Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE STUDIES BY USING SERVICE LEARNING METHOD

This article deals with the use of the service learning method in the study courses of landscape architecture bachelor studies outcomes from a student’s perspective. This kind of research is unique with combining service learning method research and involvement of student’s perspective. The service learning method, which includes both theoretical studies and practical work in the planning of actual territories and communication with the customer, is important for the development of professional competences in the field of landscape architecture. The aim of the research was to state the benefits of students’ professional growth from using this method in the study process. The article summarises the evaluation of the experience of Latvia University of Agriculture landscape architecture studies in cooperation with 3 non-governmental organisations, 8 municipalities and governmental organisations and 4 associations from 2013 to 2016. The research was based on the students’ survey. The students had to answer close-ended questions about the knowledge they had acquired from the projects of different scales. As a result of the survey, it was concluded that the students’ main benefits of professional knowledge are mainly associated with a better understanding of specific features of particular places, which is not always possible within the framework of theoretical studies. The possibility of presenting projects to a real customer, thus improving one’s presentation skills was also positively evaluated.
Performance hotspot based CUDA acceleration

With the introduction of many-core GPUs, there is widespread interest in using GPUs to accelerate non-graphics applications such as bioinformatics, energy, finance and several research areas. Even though the GPUs provide highly parallel processing capability, performance improvement is not always achievable due to multiple reasons. One of them will be the application mapping to the hardware acceleration module. In this paper, we investigate performance hotspot functions of an application and used it for application mapping for CUDA acceleration. Based on our experiments with three non-graphic applications, hotspot function based CUDA acceleration shows 15%-40% performance improvement on GPGPU with minimal efforts.
TREND ANALYSIS OF RAINFALL DATA-A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EXISTING METHODS

Rainfall studies are of utmost utility for understanding nature & hence the behavior of climate changes. Time series is a set of observations taken at specified times usually at equal interval. Thus a set of data depending on time is called a Time series. Here, Rainfall series represent the time series. The time series analysis is helpful to compare the actual performance and analyze the cause of variations. By comparing different time series we can draw important conclusion. There are four types of movements called the four components of time series namely Secular Trends, Seasonal variation, Cyclical variations, Irregular or random movement. Out of four components ‘Trend’ is a common terminology used. There are many types of Trends, the series may be increasing or decreasing at various rate. These variables are observed over a long period of time and any changes related to time or noted and calculated and a Trend of these changes is established. Some remain relatively constant and reverse from growth to decline or from decline to growth over a period of time. A change in these conditions would affect the forecast. In the present study secular changes in the annual rainfall of 1476 rain gauge stations for the period of 100 years from 1901 – 2000 in India have been studied. We present various test to detect the best suitable trend for the rainfall time series.
BUILDING CHANGE DETECTION FROM LIDAR POINT CLOUD DATA BASED ON CONNECTED COMPONENT ANALYSIS

Abstract. Building data are one of the important data types in a topographic database. Building change detection after a period of time is necessary for many applications, such as identification of informal settlements. Based on the detected changes, the database has to be updated to ensure its usefulness. This paper proposes an improved building detection technique, which is a prerequisite for many building change detection techniques. The improved technique examines the gap between neighbouring buildings in the building mask in order to avoid under segmentation errors. Then, a new building change detection technique from LIDAR point cloud data is proposed. Buildings which are totally new or demolished are directly added to the change detection output. However, for demolished or extended building parts, a connected component analysis algorithm is applied and for each connected component its area, width and height are estimated in order to ascertain if it can be considered as a demolished or new building part. Finally, a graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed to update detected changes to the existing building map. Experimental results show that the improved building detection technique can offer not only higher performance in terms of completeness and correctness, but also a lower number of undersegmentation errors as compared to its original counterpart. The proposed change detection technique produces no omission errors and thus it can be exploited for enhanced automated building information updating within a topographic database. Using the developed GUI, the user can quickly examine each suggested change and indicate his/her decision with a minimum number of mouse clicks.
° Interactive Video Scenes with Multi-directional Moving Capability

In this paper, 360° video clips of a sampled area are captured and merged together with an optimized method to extend the degree of freedom of the user’s movements. This method allows the user to move freely in 8 directions from the current position. Any movement by the user causes the view image and the light condition to be synthesized by interpolated zooming of the camera’s view to create a realistic virtual environment.
NIMEcraft Workshop : Exploring the Subtleties of Digital

This half-day workshop will explore the craft of digital musical instrument design. Craft practice is central to the working process of both acoustic and digital instrument builders. Unlike the higher-level NIME design frameworks and taxonomies that appear in the literature, craft knowledge is often personal, subjective, and occasionally difficult to describe in writing. This workshop will call attention to this important aspect of instrument design through a combination of discussion and a hands-on instrument design activity focused on sculpting the subtle behavioural details of an instrument. The workshop will also reflect on how craft knowledge can be better disseminated and shared in the NIME community.
Bibliometric assessments of network formations by keyword-based vector space model

This study proposes an empirical way for determining probability of network tie formation between network actors. In social network analysis, it is a usually problem that information for determining whether or not a network tie should be formed is missing for some network actors, and thus network can only be partially constructed due to unavailability of information. This methodology proposed in this study is based on network actors similarities calculations by vector space model to calculate how possible network ties can be formed. Also, a threshold value of similarity for deciding whether or not a network tie should be generated is suggested in this study. Four keyword-based research networks, with journal paper or research project as network actors, constructed previously are selected as the targets of this empirical study: 1) Technology Foresight Paper Network: 181 papers and 547 keywords, 2) Regional Innovation System Paper Network: 431 papers and 1165 keywords, 3) Global Sci-Tech Policy Paper Network: 548 papers and 1705 keywords, 4) Taiwans Sci-Tech Policy Project Network: 143 research projects and 213 keywords. The four empirical investigations allow a threshold value calculated by vector space model to be suggested for deciding the formation of network ties.
Reliability of Bone Scintigraphy for Suspected Scaphoid Fractures

Purpose: To examine the observer variation for bone scintigraphy in the detection of occult scaphoid fractures in daily practice, using only the early bone scanning images. Methods: One hundred bone scans of patients with a suspected scaphoid fracture but negative initial radiographs were prospectively included to calculate the inter- and intraobserver variation. Three nuclear medicine physicians independently evaluated all bone scans at 2 different points in time with a 3-month interval. The observers filled out a blinded scoring sheet for each patient. They scored if a scaphoid fracture was present or not. In addition, they scored the presence or absence of another fracture. The inter- and intraobserver variation was analyzed using the &kgr; statistic. Results: The interobserver variation showed substantial agreement for a scaphoid fracture and almost perfect agreement for another fracture. The intraobserver variation showed almost perfect agreement for both a scaphoid fracture and another fracture. Conclusions: In the present study, early static images of bone scintigraphy for suspected scaphoid fractures showed very little inter- and intraobserver variation. In addition, expertise does not seem to have a negative influence on the results. This enhances the possibility of using bone scintigraphy in daily practice.
Metrological evaluation and application of a region-based surface extraction method for material separation in CT volume data

We developed a new approach for surface extraction in CT volume data, which is based on active contours and allows a region and task adaptive surface generation. This method offers the possibility to solve a variety of application problems for different types of parts which are not or at least difficult to realize with established procedures. In this paper we present an overview of the implementation and discuss in detail the metrological evaluation of the new approach. Additionally, the possibilities and results of material separation for different multi-material tasks are shown on exemplary applications.
Relationship between cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 ( CTLA-4 ) rs 5742909 C > T polymorphism and cancer risk : a meta-analysis based on thirty case-control studies

The association between cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4) rs5742909 C>T (-318C/T) polymorphism and cancer risk has been widely investigated, while many publications have reported controversial results. The aim of this study was to carry out a meta-analysis evaluating the association between CTLA-4 rs5742909 C>T polymorphism and cancer risk. The PubMed, EMBASE and CBM (China Biology Medicine), as well as CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) databases were extensively searched up to June 22, 2015 for relevant articles investigating the relationship between CTLA-4 rs5742909 C>T polymorphism and cancer risk. A meta-analysis was conducted using STATA software (version 12.0). Thirty case-control studies from twenty-nine publications were recruited for analysis. The results indicated a significant difference in genotype and allele distributions of CTLA-4 rs5742909 C>T polymorphism between cancer cases and controls. A slight publication bias was detected in this study; therefore, non-parametric “trim-and-fill” method was used to check the stability of our results. The adjusted ORs and CIs indicated that CTLA-4 rs5742909 C>T polymorphism might be a risk factor for cancer, suggesting the reliability of our results. This meta-analysis suggests that CTLA-4 rs5742909 C>T polymorphism may be associated with cancer susceptibility.
Experimental Investigation of the Capacitor Influence on the Single Phase Induction Motor : A Labview Approach

In this article, experimental results with a single phase induction motor are presented. For the motor’s maximum efficiency, the capacitor has to vary based on torque. It was determined the optimum value of the capacitor at an optimal efficiency for different torques. Due to the motor’s special construction the measurements were made with a large number of capacitors for both motor windings. The graphs were determined using a computer calculus program. A data acquisition system was used in order to obtain the voltage and current signals and were processed off-line and saved in a data base. A Labview program was built in order to acquire determine the speed versus torque graphs.
Spectral Distributions of Random Graphs

Given a graph G with n vertices, its adjacency matrix A(G) is the n× n matrix whose (i, j) entry is 1 if vertices i and j are adjacent, and 0 otherwise. The eigenvalues of the graph G are defined to be the eigenvalues of A(G). The collection of eigenvalues of G are also known as the spectrum of G. In this project, we investigate the empirical eigenvalue distribution (ESD) of a random graph. In class, we considered ensembles of random matrices where the entries of the matrix are independent and identically distributed. We are often interested in the limit of the ESD as n→∞. The most famous result of this type is Wigner’s semicircle law [8, 9]. The random matrices in Wigner’s setup correspond to random graphs where each possible edge appears independently with some probability p. This random graph is denoted G(n, p), and it was first studied in the seminal paper of Erdős and Rényi [2]. If p were held constant as n grows, then the setup is equivalent to Wigner’s random matrix setting. However, in graph theory, we are often interested in cases where p decreases with n. In Section 2, we discuss some results and observations relating to the limiting ESD of G(n, p). In Section 3, we consider another model of random graphs. A d-regular graph is a graph where every vertex has degree d. Let Gn,d denote a random d-regular graph on n vertices, chosen uniformly at random from all d-regular graphs on n labeled vertices1. Unlike the Erdős-Rényi random graph, the edges of Gn,d are not independent. It turns out that if d is fixed, then the limiting ESD of Gn,d is not the semicircular distribution. McKay [4] determined the limiting ESD for each d. Very recently, Tran, Vu, and Wang showed that if d increases with n, then the limiting ESD of Gn,d does approach the semicircle distribution. We discuss both results. In this project, we focus on the spectral distribution of graphs. There are many other questions about eigenvalues of random graphs that could be asked, e.g., what is the distribution of the largest eigenvalue, and what is the distribution of the spectral gap (the difference between the top two eigenvalues). Questions about largest eigenvalues are very important in graph theory, as many important parameters of graphs can be characterized by their largest eigenvalues and spectral gaps. The field of spectral graph theory is dedicated to the properties of graph eigenvalues and their applications. However, we shall not explore this territory in this project. We shall discuss the above two models of random graphs separately. In Section 2 we discuss the Erdős-Rényi model G(n, p) and in Section 3 we discuss the random d-regular model Gn,d . We only include sketches of proofs and refer the readers to the original papers for details. We include MATLAB plots of the spectral distributions for both models of random graphs, as Prof. Edelman has passed to us the wisdom that these plots can sometimes be even more convincing than the proofs.
Example of post-Ediacarian complex volcanism emplaced during the Cambrian rifting in the Western High-Atlas , Morocco : Geochemical study and geotectonic significance

The Moroccan Variscan domain contains relics of the “Cambrian rift” developed from the Anti-Atlasic to the mesetian domain. Distinct volcanic activities, effusive and explosive, are related to this event, and are encased in the Cambrian deposits of the Western High Atlas from both sides of the Tizi-N-Test fault system. We have focused our work on a particular explosive volcanic conglomerate, referred here as V2 event. It’s Lan/Ybn ratios (>8) and low ratios of Nb/Y (<1), added to Nb, Ta and Ti-negative anomalies are comparable to the calc-alkaline orogenic rocks. The (Gd/Yb)C ratios (>2) confirm that the volcanic conglomerate V2 was generated by the melting of a deep garnet bearing mantle and would have inherited their orogenic signature from the partial melting of previously metasomatized mantle. The spatial extend of such volcanic rocks in different blocks of the Western High-Atlas supports their use it as a potential stratigraphic marker for the correlation of the Cambrian terranes deposited during this major extensive event.
The Analysis of Corporate Collaboration Effectiveness by Econometric Methods

This paper describes an analysis of the effects of collaboration based on a survey conducted between 1986 and 2004 of 3,600 collaborations which were made either domestically or globally by 170 Japanese biotechnology companies. Thirty-one of these companies are sampled for quantitative estimation based on panel data models of the effects of collaboration on sales, R&D investment and R&D outcomes over the past 12 years. The effects per individual company are also compared. In addition, the effectiveness of collaboration in the case of European and US global companies is investigated. The collection of long-term panel data is held to be a problem, but for this study we prepared accurate data based on corporate news releases, which are a very reliable source of information. We extend the scope of collaboration into government-firm, academia-firm and inter-firm collaborations in order to analyse the effects on Japanese companies of a wide spectrum of collaborations
Chapter 12 Evaluating content generators

Evaluating your content generator is a very important task, but difficult to do well. Creating a game content generator in general is much easier than creating a good game content generator—but what is a “good” content generator? That depends very much on what you are trying to create and why. This chapter discusses the importance and the challenges of evaluating content generators, and more generally understanding a generator’s strengths and weaknesses and suitability for your goals. In particular, we discuss two different approaches to evaluating content generators: visualizing the expressive range of generators, and using questionnaires to understand the impact of your generator on the player. These methods could broadly be called top-down and bottom-up methods for evaluating generators. 12.1 I created a generator, now what? The entirety of this book thus far has been focused on how to create procedural content generators, using a variety of techniques and for many different purposes. We hope that, by now, you have gained an appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to PCG, and also the surprises that can come from writing a generative system. We imagine that you also have experienced some of the frustration that can come from debugging a generative system: “is the interesting level I created a fluke, a result of a bug, or a genuine result? ” Creating a generator is one thing; evaluating it is another. Regardless of the method followed, generators are evaluated on their ability to achieve the desired goals of the designer (or the computational designer). This chapter reviews methods for achieving that. Arguably, the generation of any content is trivial; the generation of valuable content for the task at hand, on the other hand, is a rather challenging procedure. Further, it is more challenging to generate content that is both valuable and novel.
Alshammari Differentiation between Common Tick Species Using Molecular Biology Techniques in Saudi Arabia C

Protein and Esterase electrophoresis were used to genetically identify two Saudi tick species. Engorged females of the camel tick Hyalomma dromedarii (Koch) (Acari: Ixodidae) and the cattle tick Boophilus annulatus (Say) (Acari: Ixodidae) ticks collected from infested camels and cattle in the animals resting house at Hail region in KSA were used. The results showed that there are a variation in both of protein and esterase activity levels and a high polymorphism within and between the genera and species of Hyalomma and Boophilus . In conclusion, the protein and esterase electrophoretic analysis used in the present study could successfully distinguish among tick species, commonly found in Saudi Arabia. Keywords—Molecular biology, The camel tick Hyalomma dromedarii, The cattle tick Boophilus annulatus , Ticks.
Novel ventricular repolarization indexes in prehypertensive and newly diagnosed hypertensive patients : Tpe interval and Tpe / QT ratio

Objectives: Tp-e interval and Tp-e/QT ratio are associated with malignant ventricular arrhythmias and cardiovascular mortality. We aimed to evaluate ventricular repolarization indexes in patients with prehypertension and new diagnosed hypertension. Materials: Our study population consisted of 95 subjects: 28 healthy volunteers with normotensive, 35 subjects with prehypertension, and 32 patients with newly diagnosed hypertension (HT). Tp-e interval and Tp-e/QT ratio were measured from a 12-lead electrocardiogram, and the Tp-e interval corrected for heart rate. These parameters were compared among groups. Results: Age, gender distribution, heart rate and lipit levels were similar, between of the study groups (P > 0.05). Corrected QT dispersion, corrected Tp-e interval and Tp-e/QT ratio were significantly increased in patients with HT when compared with normotensive and prehypertension subjects (P < 0.001, P = 0.001, P = 0.001 respectively). Conclusion: Tp-e interval and Tp-e/QT ratio were increased in HT patients with respect to normotensive subjects. These parameters were similar normotensive and prehypertensive subjects. Our results may contribute to pathophysiological mechanisms of increased prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias and cardiovascular mortality risk by indicating increased ventricular repolarization heterogeneity in hypertension patients.
Acamprosate protects rat brain against middle-cerebral-artery-occlusion-induced ischemic injuries through anti-oxidative activities

It is has been reported that acamprosate significantly reduces neurological deficits following transient hemispheric ischemia, which may be related to its antiglutamatergic effect. However, it is unclear whether acamprosate may provide anti-oxidative neuroprotection in cerebral ischemic condition. To investigate the anti-oxidative neuroprotective effects of acamprosate during focal cerebral ischemia, rats were treated with acamprosate through sublingual vein injection 30 min after the onset of MCAO-induced cerebral ischemia. The behavioral tests were performed to evaluate neurological performance. 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining was used to evaluate the infarct area of brain tissue. Spectrophotometric assay was used to determine the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione-peroxidase (GSH-Px), and contents of malondialdehyde (MDA) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Furthermore, the respiratory control ratio (RCR = State 3/State 4) was calculated to determine the brain mitochondria activities. Acamprosate at doses of 30 and 100 mg/kg, but not 10 mg/kg, exhibited significant neuroprotective effects against focal cerebral ischemic injury by markedly attenuating MCAO-induced neurological deficit, and reducing the infarct area. Meanwhile, acamprosate significantly improved mitochondrial energy metabolism, and countered the reduction of SOD and GSH-Px activities and elevation of MDA level induced by cerebral ischemia. Acamprosate might provide neuroprotection against the cerebral ischemia-induced injury through antioxidative actions in the brain.