeting key facets of performance. The importance of testing venue is established where river technicality grade (I, II and IV) showed power output at the onset of blood lactate to be 120, 90, and 84 W, respectively. This paper thus supports the efficacy of using a paddle power-meter to enhance scientific understanding of slalom kayak racing through real-world competition analysis capability along with enabling the quantification of training prescription and monitoring based around work rate capability during sport specific testing, in conjunction with technical, physical and physiological qualities.
Can computational logic provide a paradigm for both the specification and implementation of concurrent systems?

Most computational systems in use today comprise a strong element of concurrency, often within a framework of distribution over networks. It is for this reason that I believe that one of the significant challenges facing the computational logic community is to demonstrate that logic can provide a paradigm for both the specification and efficient implementation of such systems, and to convince system designers and developers of the usefulness of this methodology. In this article I propose that a serious effort be made to accept this challenge and suggest that the concurrent constraint paradigm is now mature enough to be used in this role; moreover, one way to achieve this goal is to develop tools for automated reasoning about concurrent systems, based on the semantics of this paradigm. For the purposes of this discussion I shall take the definition of concurrency as that given by Milner [1989]. The parallel logic programming languages [Takeuchi and Furukawa 1987] developed a decade ago lie uncomfortably between the categories of efficient implementation languages and languages used for the formal description of concurrent systems. Historically they evolved by modifying sequential programming languages and were mainly used as experimental system programming languages [Foster 1990; Sato et al. 1987]. Had they been intended to be used for formal descriptions then their design would have been shaped by the need for clear and unambiguous semantics powerful enough to permit both the description of and reasoning about the dynamic behavior of systems. The generalization of the logic programming paradigm to encompass computing constraints over various domains [Van Hentenryck 1989] and the adaptation of this paradigm to concurrent constraint logic programming (CCLP) [Maher 1987; Saraswat 1993] is, I believe, the key to progress. There are now many researchers, too numerous to cite here, who are developing concurrent constraint-based languages and associated theories of semantics; their work is evidence that this exciting field is rapidly expanding. In the CCLP paradigm [de Boer and Palamidessi 1991] a simple constraint c is a token that may be added to a store or set of such constraints s but may never be removed from the store; that is, updates are monotonic. This update operation is called “tell” and has no effect on the store if it already contains the told constraint. The state of the store can be queried by an “ask” operation that succeeds if the store entails the asked constraint. We can conceptualize the store as a blackboard (potentially distributed), parts of which can be made private to designated processes, ask operations as reads, and tells as writes on data. In classical concurrency terminology, a process that queries the state of the store with an ask is a consumer and one that updates the store
Variation of Maximum Tree Height and Annual Shoot Growth of Smith Fir at Various Elevations in the Sygera Mountains, Southeastern Tibetan Plateau

Little is known about tree height and height growth (as annual shoot elongation of the apical part of vertical stems) of coniferous trees growing at various altitudes on the Tibetan Plateau, which provides a high-elevation natural platform for assessing tree growth performance in relation to future climate change. We here investigated the variation of maximum tree height and annual height increment of Smith fir (Abies georgei var. smithii) in seven forest plots (30 m×40 m) along two altitudinal transects between 3,800 m and 4,200/4,390 m above sea level (a.s.l.) in the Sygera Mountains, southeastern Tibetan Plateau. Four plots were located on north-facing slopes and three plots on southeast-facing slopes. At each site, annual shoot growth was obtained by measuring the distance between successive terminal bud scars along the main stem of 25 trees that were between 2 and 4 m high. Maximum/mean tree height and mean annual height increment of Smith fir decreased with increasing altitude up to the tree line, indicative of a stress gradient (the dominant temperature gradient) along the altitudinal transect. Above-average mean minimum summer (particularly July) temperatures affected height increment positively, whereas precipitation had no significant effect on shoot growth. The time series of annual height increments of Smith fir can be used for the reconstruction of past climate on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. In addition, it can be expected that the rising summer temperatures observed in the recent past and anticipated for the future will enhance Smith fir's growth throughout its altitudinal distribution range.
Some Fast Algorithms for Sequentially Semiseparable Representations

An extended sequentially semiseparable (SSS) representation derived from time-varying system theory is used to capture, on the one hand, the low-rank of the off-diagonal blocks of a matrix for the purposes of efficient computations and, on the other, to provide for sufficient descriptive richness to allow for backward stability in the computations. We present (i) a fast algorithm (linear in the number of equations) to solve least squares problems in which the coefficient matrix is in SSS form, (ii) a fast algorithm to find the SSS form of X such that AX=B, where A and B are in SSS form, and (iii) a fast model reduction technique to improve the SSS form.
An Agenda-scheduling System Based on Persuasion Among Agents

In this paper, we propose a Multi-Agent Agendascheduling System. In our daily life, meeting scheduling is a time-consuming, iterative and somewhat tedious task. In multi-agent meeting scheduling, agents who act autonomously in the network can schedule meetings on individuals' behalf. In the workplace, agendas are often scheduled for meetings. In this paper, we schedule agendas for meetings. Ideally, all users' preferences should be accepted. It is, however, often di cult to reach an agreement among agents in consideration of all users' preferences. This persuasion mechanism facilitates making a collective agreement among agents in consideration of users' preferences. In agenda-scheduling, agents must quantify the user's subjective preferences. In order to quantify the user's subjective preferences, we employ the Analytic Hierarchy Process. In this paper, we present experiments that show how agents can reach a collective agreement by using a persuasion protocol.
Towards achieving fairness in the Linux scheduler

The Operating System scheduler is designed to allocate the CPU resources appropriately to all processes. The Linux Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) design ensures fairness among tasks using the thread fair scheduling algorithm. This algorithm ensures allocation of resources based on the number of threads in the system and not within executing programs. This can lead to fairness issue in a multi-threaded environment as the Linux scheduler tends to favor programs with higher number of threads. We illustrate the issue of fairness through experimental evaluation thus exposing the weakness of the current allocation scheme where software developers could take advantage by spawning many additional threads in order to obtain more CPU resources. A novel algorithm is proposed as a solution towards achieving better fairness in the Linux scheduler. The algorithm is based on weight readjustment of the threads created in the same process to significantly reduce the unfair allocation of CPU resources in multi-threaded environments. The algorithm was implemented and evaluated. It demonstrated promising results towards solving the raised fairness issue. We conclude this paper highlighting the limitations of the proposed approach and the future work in the stated direction.
Online Walking Motion Generation with Automatic Footstep Placement

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the capacity of model predictive control (MPC) to generate stable walking motions without the use of predefined footsteps. Building up on well-known MPC schemes for walking motion generation, we show that a minimal modification of these schemes allows designing an online walking motion generator that can track a given reference speed of the robot and decide automatically the footstep placement. Simulation results are proposed on the HRP-2 humanoid robot, showing a significant improvement over previous approaches.
Online PI controller tuning for a nonlinear plant using genetic algorithm

Proportional - Integral - Derivative (PID) controller performs well for linear systems. For systems with nonlinearity, controller parameters need to be tuned every time for new operating point to obtain `local gain parameters'. These local gain parameters are not sufficient to get satisfactory performance at other operating points. In this paper a novel approach `Aggregate Fitness Function' is presented to obtain the `global gain parameters' that works satisfactorily at various operating points. Online optimization scheme with Genetic Algorithm (GA) is adopted to tune the Proportional-Integral (PI) controller parameters for setpoint tracking of DC Motor by minimizing Integral-Time-Absolute-Error (ITAE). Hardware validation of the results is presented and studied. The plant under study is DC Motor Control Module (MS15) from M/S LJ CREATE™. M/S National Instrument (NI) based software and hardware components i.e. LabVIEW™ and its add-ons toolkit and Data Acquisition (DAQ) Card has been utilized for online tuning and closed loop run time control. The simulation and run time results clearly show the efficiency of the proposed approach.
Clustering Methods in Data Mining with its Applications in High Education

Data mining is a new technology, developing with database and artificial intelligence. It is a processing procedure of extracting credible, novel, effective and understandable patterns from database. Cluster analysis is an important data mining technique used to find data segmentation and pattern information. By clustering the data, people can obtain the data distribution, observe the character of each cluster, and make further study on particular clusters. In addition, cluster analysis usually acts as the preprocessing of other data mining operations. Therefore, cluster analysis has become a very active research topic in data mining. As the development of data mining, a number of clustering methods have been founded, The study of clustering technique from the perspective of statistics, based on the statistical theories, our paper make effort to combine statistical method with the computer algorithm technique, and introduce the existing excellent statistical methods, including factor analysis, correspondence analysis, and functional data analysis, into data mining.
Spoken term detection for OOV terms based on triphone confusion matrix

The search for out of vocabulary (OOV) query terms in spoken term detection (STD) task is addressed in this paper. The phone level fragment with word-position marker is naturally adopted as the speech recognition decoding unit. Then the triphone confusion matrix (TriCM) is used to expand the query space to compensate for speech recognition errors. And we also propose a new approach to construct triphone confusion matrix using a smoothing method similar with the Katz method to solve the data sparseness problem. Experimental result on the NIST STD06 eval-set conversational telephone speech (CTS) corpus indicates that triphone confusion matrix can provide a relative improvement of 12% in actual term weighted value (ATWV).
Gauge/string duality and scalar glueball mass ratios

It has been shown by Polchinski and Strassler that the scaling of high energy QCD scattering amplitudes can be obtained from string theory. They considered an AdS slice as an approximation for the dual space of a confining gauge theory. Here we use this approximation to estimate in a very simple way the ratios of scalar glueball masses imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions on the string dilaton field. These ratios are in good agreement with the results in the literature. We also find that they do not depend on the size of the slice.
The Complement Anaphylatoxin C3a Receptor (C3aR) Contributes to the Inflammatory Response in Dextran Sulfate Sodium (DSS)-Induced Colitis in Mice

Inflammatory bowel diseases are a critical public health issue, and as treatment options remain limited, there is a need to unravel the underlying pathomechanisms in order to identify new therapeutic targets. Complement activation was found in patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease, and the complement anaphylatoxin C5a and its receptor C5aR have been implicated in disease pathogenesis in animal models of bowel inflammation. To further characterize complement-related pathomechanisms in inflammatory bowel disease, we have investigated the role of the anaphylatoxin C3a receptor in acute dextran sulfate sodium-induced colitis in mice. For this, colitis was induced in C3a receptor-deficient BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice, and disease severity was evaluated by clinical and histological examination, and by measuring the mRNA expression or protein levels of inflammatory mediators in the tissue. C3a receptor deficiency was partially protective in BALB/c mice, which had significantly reduced weight loss, clinical and histological scores, colon shortening, and CXCL-1/KC mRNA, myeloperoxidase and interleukin-6 tissue levels compared to the corresponding wild type mice. In C57BL/6 mice the differences between wild type and C3a receptor-deficient animals were much smaller and reached no significance. Our data demonstrate that the contribution of C3a receptor to disease pathogenesis and severity of dextran sulfate sodium-induced colitis in mice depends on the genetic background. Further studies will be required to clarify whether targeting of C3a receptor, possibly in combination with C5a receptor, might be considered as a therapeutic strategy for inflammatory bowel disease.
Species range expansion constrains the ecological niches of resident butterflies

Aim Changes in community composition resulting from environmental changes modify biotic interactions and affect the distribution and density of local populations. Such changes are currently occurring in nettle-feeding butterflies in Sweden where Araschnia levana has recently expanded its range northward and is now likely to interact with the resident species (Aglais urticae and Aglais io). Butterfly occurrence data collected over years and across regions enabled us to investigate how a recent range expansion of A. levana may have affected the environmental niche of resident species. Location We focused on two regions of Sweden (Skåne and Norrström) where A. levana has and has not established, and two time-periods (2001-2006, 2009-2012) during its establishment in Skåne. Methods We performed two distinct analyses in each region using the PCA-env and the framework described in Broennimann et al. (2012). First, we described the main sources of variation in the environment. Second, in each time-period and region, we characterized the realized niches of our focal species across topographic and land use gradients. Third, we quantified overlaps and differences in realized niches between and within species over time. Results In Skåne, A. levana has stabilized its distribution over time while the distribution of the native species has shifted. These shifts depicted a consistent pattern of avoiding overlap between the native species and the environmental space occupied by A. levana, and it was stronger for A. urticae than for A. io. In both regions, we also found evidence of niche partitioning between native species. Main conclusions Interspecific interactions are likely to affect local species distributions. It appears that the ongoing establishment of A. levana has modified local biotic interactions, and induced shifts in resident species’ distributions. Among the mechanisms that can explain such patterns of niche partitioning, parasitoid-driven apparent competition may play an important role in this community.
Internet utility evaluation of a multi-start particle swarm optimization beamformer in a partial joint processing cellular network

Joint processing (JP) is a powerful mechanism in alleviating inter-cell interference (ICI) and maximizing data rate of cell-edge users. However, JP puts tremendous load on both feedback and backhaul overhead, thus partial JP was proposed to overcome high overhead signaling. Unlike linear techniques such as zero-forcing (ZF), achieving an equivalent backhaul reduction and presenting a totally free ICI system based on limited feedback channel state information can be done by designing and implementing a multi-start particle swarm optimization algorithm (MSPSOA) as a beamforming (BF) mechanism. The performance of the proposed MSPSOA and ZF BF is evaluated based on the acquired spectral efficiency and utility of internet application such as hard real-time, adaptive and elastic applications. The simulation results shows that, the proposed MSPSOA BF achieves spectral efficiency up to 69.5% compared to ZF BF, and it maintains total utility for high data rate requirements of three common internet traffic such as hard real-time, adaptive and elastic applications.
Provision of School Data and Research Based Teacher Professional Development: Does It Work? Data- and Research-Informed Development of Schools in the Danish “Program for Learning Leadership”

In the beginning of 2015, a consortium consisting of 13 Danish municipalities with 240 schools, almost 80,000 students and 10,000 professionals together with a university based research institution and a competence development center launched the school development project “Program for Learning Leadership. ” The project provides data for teachers and school leaders in order to support pedagogical practices and school leadership. It also provides research based competence development packages with professional teams organized in professional learning communities as the central target group for receiving research results and transforming these results into professional practice. Based on a quantitative survey performed in 2015 and repeated in 2017, the project shows that school data and competence development can support positive school changes and improve teachers’ professional self-evaluation, and that competence development should focus on professional teams (professional learning communities) rather than on individual teachers. However, it is still too early to identify the effects for students’ learning and development achievements.
Performance Enhancement of On-Board Communication Networks Using Outage Prediction

A research area that has become increasingly important in recent years is that of on-board mobile communication, where users on a vehicle are connected to a local network that attaches to the Internet via a mobile router and a wireless link. In this architecture, link disruptions (e.g., due to signal degradation) may have an immediate impact on a potentially large number of connections. We argue that the advance knowledge of public transport routes, and their repetitive nature, allows a certain degree of prediction of impending link disruptions, which can be used to offset their catastrophic impact. Focusing on the transmission control protocol (TCP) and its extension known as Freeze-TCP, we present a detailed analysis of the performance improvement of TCP connections in the presence of disruption prediction. In particular, we propose a Markov model of Freeze-TCP that captures both the TCP behavior and the prediction+"freezing" feature and, using simulations, show that it accurately predicts the performance of the protocol. Our results demonstrate the significant throughput improvement that can be gained by disruption prediction, even with random packet losses or imperfect timing of the predicted disruptions