Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Language teacher supply: A content analysis of newspaper coverage across the 'Anglobubble'

In the monolingual English-speaking world referred to as the ‘Anglobubble’, governments are finally recognising the advantages of a citizenry able to engage in and between multiple languages and cultures. As a result, increased efforts are being made to introduce and expand educational programs to teach languages. Thus, now more than ever, an appropriate language teacher supply is needed to support the internationalisation process of citizens. However, a language teacher supply crisis is emerging. The content analysis study reported here, explored how the issue of language teacher supply was portrayed in print-based newspaper media from six English-speaking countries between 2010 and 2015. The findings indicate that there is an ongoing crisis with the supply of language teachers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Further, in areas where language education is being propelled by top-down political agendas, sustainable progress is limited. Attention is focused on a small number of ‘popular’ languages, with indigenous languages all but forgotten. In contrast, in areas where grass-roots community movements are present, actions are being undertaken to find genuine and sustainable solutions. This is also bringing a more positive media discourse, and, as such, increased social awareness of and value for language education.
Image hashing basing on joint learning of multi-dimension features

For the problem of image retrieval in computer vision, basing on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and convolution filtering, a novel image hashing realized by joint learning of multi-dimension features is proposed. As the first step, in order to get the convolution filters, the PCA eigenvectors is learned from the matrix constructed by the patches which are extracted randomly from original images. Next, in order to get the multi-dimension feature expression of the original images, the original images are convolution filtered to several groups which are in accordance with the filter sequence. Then, the hash projection matrix and binary coding are learned by a traditional hashing operator in each dimension respectively. Finally, the hash code of our joint learning model is obtained by merging the grouping binary coding together. Abundant experiment is done to validate the algorithm validity on a widely used dataset called CIFAR-10. The result shows that the algorithm of image hashing proposed in this paper performs well in image retrieval application, compare with the traditional image hashing, there is a certain performance improvement on both precision and recall.
P 2 X 2 and P 2 X 3 purinoceptors in the rat enteric nervous system

Adenosine 50-triphosphate receptors are known to be involved in fast excitatory postsynaptic currents in myenteric neurons of the digestive tract. In the present study, the distribution of P2X2 and P2X3 receptor mRNA was examined by in situ hybridisation while P2X2 and P2X3 receptor protein was localised by immunohistochemical methods. In addition, P2X2 and P2X3 receptors were colocalised with calbindin and calretinin in the myenteric and submucosal plexus. P2X2and P2X3immunoreactive neurons were found in the myenteric and submucosal plexuses throughout the entire length of the rat digestive tract from the stomach to the colon. Approximately 60%, 70% and 50% of the ganglion cells in the myenteric plexus of the gastric corpus, ileum and distal colon, and 56% and 45% in the submucosal plexus of the ileum and distal colon, respectively, showed positive immunoreactivity to the P2X2 receptor. Approximately 10%, 2% and 15% of the ganglion cells in the myenteric plexus of the gastric corpus, ileum and distal colon, and 62% and 40% in the submucosal plexus of the ileum and distal colon, respectively, showed positive immunoreactivity to the P2X3 receptor. Double-labelling studies showed that about 10–25% of the neurons with P2X2 immunoreactivity in myenteric plexus and 30–50% in the submucosal plexus were found to express calbindin or calretinin. About 80% of the neurons with P2X3 receptor immunoreactivity in the myenteric plexus and about 40% in the submucosal plexus expressed calretinin. Approximately 30–75% of the neurons with P2X3 receptor immunoreactivity in the submucosal plexus expressed calbindin, while none of them were found to express calbindin in the myenteric plexus.
Intracellular pH recovery from alkalinization. Characterization of chloride and bicarbonate transport by the anion exchange system of human neutrophils

The nature of the intracellular pH-regulatory mechanism after imposition of an alkaline load was investigated in isolated human peripheral blood neutrophils. Cells were alkalinized by removal of a DMO prepulse. The major part of the recovery could be ascribed to a Cl- /HCO3- counter-transport system: specifically, a one-for-one exchange of external Cl- for internal HCO3-. This exchange mechanism was sensitive to competitive inhibition by the cinnamate derivative UK-5099 (Ki approximately 1 microM). The half-saturation constants for binding of HCO3- and Cl- to the external translocation site of the carrier were approximately 2.5 and approximately 5.0 mM. In addition, other halides and lyotropic anions could substitute for external Cl-. These ions interacted with the exchanger in a sequence of decreasing affinities: HCO3- greater than Cl approximately NO3- approximately Br greater than I- approximately SCN- greater than PAH-. Glucuronate and SO4(2-) lacked any appreciable affinity. This rank order is reminiscent of the selectivity sequence for the principal anion exchanger in resting cells. Cl- and HCO3- displayed competition kinetics at both the internal and external binding sites of the carrier. Finally, evidence compatible with the existence of an approximately fourfold asymmetry (Michaelis constants inside greater than outside) between inward- and outward-facing states is presented. These results imply that a Cl-/HCO3- exchange mechanism, which displays several properties in common with the classical inorganic anion exchanger of erythrocytes, is primarily responsible for restoring the pHi of human neutrophils to its normal resting value after alkalinization.
A Near Optimal Isosurface Extraction Algorithm Using the Span Space

Presents the "Near Optimal IsoSurface Extraction" (NOISE) algorithm for rapidly extracting isosurfaces from structured and unstructured grids. Using the span space, a new representation of the underlying domain, we develop an isosurface extraction algorithm with a worst case complexity of o(/spl radic/n+k) for the search phase, where n is the size of the data set and k is the number of cells intersected by the isosurface. The memory requirement is kept at O(n) while the preprocessing step is O(n log n). We utilize the span space representation as a tool for comparing isosurface extraction methods on structured and unstructured grids. We also present a fast triangulation scheme for generating and displaying unstructured tetrahedral grids.
ANN-based extraction approach of PV cell equivalent circuit parameters

In most practical cases, a PV array is constructed from a combination of standard PV units (solar cells or panels) connected in series and/or in parallel to obtain the desired power, voltage and current ratings. However, the non-linear behavior of solar cells or panels makes accurate determination of the model parameters a difficult task. A precise determination of the internal physical parameters of cells and panels is not always possible because of the non-uniqueness of the solution. As a result, some parameters of the PV panel model are estimated with non-negligible errors. In this paper, an advanced ANN-based determination approach of PV array parameters from individual cell/panel characteristics is developed for single-diode model. A proper selection of the training points for the ANN is also introduced to improve the estimation of the model. Simulation results obtained for simple case studies using Matlab/Simulink software are presented and discussed. The proposed ANN-based technique made possible more accurate determination of the parameters of the single-diode model with mean errors below 1% for all parameters except for the diode saturation and diffusion current which reached 11%.
An effective genetic algorithm to improve wireless sensor network lifetime for large-scale surveillance applications

Wireless sensor network lifetime for large-scale surveillance systems is defined as the time span that all targets can be covered. One approach to extend the lifetime is to divide the deployed sensors into disjoint subsets of sensors, or sensor covers, such that each sensor cover can cover all targets and work by turns. The more sensor covers can be found, the longer sensor network lifetime can be prolonged. Finding the maximum number of sensor covers can be solved via transformation to the Disjoint Set Covers (DSC) problem, which has been proved to be NP-complete. For this optimization problem, existing heuristic algorithms either get unsatisfactory solutions in some cases or take exponential time complexity. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm to solve the DSC problem. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can get near-optimal solutions with polynomial computation time and can improve the performance of the most constrained-minimum constraining heuristic algorithm by 16% in solution quality.
ASR dependent techniques for speaker recognition

This thesis is concerned with improving the performance of speaker recognition systems in three areas: speaker modeling, verification score computation, and feature extraction in telephone quality speech. We first seek to improve upon traditional modeling approaches for speaker recognition, which are based on Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) trained globally over all speech from a given speaker. We describe methods for performing speaker identification which utilize domain dependent automatic speech recognition (ASR) to provide a phonetic segmentation of the test utterance. When evaluated on YOHO, a standard speaker recognition corpus, several of these approaches were able outperform all previously published results for the closed-set speaker identification task. On a more difficult conversational speech task, we were able to use a combination of classifiers to reduce identification error rates on single test utterances. Over multiple utterances, the ASR dependent approaches performed significantly better than the ASR independent methods. Using an approach we call speaker adaptive modeling for speaker identification, we were able to reduce speaker identification error rates by 39% over a baseline GMM approach when observing five test utterances per speaker. In the area of score computation for speaker verification, we describe a novel method of combining multiple verification metrics, which is based on confidence scoring techniques for speech recognition. This approach was compared against a baseline which used logarithmic likelihood ratios between target and background scores. Finally, we describe a set of experiments using TIMIT and NTIMIT which compare the speaker distinguishing capabilities of three different front end feature sets: mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC), formant locations, and fundamental frequency (Fo). Under matched training and testing conditions, the MFCC feature sets had perfect identification accuracy on TIMIT, but significantly worse performance on NTIMIT. By training and testing under mismatched conditions, we were able to determine the reliability of extraction for individual features on telephone quality speech. Of the alternative features used, we found that F0 had the highest speaker distinguishability, and was also the most reliably extracted feature under mismatched conditions. Thesis Supervisor: Timothy J. Hazen Title: Research Scientist
Distributed network beamforming with a multi-antenna receiver

We consider the problem of distributed beamforming in a relay network, which consists of a single-antenna transmitter, a multi-antenna receiver, and multiple single-antenna relays. Assuming that the channel state information (CSI) is available, our goal is to maximize the destination quality-of-service (QoS) under the total relay transmitted power constraint. Using the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) technique, the problem is turned into a convex semi-definite programming (SDP) problem, which can be solved efficiently using interior point methods. Simulation results show that the proposed relay network beamforming approach offers considerable performance improvements as compared to the single-antenna receiver case.
Status and potential of herbal applications in aquaculture: A review

Disease are recognized as one of the major constraint to sustainable animal production which can cause significant economic loss especially in aquaculture. Various chemotherapeutic agents have been traditionally used in the treatment and prevention of diseases in farmed fish but they are not recommended since improper and continuous use of antibiotics may lead to potential development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, environmental pollution and accumulation of toxic residues in fish. Therefore, scientists have intensified efforts to exploit natural products such as herbs in developing alternative dietary supplements that enhance growth performance, and health and immune system of cultured fish, as these products are inexpensive, safer, effective, and can be easily prepared and are biodegradable. This review discusses the findings from different studies related to the in-vitro and in-vivo applications of herbs and plant extracts or their combinations, in relation to appetite stimulator, growth promoter, antimicrobial, antiparasitic, antioxidant and immunostimulation in fish.
Habitual Consumption of Soy Products and Risk of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma in Chinese Adults: A Case-Control Study

Background and Objectives Many studies have shown a negative association between the consumption of soy products and the risk of some cancers, but little is known about the effect of soy consumption on nasopharyngeal carcinoma. We assessed the association between the consumption of soy products on nasopharyngeal carcinoma risk in Chinese individuals. Methods This case-control study included 600 (448 males and 152 females) incident cases of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and an equal number of controls, matched according to gender, age (± 3 y) and household type to the nasopharyngeal carcinoma cases. All subjects were recruited from hospitals in Guangzhou, China. A face-to-face interview was conducted with each study individual to collect general information and habitual dietary intake using a 78-item quantitative food-frequency questionnaire. Odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals were estimated using conditional logistic regression analyses. Results The median intakes of soy foods (in protein) were 0.5/0.5, 1.4/1.7, 2.7/3.3 and 6.1/7.7 (male/female) g/d in the quartiles 1 to 4. Both univariate and multivariate analyses showed no significant association between the consumption of soy proteins or soy isoflavones and the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) between extreme quartiles were 0.97 (0.66-1.45) for soy proteins and 0.97 (0.66-1.42) for total isoflavones. Null associations were also observed between intake of the individual isoflavones daidzein, genistein and glycitein and NPC risk, with adjusted odds ratios for the extreme quartiles ranging between 0.73 and 1.23. Conclusion Habitual consumption of soy products had no significant effect on the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Chinese adults with a relatively low intake.
Color correction for multi-view video based on background segmentation and dominant color extraction

Color correction is a necessary operation in multi-view video processing, because color tends to be influenced by camera characteristic, surface reflectance or scene illumination. To achieve high-quality correction results, a new color correction method, based on the theoretical model of multi-view imaging and image restoration, is proposed in this paper. Considering the illumination problem in multi-view imaging, foreground and background regions are separated from images and dominant color extraction is used only for background regions of reference and input images, so that uniform reference surface information is used. Then, color correction is extended to video sequences with a tracking approach. Furthermore, an objective performance evaluation is proposed to evaluate the color correction. We present a variety of results for different test sequences, arguing that background-based method outperforms foreground-based method, and better subjective and objective visual effect can be achieved for images as well as videos.
A Comparison of Timbral and Harmonic Music Segmentation Algorithms

Four music segmentation algorithms are presented, one based on purely timbral features, one on purely harmonic features, and two on different combinations of features. They are compared against each other and against human annotations of two albums by The Beatles. Example segmentations are given together with a quantitative measure of boundary accuracy. No algorithm is found to be clearly superior, although examples suggest that the combined algorithms can offer improved boundary detection.
Precipitation chemistry in and ionic loading to an Alpine Basin, Sierra Nevada

Wet deposition of solutes to an alpine catchment in the southern Sierra Nevada was measured from October 1984 through March 1988. Rainfall had a volume-weighted pH of 4.9, and snowfall had a volume-weighted pH of 5.3. Acetic and formic acids were important components of all wet deposition, contributing 25-30% of the measured anions in snowfall and, through analysis of charge balance deficits, the same percentage in rainfall. The NO{sub 3}{sup {minus}} to SO{sub 4}{sup 2{minus}} equivalent ratio for all wet deposition was 1.16. Ammonium concentration was tenfold greater than H{sup +} in rainfall: ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate appear to be the principal nitrate and sulfate containing aerosols in wet deposition. Snowmelt runoff (1985 and 1986) or snowpack runoff plus rainfall during the period of snowpack runoff (1987) supplied 90% of the annual solute flux from wet deposition to the catchment. Data show that dry deposition was not an important contributor of H{sup +}, NO{sub 3}{sup {minus}}, and SO{sub 4}{sup 2{minus}} to the winter snowpack. The source of the ions in snowfall was air masses that originated over the Pacific Ocean, while low Cl{sup {minus}} and Na{sup +} relative to NO{sub 3}{sup {minus}} and NH{sub 4}{sup +} in rainfall indicatemore » that local urban and agricultural areas were the major source of the ions in rainfall. « less
A responsive Tier 2 process for a middle school student with behavior problems

ABSTRACT Students requiring Tier 2 behavioral supports frequently display behavioral deficits in multiple domains (e.g., emotional symptoms and peer problems). The Tier 2 framework developed by McDaniel, Bruhn, & Mitchell (2015a) is a responsive structure for identifying and intervening at Tier 2. This process is described with a practical case example of a student with multiple areas of risk. Stacking Tier 2 behavioral interventions for students who score in the “abnormal” range in multiple areas on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire is described. A description of this process for delivering Tier 2 supports and the results from the case example are presented.
Adjacent point thinning sampling for cylindrical far-field estimation method

Cylindrical near-field measurement is effective against spherical far-field measurement of long linear array antenna. Long measurement time is a problem of this method caused by a large amount of sampling points. This paper proposes a thinning sampling technique for sampling points reduction on cylindrical far-field estimation method. Near-field equivalent current is sparsely sampled. Number of sampling points can be reduced by the proposed method while maintaining the accuracy of estimated far-field pattern. We clarify that reduction limit of sampling points is 25% than the ordinary sampling.
Homogeneous Approximation, Recursive Observer Design, and Output Feedback

We introduce two new tools that can be useful in nonlinear observer and output feedback design. The first one is a simple extension of the notion of homogeneous approximation to make it valid both at the origin and at infinity (homogeneity in the bi-limit). Exploiting this extension, we give several results concerning stability and robustness for a homogeneous in the bi-limit vector field. The second tool is a new recursive observer design procedure for a chain of integrator. Combining these two tools, we propose a new global asymptotic stabilization result by output feedback for feedback and feedforward systems.
Spatial Queries on a Hierarchical Terrain Model

Triangulated models are widely used to represent surfaces in important application elds, like CAD, GIS, nite element analysis, robotics, and computer graphics in general. Several applications require that surfaces are represented and analyzed at variable levels of precision. For instance, in landscape visualization and ight simulation, the terrain surface and the objects on the terrain must be rendered at di erent levels of resolution, depending on their distance from the viewpoint. Similarly, di erent precision levels will be used in representing the terrain in a GIS, depending on the scale used.
Fusion of M-IMU and EMG signals for the control of trans-humeral prostheses

The commercially available myoelectric control strategies with surface electrodes used to drive upper limb prostheses, e.g. conventional amplitude-based control, do not allow the control of simultaneous movements in multi-Dof devices, i.e. the prostheses for trans-humeral amputees or with shoulder disarticulation. Pattern recognition applied to ElectroMyoGraphic (EMG) signals represents a valid solution to this problem although it could be efficiently applied only to high level upper limb amputees who undergo a Targeted Muscle Reinnervation surgery (TMR). This paper introduces a novel control strategy for trans-humeral prostheses that, based on the coupled use of myoelectric and magneto-inertial sensors, allows managing simultaneous movements and more physiological reaching tasks. With the proposed approach the user could operate the elbow flexion-extension, wrist prono-supination and hand opening-closing exploiting the residual stump motions combined to the myoelectric activity of two target muscles, i.e. biceps and triceps. A comparative experimental analysis has been carried out in order to compare the performance of the proposed control with the traditional myoelectric control. Eight able-bodied individuals have been recruited and were asked to perform four different tasks in a Virtual Environment (VE), using both control strategies. Control performance was assessed by means of three quantitative indices, i.e. completion time, average rotational speed and success rate. The obtained results show that the proposed control strategy can achieve higher performance than the traditional control for each task.
Surface simplification by image retargeting

Surface simplification aims to reduce the complexity of a 3D model while maintaining a good approximation to the original model. In this work, we propose a novel combination of geometry images and content-aware image resizing to achieve efficient surface simplification. There are two main advantages to simplify surface based on geometry images. First, it is relatively simple to simplify the surface in the parameterized 2D space because the features of a 3D surface can be easily represented by the gradient energy. Second, the regularity and features on 3D surface can also be preserved without additional effort. The proposed retargeting algorithm performs well both on real images and 3D surface simplification.