Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teachers' Perceptions of SAE Programs and Benefits for Students with Special Needs in Oklahoma.

An Oklahoma study sought to identify specific benefits that accrue to students with special needs in secondary Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) programs and to determine teachers' perceptions of SAE programs for students with special needs. Data were gathered in the fall of 1993 through a mailed survey of all 362 agricultural education departments in the state; 249 responses were received (69 percent). The study found that only 68 percent (956) of 1,401 students with special needs were involved in SAE. The most common types of SAE programs conducted by students with special needs included livestock exhibition, horticulture, agricultural mechanics, and job placement. The teachers were very experienced, with an average age of 38 and with 14 years of teaching experience. Overall, teachers' perceptions of students with special needs involved in SAE programs were positive. They felt that SAE for students with special needs was similar to SAE for mainstream students in most respects, although special needs students needed more help and had fewer options. The study concluded that SAE offered multiple opportunities and benefits for special needs students and related directly to the objectives of special education. Several difficulties were cited: poor student recordkeeping, lack of parental support, family's socioeconomic status, supervision time, and students' abilities and behaviors. Recommendations were made to involve more special needs students in SAE based on their needs. (Contains 23 references.) (KC) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS OF SAE PROGRAMS AND BENEFITS FOR STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS IN OKLAHOMA
Just-in-time Java compilation for the Itanium/spl reg/ processor

This paper describes a just-in-time (JIT) Java compiler for the Intel/spl reg/ Itanium/spl reg/ processor. The Itanium processor is an example of an Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) architecture and thus relies on aggressive and expensive compiler optimizations for performance. Static compilers for Itanium use aggressive global scheduling algorithms to extract instruction-level parallelism. In a JIT compiler, however, the additional overhead of such expensive optimizations may offset any gains from the improved code. In this paper, we describe lightweight code generation techniques for generating efficient Itanium code. Our compiler relies on two basic methods to generate efficient code. First, the compiler uses inexpensive scheduling heuristics to model the Itanium microarchitecture. Second, the compiler uses the semantics of the Java virtual machine to extract instruction-level parallelism.
A Decision Support System Coupling Fuzzy Logic and Probabilistic Graphical Approaches for the Agri-Food Industry: Prediction of Grape Berry Maturity

Agri-food is one of the most important sectors of the industry and a major contributor to the global warming potential in Europe. Sustainability issues pose a huge challenge for this sector. In this context, a big issue is to be able to predict the multiscale dynamics of those systems using computing science. A robust predictive mathematical tool is implemented for this sector and applied to the wine industry being easily able to be generalized to other applications. Grape berry maturation relies on complex and coupled physicochemical and biochemical reactions which are climate dependent. Moreover one experiment represents one year and the climate variability could not be covered exclusively by the experiments. Consequently, harvest mostly relies on expert predictions. A big challenge for the wine industry is nevertheless to be able to anticipate the reactions for sustainability purposes. We propose to implement a decision support system so called FGRAPEDBN able to (1) capitalize the heterogeneous fragmented knowledge available including data and expertise and (2) predict the sugar (resp. the acidity) concentrations with a relevant RMSE of 7 g/l (resp. 0.44 g/l and 0.11 g/kg). FGRAPEDBN is based on a coupling between a probabilistic graphical approach and a fuzzy expert system.
Synaptic Autoregulation by Metalloproteases and γ-Secretase

The proteolytic machinery comprising metalloproteases and γ-secretase, an intramembrane aspartyl protease involved in Alzheimer's disease, cleaves several substrates in addition to the extensively studied amyloid precursor protein. Some of these substrates, such as N-cadherin, are synaptic proteins involved in synapse remodeling and maintenance. Here we show, in rats and mice, that metalloproteases and γ-secretase are physiologic regulators of synapses. Both proteases are synaptic, with γ-secretase tethered at the synapse by δ-catenin, a synaptic scaffolding protein that also binds to N-cadherin and, through scaffolds, to AMPA receptor and a metalloprotease. Activity-dependent proteolysis by metalloproteases and γ-secretase takes place at both sides of the synapse, with the metalloprotease cleavage being NMDA receptor-dependent. This proteolysis decreases levels of synaptic proteins and diminishes synaptic transmission. Our results suggest that activity-dependent substrate cleavage by synaptic metalloproteases and γ-secretase modifies synaptic transmission, providing a novel form of synaptic autoregulation.
Performance Evaluation of Bankruptcy Prediction Models: An Orientation Super-efficiency DEA-based Framework

Prediction of corporate failure is one of the major activities in auditing firms risks and uncertainties. The design of reliable models to predict bankruptcy is crucial for many decision making processes. Although a large number of models have been designed to predict bankruptcy, the relative performance evaluation of competing prediction models remains an exercise that is unidimensional in nature, which often leads to reporting conflicting results. In this research, we overcome this methodological issue by proposing an orientation-free super-efficiency data envelopment analysis model as a multi-criteria assessment framework. Furthermore, we perform an exhaustive comparative analysis of the most popular bankruptcy modeling frameworks for UK data including our own models. In addition, we address two important research questions; namely, do some modeling frameworks perform better than others by design? and to what extent the choice and/or the design of explanatory variables and their nature affect the performance of modeling frameworks? , and report on our findings.
The Slavic NBN Founder Mutation: A Role for Reproductive Fitness?

The vast majority of patients with Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome (NBS) are of Slavic origin and carry a deleterious deletion (c.657del5; rs587776650) in the NBN gene on chromosome 8q21. This mutation is essentially confined to Slavic populations and may thus be considered a Slavic founder mutation. Notably, not a single parenthood of a homozygous c.657del5 carrier has been reported to date, while heterozygous carriers do reproduce but have an increased cancer risk. These observations seem to conflict with the considerable carrier frequency of c.657del5 of 0.5% to 1% as observed in different Slavic populations because deleterious mutations would be eliminated quite rapidly by purifying selection. Therefore, we propose that heterozygous c.657del5 carriers have increased reproductive success, i.e., that the mutation confers heterozygote advantage. In fact, in our cohort study of the reproductive history of 24 NBS pedigrees from the Czech Republic, we observed that female carriers gave birth to more children on average than female non-carriers, while no such reproductive differences were observed for males. We also estimate that c.657del5 likely occurred less than 300 generations ago, thus supporting the view that the original mutation predated the historic split and subsequent spread of the ‘Slavic people’. We surmise that the higher fertility of female c.657del5 carriers reflects a lower miscarriage rate in these women, thereby reflecting the role of the NBN gene product, nibrin, in the repair of DNA double strand breaks and their processing in immune gene rearrangements, telomere maintenance, and meiotic recombination, akin to the previously described role of the DNA repair genes BRCA1 and BRCA2.
Using Data Compressors to Construct Rank Tests

Nonparametric rank tests for homogeneity and component independence are proposed, which are based on data compressors. For homogeneity testing the idea is to compress the binary string obtained by ordering the two joint samples and writing 0 if the element is from the first sample and 1 if it is from the second sample and breaking ties by randomization (extension to the case of multiple samples is straightforward). $H_0$ should be rejected if the string is compressed (to a certain degree) and accepted otherwise. We show that such a test obtained from an ideal data compressor is valid against all alternatives. Component independence is reduced to homogeneity testing by constructing two samples, one of which is the first half of the original and the other is the second half with one of the components randomly permuted.
Spectral modeling using neural autoregressive distribution estimators for statistical parametric speech synthesis

This paper describes a new approach which utilizes neural autoregressive distribution estimators (NADE) for the spectral modeling in statistical parametric speech synthesis. In order to alleviate the over-smoothing effect on the generated spectral structures, a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) modeling method has been proposed in our previous work, where the RBM is adopted to represent the joint distribution of high-dimensional and physically meaningful spectral envelopes. However, the RBM can not provide a tractable partition function even in a moderate size. In this paper, we introduce NADE to model the distribution of mel-cepstra and spectral envelopes at each HMM state considering its simplicity in evaluating the probability of given observations. At the stage of synthesis, the spectral parameters derived from the mode of each context-dependent NADE are used to replace the Gaussian mean vector in the parameter generation process. Experimental results show that the NADE is able to model the distribution of the spectral features with better accuracy than the RBM model. Furthermore, our proposed method improves the naturalness of the conventional HMM-based speech synthesis system using mel-cepstra significantly and outperforms the RBM-based spectral modeling.
Comparison of Gabor-Based Features for Writer Identification of Farsi/Arabic Handwriting

Writer identification recently has been studied and it has a wide variety of applications. Most studies are based on English documents with the assumption that the written text is fixed (text-dependent methods) and no research has been reported on Farsi or Arabic documents. In this paper, we have proposed a method for off-line writer identification based on Farsi handwriting, which is text-independent. Based on idea that has been presented in previous studies, in this paper we assume handwriting as texture image and a set of features which are based on multi-channel Gabor filtering and co-occurrence matrix features, are extracted from preprocessed image of documents. Experimental results demonstrate that the best result, 92% correct identification in a hit list with size 3 and 88% in a hit list with size 1, is acquired by using Gaborenergy features on Farsi handwritten documents from 25 peoples.
Signatures of Convection in the Spectrum of Procyon: Fundamental Parameters and Iron Abundance

We have observed the spectrum of Procyon A (F5 IV) from 4559 to 5780 Å with a signal-to-noise ratio of ~103 and a resolving power of 2 × 105. We have measured the line bisectors and relative line shifts of a large number of Fe I and Fe II lines, comparing them to those found in the solar spectrum. A three-dimensional hydrodynamical model atmosphere has been computed and is tested against observations. The model reproduces in detail most of the features observed, although we identify some room for improvement. At all levels, the comparison of the three-dimensional time-dependent calculations with the observed spectral lines shows a much better agreement than for classical homogeneous models, making it possible to refine previous estimates of the iron abundance, the projected rotational velocity, the limb darkening, and the systemic velocity of the Procyon binary system. The difference between the iron abundance determined with the three-dimensional model and its one-dimensional counterpart is ≲0.05 dex. We find consistency between the iron abundance derived from Fe I and Fe II lines, suggesting that departures from LTE in the formation of the studied lines are relatively small. The scatter in the iron abundance determined from different lines still exceeds the expectations from the uncertainties in the atomic data, pointing out that one or more components in the modeling can be refined further.
Softbot: Software-based lead-through for rigid servo robots

In this paper, we present an interactive control method for rigid robotics. The core of the method is a neural network classifier that maps position and torque readings to a force direction in 3D space. We show that running our method online allows a human to move the robot along a desired path by performing intuitive pushes and pulls on the robot's joints. The setup is sensorless: no additional sensors, other than those already integral to the rigid joint itself, are added to the manipulator or used in the process.
Turk Bootstrap Word Sense Inventory 2.0: A Large-Scale Resource for Lexical Substitution

This paper presents the Turk Bootstrap Word Sense Inventory (TWSI) 2.0. This lexical resource, created by a crowdsourcing process using Amazon Mechanical Turk (http://www.mturk.com), encompasses a sense inventory for lexical substitution for 1,012 highly frequent English common nouns. Along with each sense, a large number of sense-annotated occurrences in context are given, as well as a weighted list of substitutions. Sense distinctions are not motivated by lexicographic considerations, but driven by substitutability: two usages belong to the same sense if their substitutions overlap considerably. After laying out the need for such a resource, the data is characterized in terms of organization and quantity. Then, we briefly describe how this data was used to create a system for lexical substitutions. Training a supervised lexical substitution system on a smaller version of the resource resulted in well over 90% acceptability for lexical substitutions provided by the system. Thus, this resource can be used to set up reliable, enabling technologies for semantic natural language processing (NLP), some of which we discuss briefly.
miRBase: tools for microRNA genomics

miRBase is the central online repository for microRNA (miRNA) nomenclature, sequence data, annotation and target prediction. The current release (10.0) contains 5071 miRNA loci from 58 species, expressing 5922 distinct mature miRNA sequences: a growth of over 2000 sequences in the past 2 years. miRBase provides a range of data to facilitate studies of miRNA genomics: all miRNAs are mapped to their genomic coordinates. Clusters of miRNA sequences in the genome are highlighted, and can be defined and retrieved with any inter-miRNA distance. The overlap of miRNA sequences with annotated transcripts, both protein- and non-coding, are described. Finally, graphical views of the locations of a wide range of genomic features in model organisms allow for the first time the prediction of the likely boundaries of many miRNA primary transcripts. miRBase is available at http://microrna.sanger. ac.uk/.
Balancing Business Value of Thai Internet Banking Services: The Corporate Customers' Perspectives

An understanding of corporate customer acceptance of Internet banking can assist banks to assess the real business value of Internet banking implementation. The four benefit factors are information quality, information accessibility, information sharing, and transaction benefit. The three major barriers are related to trust, legal support, and organization barriers. Information quality and transaction benefit factors are far more important than other in discriminating Internet banking users from non-users. In addition, information sharing and distrust of the web are two drawbacks of Thai Internet banking adoption. As Thai banks decide to use Internet technology as a new self-service delivery channel, they have to enhance acceptance from corporate customers. This does not seem to be merely a matter of getting corporate customers to recognize benefits, but banks probably need to lower barriers to Internet banking adoption to provide actual benefits to corporate customers.
Design and implementation of software research platform for humanoid robotics: H6

The H6 humanoid robot has been developed as a platform for the research on perception-action coupling in intelligent behaviour of humanoid type robots. The H6 features: 1) a body which has enough DOFs and each joint has enough torque for full body motion; 2) a PC/AT compatible high-performance on-board computer which is controlled by RT-Linux so that from low-level to high-level control is achieved simultaneously; 3) self-contained and connected to a network via radio Ethernet; and 4) dynamic walking trajectory generation, motion planning and 3D vision functions are available. The H6 can be used as a common test-bed in experiment for various aspects of intelligent humanoid robotics.
Silence among Afro Caribbean men diagnosed with prostate cancer in Trinidad and Tobago : a grounded theory study.

Background: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the leading cause of death among Afro-Caribbean men in Trinidad and Tobago (TT). TT is listed as one among countries with the highest PCa mortality rates in the world (Hosein et al., 2016). A systematic review undertaken explored men’s cultural beliefs about prostate symptoms and help-seeking behaviours, which revealed a dearth of knowledge of Afro-Caribbean men and PCa (King-Okoye et al., 2017). This study aims to explore men and partners experiences along care pathways for PCa in TT, including the beliefs and meanings men associate with their illness and its presentation. Methods: Utilising Straussian grounded theory, semi-structured and focus-group interviews were conducted with men (n= 51) diagnosed with PCa and partners (n=16) at four (urology & oncology) centres throughout TT in 2015-2016. Results: Five categories: ‘Disrupting the Self’, ‘Disconnected to Health Services’, ‘The Silent Wall’, ‘Blame and Distrust’ and ‘Breaking the Silence’ and a core category, ‘Silence among Afro-Caribbean men’ (SAACM) were generated from the data. These connect with men’s late presentation of PCa at emergency services with severe and life-limiting symptoms associated with high mortality rates for this disease. The main reasons underlying men’s late presentation to health services with debilitating symptoms, concern masculinity norms, lack of awareness and knowledge of early stage PCa, cultural beliefs and practices and perceptions of an uncaring health system. These heavily influenced men’s ability to access care and move through routes to diagnosis for PCa in TT. Conclusion: The SAACM offers unique insight into identifying how men’s cultural beliefs, hegemonic masculinity and lack of knowledge and awareness of the prostate and PCa resulted in delays in help-seeking and subsequently late diagnosis. A better understanding of men and their partners’ experiences along routes to diagnosis for PCa can target specific public health messages to address barriers to early diagnosis for men. Key words: Trinidad and Tobago, experiences, beliefs, culture, silence
Robust Automated Tumour Segmentation on Histological and Immunohistochemical Tissue Images

Tissue microarray (TMA) is a high throughput analysis tool to identify new diagnostic and prognostic markers in human cancers. However, standard automated method in tumour detection on both routine histochemical and immunohistochemistry (IHC) images is under developed. This paper presents a robust automated tumour cell segmentation model which can be applied to both routine histochemical tissue slides and IHC slides and deal with finer pixel-based segmentation in comparison with blob or area based segmentation by existing approaches. The presented technique greatly improves the process of TMA construction and plays an important role in automated IHC quantification in biomarker analysis where excluding stroma areas is critical. With the finest pixel-based evaluation (instead of area-based or object-based), the experimental results show that the proposed method is able to achieve 80% accuracy and 78% accuracy in two different types of pathological virtual slides, i.e., routine histochemical H&E and IHC images, respectively. The presented technique greatly reduces labor-intensive workloads for pathologists and highly speeds up the process of TMA construction and provides a possibility for fully automated IHC quantification.
Adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: recognition and treatment in general adult psychiatry

Summary Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common disorder affecting children and adults. Many young people treated with stimulants, as well as those in whom ADHD went unrecognised in childhood, need treatment as adults. Stimulants and atomoxetine effectively reduce ADHD symptoms at all ages and should be a standard treatment in general adult psychiatric practice.
REVISITING A WELL-KNOWN CONSTANT-INPUT LIMIT CYCLE-FREE SECOND ORDER DIGITAL

The suppression of constant-input limit cycles when designing second-order-statespace digital filters is addressed in this paper. A set of three sections yet proposed in the literature is revisited, focusing on the specific block called type III structure. It is shown that there is an optimum version of that section, what is the main contribution of the paper. The noise performance of the optimum type III section here discussed is compared to the noise performance of the similar structure yet available in the literature as well as to the noise performance of other meaningful second-order sections. This work was supported by CNPq, Brazil .
Cross-Border Bank M&As and Risk: Evidence from the Bond Market

The impact of cross-border bank M&As on bank risk remains an open question. Though geographically diversifying bank M&As have the potential to reduce the risk of bank insolvency, they also have the potential to increase that risk due to the increase in risk-taking incentives for bank managers and stockholders following these transactions. This paper empirically investigates whether cross-border bank M&As increase or decrease the risk of acquiring banks as captured by changes in acquirers’ yield spreads. The paper also investigates how differences in the institutional environments between bidder and target countries affect changes in yield spreads following M&A announcements. The study finds that bondholders, in general, perceive cross-border bank M&As as risk-increasing activities, unlike domestic bank mergers. Specifically, on average, yield spreads increase by 4.13 basis points following the announcement of cross-border M&As. This study also finds that these yield spreads are significantly affected by the differences in investor-protection and deposit-insurance environments between the transacting countries. However, the study does not find that the regulatory and supervisory environment in the home countries of the transacting parties significantly affects the changes in yield spreads. The overall evidence suggests that regulators should judge the relative environment in both the home and the host countries in evaluating the associated risks of an active multinational financial institution and in setting the sufficiency of the banks’ reserve positions.