Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experiments with a Stemming Algorithm for Malay Words

Stemming is used in information retrieval systems to reduce variant word forms to common roots in order to improve retrieval effectiveness. As in other languages, there is a need for an effective stemming algorithm for the indexing and retrieval of Malay documents. The Malay stemming algorithm developed by Othman is studied and new versions proposed to enhance its performance. The improvements relate to the order in which the dictionary is looked-up, the order in which the morphological rules are applied, and the number of rules. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Goal setting via videoconferencing

In two experiments (N = 126, N = 120) telework in an advertising company was simulated. Participants communicated either face-to-face or via a PC-videoconference with a supervisor who motivated employees to solve brainstorming tasks using several goal setting strategies. In addition, communication with the supervisor prior to goal setting was manipulated to examine the impact of a personal meeting with the supervisor and to investigate the effect of having some prior experience with this technology. In both experiments, stimulating challenging goals improved performance compared to “do your best” instructions when goal setting was conducted via a videoconference. Moreover, it was found that participative goal setting was more effective than directive goal setting. However, a prior personal meeting with a supervisor or an additional interaction via videoconference prior to goal setting had no impact on performance or the effectiveness of goal setting. In sum, these findings indicate that goal setting effects are robust and can be found even if communication is based on a videoconference. When difficult goals have to be set within a videoconference, participative goal setting strategies are most effective.
Management accounting systems and organisational culture: Interpreting their linkages and processes of change

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature, roles and dynamics of change of management accounting systems (MAS), in processes of continuous organisational learning and transformation. By studying the interaction between the accounting (and finance) function and the implementation of a Six-sigma initiative, as the engine for organisational change, the authors seek to uncover the potential of measurement-based systems of management for aligning business processes with corporate strategies. Such systems sustain continuous processes of transformation by infusing organisational culture with financial and non-financial metrics of accountability. Design/methodology/approach - The research is based on a longitudinal case study in which one of the authors had the opportunity to exercise what Schein called the clinical perspective; i.e. combining the role of researcher with that of helper-consultant. There is mutual interdependence in the relationship between the authors' theoretical framework and the authors' longitudinal case study. While, on the one hand, the case research contributed to the search for an institutional explanation of the evidence experienced and collected, on the other hand, the empirical data are illuminated by the theoretical insights gained from that framework. Findings - After first discussing cultural change, the authors rely both on the “clinical” position of one of the authors as researcher/helper-consultant and on the insights provided by Schein's work on organisational culture and Giddens' structuration theory to develop an institutional framework for interpreting the ways in which routinised systems of accountability bind the ongoing processes of cultural transformation across time and space. Research limitations/implications - Possible limitations are: the conceptualisation of organisational culture as a shared and institutional phenomenon does not take account of wider anthropological aspects (such as the influence of national culture); the role of helper-consultant as well as researcher may have influenced some of the authors' interpretations; the authors' analysis does not consider macro-economic variables; and only a small percentage of shop-floor workers were interviewed. Originality/value - The paper sheds light on the role of management accounting within organisational processes of transformation far beyond their mere visible enactment. As a result, the authors develop an institutional framework to interpret the linkages between the cognitive dynamics which characterise organisational culture (viewed as shared cognitive schemas) and the behavioural and structural modalities through which they are drawn upon and reproduced by organisational members.
MANÁ: uma arquitetura para gerenciamento de redes de sensores semfFio

Esta tese apresenta um arcabouco para o gerenciamento de redes de sensores sem fio que inclui a especificacao de uma arquitetura chamada MANNA1. Esta arquitetura estabelece uma separacao entre as funcionalidades da aplicacao e as funcionalidades do gerenciamento atraves da proposicao de tres arquiteturas (funcional, de informacao e fisica). O arcabouco introduz uma organizacao para ogerenciamento de redes de sensores sem fio considerando duas dimensoes de gerenciamento tradicionais sendo areas funcionais e niveis de gerenciamento e definindo uma nova dimensao chamada funcionalidades das redes de sensores sem fio. Esta organizacao tridimensional e importante na definicao de servicos, funcoes e informacao de gerenciamento assim como na proposicao de solucoesintegradas dE gerenciamento. Um dos principais objetivos da arquitetura MANNA e promover a produtividade dos recursos da rede e a qualidade dos servicos providos.
Toward Context-Aware Mobile Social Networks

CA-MSNs are more intelligent and user-friendly than conventional online or mobile social networks. We first classify CA-MSNs into four categories, and divide their life cycle into four phases: discovery, connection, interaction, and organization. We then introduce personal and community context, and discuss the corresponding taxonomy. Subsequently, we elaborate how such context can be leveraged to enhance each life cycle phase. We also present our practices on designing various CA-MSN applications. Finally, future research directions are identified to shed light on the next generation MSNs from the context awareness perspective.
Alzheimer's disease in the NAS–NRC Registry of ageing twin veterans, IV. Performance characteristics of a two-stage telephone screening procedure for Alzheimer's dementia

Synopsis In the course of a large twin study of Alzheimer's disease we used a two-stage telephone screening procedure. The modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS-m) served as an initial screen for dementia in 12709 individuals. The telephone Dementia Questionnaire (DQ) was then asked of collateral informants for subjects with TICS-m scores below 28, as well as for samples of persons with higher TICS-m scores. Based upon DQ responses, individuals with cognitive impairment not attributable to focal causes underwent assessment for the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (‘Alzheimer's dementia’), as did their twins. Well-defined Alzheimer's dementia was apparent in 39 subjects. Employing a cut-off of 27 or lower as indicative of cognitive impairment, the sensitivity of the TICS-m in the detection of Alzheimer's dementia was estimated at >99% and specificity at 86%. Inclusion of the DQ increased the specificity at the 27/28 cut-point to 99%. The TICS-m score was associated with an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0·88 (95% confidence interval 0·81 to 0·94). The maximum number of cases of Alzheimer's dementia remaining undetected in the sample was estimated to be 34.
Nahalal: Memory Organization for Chip Multiprocessors

-This paper addresses cache organization in Chip Multiprocessor (CMPs). We introduce Nahalal, a novel nonuniform cache (NUCA) topology that enables fast access to shared data for all processors, while preserving the vicinity of private data to each processor. Our characterization of memory accesses patterns in typical parallel programs shows that such a topology is appropriate for common multi-processor applications. Detailed simulations in Simics demonstrate that Nahalal decreases the shared cache access latency by up to 54% compared to traditional CMP designs, yielding performance gains of up to 16.3% in run time.
Hydrogen protects vestibular hair cells from free radicals

Abstract Conclusion: Hydrogen gas effectively protected against the morphological and functional vestibular hair cell damage by reactive oxygen species (ROS). Objective: ROS are generally produced by oxidative stress. In the inner ear, ROS levels increase as a result of noise trauma and ototoxic drugs and induce damage. It is thus important to control ROS levels in the inner ear. The protective effects of hydrogen gas in cochlear hair cells have been reported previously. Methods: This study examined the effects of hydrogen gas on mouse vestibular hair cell damage by ROS using antimycin A. Results: In the group *exposed to hydrogen gas, vestibular hair cells were morphologically well preserved and their mechano-electrical transduction activities were relatively well maintained when compared with controls. Hydroxyphenyl fluorescein (HPF) fluorescence in vestibular tissue was also reduced by hydrogen gas.
A comparison of younger and older baby boomers: investigating the viability of cohort segmentation

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between two age cohorts within the baby boomer group, younger baby boomers (born between 1956‐1965) and older baby boomers (born between 1946‐1955), based on various behavioral variables. It is postulated that, even though this group is exceedingly large in number, there are more similarities than differences among its younger and older members.Design/methodology/approach – The study sample was a convenience sample and consisted of 295 respondents who were in the 40‐58 age category. A questionnaire was administered with scales that were well established and that have been used in previous research.Findings – With the exception of cognitive age, there were no significant differences between younger and older baby boomers regarding a large number of salient behavioral variables. This conclusion suggests that marketers use caution when applying the widely accepted age segmentation strategy of splitting baby boomers into younger and older boome.
Rho-family GTPases: it's not only Rac and Rho (and I like it)

The Rho-family proteins make up a major branch of the Ras superfamily of small GTPases. To date, 22 human genes encoding at least 25 proteins have been described. The best known `classical' members are RhoA, Rac1 and Cdc42. Highly related isoforms of these three proteins have not been studied as intensively, in part because it has been assumed that they are functionally identical to their better-studied counterparts. This now appears not to be the case. Variations in C-terminal-signaled modifications and subcellular targeting cause otherwise highly biochemically related isoforms (e.g. RhoA, RhoB and RhoC) to exhibit surprisingly divergent biological activities. Whereas the classical Rho GTPases are regulated by GDP/GTP cycling, other Rho GTPases are also regulated by other mechanisms, particularly by transcriptional regulation. Newer members of the family possess additional sequence elements beyond the GTPase domain, which suggests they exhibit yet other mechanisms of regulation.
Determinants of E-Learning Effectiveness: A Tunisian Study

E-learning is advantageous for trainees as well as for organisation. The purpose of this research is to discover determinants of effective online training. The different theoretical currents treating the behaviour of individuals towards the technological innovation utilization permit to identify variables that determine the efficiency of e-learning. In this setting, we have made reference to five theories that are: motivation theory, social cognitive theory, media richness theory, technology acceptance theory and structure theory. This study rests upon a model elaborated by Lim and al (2007). This model contains individual, conception, technological and environmental factors. Empirical study is conducted on Tunisian 410 employees’ sample. Factor analysis and structural equations have been used. Results suggest the importance of motivation, face- to- face meeting, e-mail exchange, ease of use, contents of training, seniors’ support and continuous learning culture for learning performance. Learning performance, in turn, affects transfer performance.
Partial Complete iBGP

The Internet is a composition of ASes (Autonomous Systems), BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is the routing protocol that is responsible of exchanging routes between these ASes. It operates in two modes: eBGP (External BGP) and iBGP (Internal BGP). EBGP exchanges routing information between ASes, while iBGP propagates that information within the AS. IBGP node has not the ability to reflect routes. Therefore, each internal node should have iBGP sessions with all ASBRs (Autonomous System Border Routers). BGP route reflection was widely employed as an alternative to full mesh solution to reduce the needed number of iBGP sessions and, in turn, increase the scalability inside the AS. Under particular configuration, BGP scaling mechanism defined in route reflection mechanism introduces persistent route oscillation, forwarding loops, and non-optimal egress nodes. We propose the PC-iBGP (Partial Complete iBGP) as an alternative to the route reflection approach. PC- iBGP nodes have the ability of reflecting routes. It eliminates the use of clusters and establishes iBGP sessions only between single hop neighbors. We prove that it holds sufficient correctness conditions as well as its robustness against failures, asymmetric path problem, and MED (Multi Exit Discriminator) induced oscillations.
Promoting Access to Knowledge, Strategy, and Disposition in Students: A Research Synthesis

The emphasis in this paper is on access, defined as the ability to draw on or utilize one’s intellectual resources in situations where those resources are relevant. A number of factors influence access. They have been identified in various strands of research representing different construct and curriculum perspectives. To date, few attempts have been made to synthesize this research. This is the purpose of the present paper, which utilizes a framework thought to have relevance across research domains. According to this framework, two factors influence students’ ability to access knowledge, strategy, and disposition. The first is organizational in nature, the second relates to the amount of reflective awareness possessed by the individual. This paper discusses how organization and awareness factors influence access in each of the informational categories and how teachers can better attend to these factors and thus promote access or transfer in students.
Experiences of Parents Attending a Programme for Families of Adolescent Child Sexual Abuse Perpetrators in Ireland

The Northside Interagency Project parents' group programme is a psycho-educational support group for parents of adolescents who have committed a sexual offence. In this qualitative study of five programme participants, their self-reported psychological adjustment, self-esteem and perceived social support improved over the course of treatment. From a thematic content analysis of responses to semi-structured interviews conducted before and after the programme and midway through it a conceptual model of the processes and parents' experience in reaction to the disclosure of their sons' sexual offence was developed. The model proposes relationships between parental shock, confusion, searching and questioning, disbelief or minimisation, acceptance, shame, self-blame, guilt, anger and sadness. The model may inform future research and clinical practice with parents of adolescent child sexual abuse perpetrators.
Tool use in a psychomotor task: The role of tool and learner variables

Research on the use of learning tools has brought to light variables that influence the learner on using or not using the tools. A deeper analysis on the current findings is attempted in this study. It adds a psychomotor task; it assesses the actual functionality of the employed tools, and it further explores learner-related variables that influence tool use, most importantly on perceived tool functionality (the beliefs of learners that a certain tool would be the most optimal one). Fiftyeight learners had to build a LEGO® figure. Two tools were used: a video with intentionally low functionality demonstrating the figure assembly, and a step-bystep guideline with pictures. Based on the tools, there were three experimental conditions: guideline (G), video (V) both tools (GV); and one control condition (C) without tools. To analyze the functionality of the tools, the effect of tool use on performance was monitored at two different moments in all conditions. To examine the perceived functionality of tools, the tool use by the learners was monitored in the (GV) condition. Moreover, we checked for the effect of prior knowledge, metacognition and self-efficacy on tool use in the (GV)condition. Results revealed that the tools were functional. The (G), (V) and (GV) conditions significantly outperformed the (C) condition, but contrary to our assumptions, the (V) condition outperformed the other experimental conditions. Regarding perceived functionality, all learners perceived the tools as functional, that means all learners picked a tool. They, however, could not identify from which tool they would benefit the most, i.e. they could not recognize the most functional tool. Concerning the other learner-related variables, no significant effect was found. Theoretical implications for further research are discussed. First on what kind of tool-related variables influence tool use. Second on the effect learner-related variables, especially perceptions, might have on using tools.
Hand in air tapping: A wearable input technology to type wireless

We present Hand in Air Tapping (HAT), a wearable input interface which allows interactions through fingers tapping. It consists in a Bluetooth Low Energy rings enabling wireless communication with any compatible device. Each ring is hardware-wise independent of the others. This allows full modularity, i.e., the number of employed devices can be chosen to meet each application requirements. The proposed system was evaluated in two user studies, both on text input: (1) users learning curve in terms of writing speed; (2) rate of text entry comparison between the proposed interface and that of numpad style keyboards. We associated each keystroke to a set of letters/symbols and compared two approaches: one based on T9 technique and the other on multi-tap input method. Results show comparable performance between HAT and numpad style keyboards. HAT keeps the hands free, not affecting hand movements and human interactions with the surroundings. Moreover, as a general input technology, it might have several potential applications in the field of computer-human interfaces.
Visual servoing over unknown, unstructured, large-scale scenes

This work proposes a new vision-based framework to control a robot within model-free large-scale scenes, where the desired pose has never been attained beforehand. Thus, the desired image is not available. It is important to remark that existing visual servoing techniques cannot be applied in this context. The rigid, unknown scene (i.e. the metric model is also not available) is represented as a collection of planar regions, which may leave the field-of-view continuously as the robot moves toward its distant goal. Hence, a novel approach to detect new planes that enter the field-of-view, which is robust to large camera calibration errors, is then deployed here. In fact, it is well-known that representing the scene as composed by planes, the estimation processes are improved in terms of accuracy, stability, and rate of convergence. This extended 3D vision-based control technique is also based on an efficient second-order method for plane-based tracking and pose reconstruction. The framework is validated by using simulated data with artificially created scenes as well as with real images, and accurate navigation tasks are shown
Solving Highly Constrained Search Problems with Quantum Computers

A previously developed quantum search algorithm for solving 1-SAT problems in a single step is generalized to apply to a range of highly constrained k-SAT problems. We identify a bound on the number of clauses in satisfiahility problems for which the generalized algorithm can find a solution in a constant number of steps as the number of variables increases. This performance contrasts with the linear growth in the number of steps required by the best classical algorithms, and the exponential number required by classical and quantum methods that ignore the problem structure. In some cases, the algorithm can also guarantee that insoluble problems in fact have no solutions, unlike previously proposed quantum search algorithms.
A contact stress model for multifingered grasps of rough objects

The model developed utilizes a contact-stress analysis of an arbitrarily shaped object in a multifingered grasp. The fingers and the object are all treated as elastic bodies, and the region of contact is modeled as a deformable surface patch. The relationship between the friction and normal forces is nonlocal and nonlinear in nature and departs from the Coulomb approximation. The nature of the constraints arising out of conditions for compatibility and static equilibrium motivated the formulation of the model as a nonlinear constrained minimization problem. The model is able to predict the magnitude of the inwardly directed normal forces and both the magnitude and direction of the tangential (friction) forces at each finger-object interface for grasped objects in static equilibrium. <<ETX>>
The Social Context of Middle School: Teachers, Friends, and Activities in Montessori and Traditional School Environments

This study compared the time use and perceptions of schools, teachers, and friends of approximately 290 demographically matched students in Montessori and traditional middle schools. We used the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and questionnaires and conducted multivariate analyses showing that the Montessori students (a ) reported more positive perceptions of their school environment and their teachers, and (b ) more often perceived their classmates as friends while at school. ESM time estimates suggested that the 2 school environments were also organized in different ways: Montessori students spent more time engaged with school‐related tasks, chores, collaborative work, and individual projects; traditional students spent more time in social and leisure activities and more time in didactic educational settings (e.g., listening to a lecture, note taking, watching instructional videos). These results are discussed in terms of current thought on motivation in education and middle school reform.