Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teacher Learning as Changing Meaning, Practice, Community, Identity and Confidence: The Story of Ivan.

This article arises from a broader study that investigates mathematics teacher learning in relation to teachers' participation in a two-year In-Service Education and Training (INSET) programme, structmed to enhance participation in a community of practice, in the context of current South African curriculum change The broader study focused on explaining the learning mechanisms by which teachers become professional, competent mathematics teachers (able to tackle curriculum change) through participation in an INSET community of practice that overlaps with a wide range of other professionally associated communities (such as school communities and professional associations) By means of rich and texhued vignettes and quotations, the study illustrated that in-service teacher learning involves the complex intersection of vmious components of leruning identified by Wenger (1998), namely: meaning, practice, identity and community However, the study revealed a fifth important component of learning, one not considered by Wenger, namely that of confidence In this article, I ptovide a vignette of Ivan (one of the fourteen teachers who participated in the two-year in-service programme) In it, I have used Wenger's four categories of learning (meaning, practice, identity and community) to structure and to organise the data I gathered in relation to Ivan's learning to become a professional, confident mathematics educator Through the vignette of Ivan we see the importance of confidence as a possible fifth component of learning
The Steam Boiler Controller Problem in ESTEREL and its Verification by Means of Symbolic Analysis

We describe the use of the verification tools XEVE and FC2SYMBMIN on the ESTEREL encoding of a Steam Boiler controller proposed by J.R. Abial. XEVE is a verification tool set dedicated to the analysis of synchronous reactive systems in the form of boolean equations, using the symbolic representation of BDDs for implicit state representation. FC2SYMBMIN is a latter addition to this toolset, and allows verification after reduction and abstraction with respect to bisimulation of explicit finite state machines with a symbolic treatment (using BDDs again) of input event predicates. This specific representation triggers new algorithmic issues in the computation of bisimulation classes. We demonstrate the power of FC2SYMBMIN in terms of reduction of states, but also in terms of reduction of transitions for which the gain is often dramatic.
POST DISCHARGE DROPOUT OF ALCOHOLICS - A NATURALISTIC STUDY IN A GENERAL HOSPITAL SETTING

In a naturalistic longitudinal design 133 consecutive inpatients with alcohol dependence syndrome were followed up for one year following discharge from the hospital. 59 patients (group 1) paid follow up visit at regular intervals whereas 28 subjects (group 2)never returned despite three consecutive postal intimations. Rest of the patient were irregular in follow up. The individuals in group 1 were compared with those in group 2 on various sociodemographic and clinical variables with the aim of delineating the characteristics that could define the alcoholics who dropped out following discharge. It was found that such patient were relatively younger with lower level of education, less frequently married, had earlier onset of problem drinking with poor social support and higher rates of mental problems. It was concluded that post discharge attrition of alcoholics could be a social as well as a clinical problem in any setting rendering long treatment for alcoholism.
Neuromuscular and biomechanical compensation for wing asymmetry in insect hovering flight

SUMMARY Wing damage is common in flying insects and has been studied using a variety of approaches to assess its biomechanical and fitness consequences. Results of these studies range from strong to nil effect among the variety of species, fitness measurements and damage modes studied, suggesting that not all damage modes are equal and that insects may be well adapted to compensate for some types of damage. Here, we examine the biomechanical and neuromuscular means by which flying insects compensate for asymmetric wing damage, which is expected to produce asymmetric flight forces and torques and thus destabilize the animal in addition to reducing its total wing size. We measured the kinematic and neuromuscular responses of hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) hovering in free flight with asymmetrically damaged wings via high-speed videography and extracellular neuromuscular activity recordings. The animals responded to asymmetric wing damage with asymmetric changes to wing stroke amplitude sufficient to restore symmetry in lift production. These asymmetries in stroke amplitude were significantly correlated with bilateral asymmetries in the timing of activation of the dorsal ventral muscle among and within trials. Correspondingly, the magnitude of wing asymmetry was significantly, although non-linearly, correlated with the magnitude of the neuromuscular response among individuals. The strongly non-linear nature of the relationship suggests that active neural compensation for asymmetric wing damage may only be necessary above a threshold (>12% asymmetry in wing second moment of area in this case) below which passive mechanisms may be adequate to maintain flight stability.
Characterization of the Collagen-Binding S-Layer Protein CbsA of Lactobacillus crispatus

ABSTRACT The cbsA gene of Lactobacillus crispatusstrain JCM 5810, encoding a protein that mediates adhesiveness to collagens, was characterized and expressed in Escherichia coli. The cbsA open reading frame encoded a signal sequence of 30 amino acids and a mature polypeptide of 410 amino acids with typical features of a bacterial S-layer protein. ThecbsA gene product was expressed as a His tag fusion protein, purified by affinity chromatography, and shown to bind solubilized as well as immobilized type I and IV collagens. Three otherLactobacillus S-layer proteins, SlpA, CbsB, and SlpnB, bound collagens only weakly, and sequence comparisons of CbsA with these S-layer proteins were used to select sites in cbsAwhere deletions and mutations were introduced. In addition, hybrid S-layer proteins that contained the N or the C terminus from CbsA, SlpA, or SlpnB as well as N- and C-terminally truncated peptides from CbsA were constructed by gene fusion. Analysis of these molecules revealed the major collagen-binding region within the N-terminal 287 residues and a weaker type I collagen-binding region in the C terminus of the CbsA molecule. The mutated or hybrid CbsA molecules and peptides that failed to polymerize into a periodic S-layer did not bind collagens, suggesting that the crystal structure with a regular array is optimal for expression of collagen binding by CbsA. Strain JCM 5810 was found to contain another S-layer gene termed cbsB that was 44% identical in sequence to cbsA. RNA analysis showed that cbsA, but not cbsB, was transcribed under laboratory conditions. S-layer-protein-expressing cells of strain JCM 5810 adhered to collagen-containing regions in the chicken colon, suggesting that CbsA-mediated collagen binding represents a true tissue adherence property of L. crispatus.
Eigen Feature Extraction by Image Locality Preservation

Pattern recognition is one of the most popular topics in the world today. One of its problems is reducing sample variation for the same class and keeping discrimination for different classes. Principal component analysis (PCA) is a multivariate technique that analyzes a data table in which observations are described by several inter-correlated quantitative dependent variables. Its goal is to extract important information from the table to represent it as a set of new orthogonal variables called principal components. Mathematically, PCA depends on the Eigen-decomposition of positive semi-demote matrices and upon the singular value decomposition (SVD) of rectangular matrices. To produce more reliable eigenvalues and hence boost classification accuracy, this project constructs a novel covariance matrix that preserves image locality. The result of this project is significant. The training data can predict testing data accuracy. Compared to with covariance used before, this new covariance may better reflect the relationship between pixels of an image better, hence, classification is better.
Speci cation Re nement with System FJo

Essential concepts of algebraic speciication reenement are translated into a type-theoretic setting involving System F and Reynolds' relational parametricity assertion as expressed in Plotkin and Abadi's logic for parametric polymorphism. At rst order, the type-theoretic setting provides a canonical picture of algebraic speciication reenement. At higher order, the type-theoretic setting allows future generalisation of the principles of algebraic speciication reenement to higher order and polymorphism. We show the equivalence of the acquired type-theoretic notion of speciication reenement with that from algebraic speciication. To do this, a generic algebraic-speciication strategy for behavioural re-nement proofs is mirrored in the type-theoretic setting.
An Educational Ontology based on Metadata Standards

In this paper, we present EUME Onto, an educational ontology that describe terms of learning design, contents and resources. This ontology is intended to (1) organize the available information; and (2) provide the grounds of the knowledge based for an Intelligent Learning Management System. EUME Onto is based on metadata standards such as IMSEML, LOM 1484, OASIS DocBook and FIPA Ontology Devices. To reduce implementation efforts, the WebODE platform, a scalable and integrated workbench for ontological engineering, has been used.
Building Symbolic Primitives with Continuous Control

This paper is about the interface between continuous and symbolic robot control. We advocate describing continuous actions and their related sensing strategies as situation speciic activities, which can be manipulated by a symbolic reactive planner. The approach addresses the issues involved in turning symbolic actions into continuous activities , and using task speciic sensing routines to support those activities. Situation spe-ciic activities help preserve the convenient ction of \primitive actions" for use in planning without requiring that they all be programmed into the control system in advance. We demonstrate the utility of this architecture with an object tracking example. A control system is presented that can be re-conngured by a the rap reactive executor to achieve diierent tasks. We show how this system allows us to build interchangeable tracking activities that use diierent sens-ing/action feedback loops in diierent situations .
Social and Technological Motivations for Online Photo Sharing

The popularity of social media sites for posting pictures has given rise to a new form of mediated communication: online photo sharing. This article explores motivations for sharing photos online, using the 2-step procedure common in Uses and Gratifications research. Focus groups revealed 42 motivations which were rated in importance by survey respondents (N = 460). Factor analysis revealed 4 classes of gratifications: seeking and showcasing experiences, technological affordances, social connection, and reaching out. These results suggest that photo sharing is driven by social needs and facilitated by interface features, with important implications for theories of technology and user psychology.
Visual Mouse: SIFT Detection and PCA Recognition

The paper presents the Visual Mouse (VM), a novel and simple system for interaction with displays via hand gestures. Our method includes detecting bare hands using the fast SIFT (Scale-Invariant Feature Transform) algorithm saving long training time of the Adaboost algorithm, tracking hands based on the CAMShift algorithm, recognizing hand gestures in cluttered background via Principle Components Analysis (PCA) without extracting clear-cut hand contour, and defining simple and robustly interpretable vocabularies of hand gestures, which are subsequently used to control a computer mouse. The system provides a fast and simple interaction experience without the need for more expensive hardware and software.
An Intelligent Opinion Mining for Customer Reviews

Today opinion mining is fast growing topic as more and more people use internet in their day to day life and share information globally. Due to increase in social networking and micro-blogging people share their views, opinion and emotions with each other. This information is necessary for the organization that are selling or manufacturing products in order make changes in design and other configuration of the product. As number of customers give their reviews on same product so that it is difficult for the new user to take decision whether to buy a product or not. The proposed system gives an enhanced summarized result for newly users in order to take fast decision. It extends the level of feature based opinion classification. A soft computing technique is used to classify opinion into positive and negative opinion. The extensive result is presented based on standard dataset retrieved from websites. It not only gives the summary of individual model of a car but also compare two models of a car. By using proposed system, it is easy for user to learn the characteristics of a model as well as to take fast decision.
CEO Compensation : Trends , Market Changes , and Regulation Arantxa Jarque

C ompensation figures for the top managers of large firms are on the news frequently. Newspapers report the salaries, the bonuses, and the profits from selling stock options of the highest paid executives, often under headlines suggesting excessive levels of pay or a very weak relation of pay to the performance of the firms.1 Especially after the fraud scandals at Enron and other important corporations around the world, executive performance and pay have been carefully scrutinized by the public. Academic economists, however, have long ago recognized the importance of understanding the issues involved in determining executive pay and have been studying them for decades. In short, the main economic problem behind executive compensation design is that firm owners need to align the incentives of the executives to their own interests—typically to maximize firm value. To achieve this alignment, the compensation of the manager is usually made contingent on the performance of the firm. While in the largest firms executive compensation typically represents a small fraction of the total firm value, the decisions that a top executive makes can be potentially important for firm performance. Therefore, the way in which the dependence of compensation on firm performance is structured can have a significant impact on the added value that the executive brings to the firm. There is by now a large body of academic studies that document practices in executive pay and study the
Temi di discussione del Servizio Studi Sunk costs of exports

Using a very large panel dataset of Italian manufacturing ¿rms, we test an empirical model of foreign markets participation with sunk costs. The period of analysis (19821999) is exceptionally informative: the large Àuctuations in the lira exchange rate determined substantial Àows of ¿rms in and out of foreign markets. We ¿nd that sunk costs of exporting are very important: past experience in foreign markets increases the probability of exporting by about 70 percentage points. Although the assets entailing such costs depreciate quite slowly, new exporters have to acquire them very soon after entry. Altogether, these results suggest that the break in the Italian aggregate export supply function caused by the depreciation of the 1990s can be considerable and long-lasting. We then relate sunk costs to ¿rm size and ¿nd that they are an important barrier to export, especially for the myriad of Italian small and medium ¿rms. Finally, we provide some new evidence that sunk costs are indeed related to the need to collect information on foreign market/country characteristics. JEL classi¿cation: F10, L10, L60, C25.
The Automatic Computation of Second-Order Slope Tuples for Some Nonsmooth Functions

In this paper, we show how the automatic computation of second-order slope tuples can be performed. The algorithm allows for nonsmooth functions, such as ϕ ( x ) = | u ( x ) | and ϕ ( x ) = max { u ( x ) , v ( x ) } , to occur in the function expression of the underlying function. Furthermore, we allow the function expression to contain functions given by two or more branches. By using interval arithmetic, second-order slope tuples provide veri(cid:28)ed enclosures of the range of the underlying function. We give some examples comparing range enclosures given by a second-order slope tuple with enclosures from previous papers.
Optimization of the "FOCUS" Inband-FEC Architecture for 10-Gbps SDH/SONET Optical Communication Channels

Forward-error correction (FEC) is of key importance to the robustness of optical communication networks. In particular, inband-FEC is an attractive option, because it improves channel-performance without requiring an increase of the transmission bandwidth. We have devised and implemented a novel inband FEC method, dubbed FOCUS, for the electronic-mitigation of physical impairments in SDH/SONET optical networks. It is an inherently low-cost approach for both the metro and backbone network regions, scalable to any SDH/SONET rate and capable to significantly increase optical channel performance. This paper analyzes the most sophisticated ones from the plethora of optimizations that were employed to minimize the architectural complexity of FOCUS, falling in: a) Arithmetic operator design, b) Resource sharing and c) Redundant logic elimination. These optimizations were necessary to obtain a prototype, which eventually permitted the first fully successful laboratory evaluation of the FOCUS inband-FEC method
C-ATN: An ATN Model Based on the Credibility of Credentials

Automated trust negotiation is an approach to establish trust in pervasive computing environment, where the involved participators belong to different security domains and need to establish trust before interactions can take place. However, during the trust negotiation, one’s private information can be easily exploited to infer through observing one’s behavior, even if access control policies are strictly enforced. In order to prevent such inference, we propose C-ATN, an ATN model based on the credibility of credentials. We propose the access threshold to take place of the access control policies. Compared to the previously proposed approaches, malicious observer can dig out nothing unless the corresponding policies are satisfied. After we demonstrate that finding the safest reply is an NP-Complete problem, we still provide polynomial-time arithmetic to find out the near-optimal solution, and in some cases it is the optimal solution.
Improvements to Korektor: A Case Study with Native and Non-Native Czech

We present recent developments of Korektor, a statistical spell checking system. In addition to lexicon, Korektor uses language models to find real-word errors, detectable only in context. The models and error proba- bilities, learned from error corpora, are also used to sug- gest the most likely corrections. Korektor was originally trained on a small error corpus and used language models extracted from an in-house corpus WebColl. We show two recent improvements: • We built new language models from freely avail- able (shuffled) versions of the Czech National Cor- pus and show that these perform consistently better on texts produced both by native speakers and non- native learners of Czech. • We trained new error models on a manually annotated learner corpus and show that they perform better than the standard error model (in error detection) not only for the learners' texts, but also for our standard eval- uation data of native Czech. For error correction, the standard error model outperformed non-native mod- els in 2 out of 3 test datasets. We discuss reasons for this not-quite-intuitive improve- ment. Based on these findings and on an analysis of errors in both native and learners' Czech, we propose directions for further improvements of Korektor.
“People live in their heads a lot”: Polymedia, life course, and meanings of home among Melbourne’s older Irish community

Abstract Research across a number of disciplines demonstrates that digital technologies have intensified migrants’ connections to both old and new homelands. Yet to be explored, however, is how this interconnectedness intersects with shifting conceptions of “home” over the life course. The research presented here helps fill this gap by drawing on surveys and semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with Irish immigrants to Australia, now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, who left Ireland prior to the emergence of new media. The article charts a trajectory across three phases of the migrant life course: “leaving home,” characterized by feelings of dislocation from Ireland and an involvement in the local Irish “ethnic village”; “at home,” characterized by withdrawal from ethnic community involvements under the pressure of family and work responsibilities; and “going home,” characterized by a desire to reconnect with origins, both locally and transnationally. Our findings suggest that age-related social circumstances and existential concerns have played an important role in shaping older migrants’ use of new media to stay “connected. ”
Progressive Simplification of Tetrahedral Meshes Preserving All Isosurface Topologies

In this paper, we propose a novel technique for constructing multiple levels of a tetrahedral volume dataset whilepreserving the topologies of all isosurfaces embedded in the data. Our simplification technique has two majorphases. In the segmentation phase, we segment the volume data into topological‐equivalence regions, that is, thesub‐volumes within each of which all isosurfaces have the same topology. In the simplification phase, we simplifyeach topological‐equivalence region independently, one by one, by collapsing edges from the smallest to the largesterrors (within the user‐specified error tolerance, for a given error metrics), and ensure that we do not collapseedges that may cause an isosurface‐topology change. We also avoid creating a tetrahedral cell of negative volume(i.e., avoid the fold‐over problem). In this way, we guarantee to preserve all isosurface topologies in the entiresimplification process, with a controlled geometric error bound. Our method also involves several additionalnovel ideas, including using the Morse theory and the implicit fully augmented contour tree, identifying typesof edges that are not allowed to be collapsed, and developing efficient techniques to avoid many unnecessary orexpensive checkings, all in an integrated manner. The experiments show that all the resulting isosurfaces preservethe topologies, and have good accuracies in their geometric shapes. Moreover, we obtain nice data‐reductionrates, with competitively fast running times.