Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Book Review

This book aims to be an introductory text on the basic properties and principles of Rasch measurement for researchers in the fields of education and psychology, and the “human sciences” more generally. The intent is to provide an overview that is both conceptual and practical (in the sense that it provides an introduction to the use of Rasch computer programs) without making as strong a demand on the statistical literacy of the reader as do earlier texts. My general conclusion is that the authors have done an excellent job of meeting those goals. I believe that the book will, following the intent of the authors, serve as a solid introduction to Rasch ideas and practices for those wishing to understand more about it than can be gleaned from attending a talk or reading an introductory article, and also for those wishing to take the plunge and proceed to analyze their own data. For those seeking a more formal introduction and explanation, other texts (e.g., Fischer & Molenaar, 1999; Wright & Masters, 1982) already exist. For those who are not already familiar to a certain extent with Rasch measurement, I will not attempt to describe it in these few paragraphs—for that, you should read the book! But, just to help orient some who might be otherwise perplexed at the motivation for writing a whole book about a topic that some might characterize as an “oversimplified special case” of an item response model, I will try and characterize it in just a few words. The point of view in the Rasch approach to measurement is that one must start from a philosophy that establishes certain requirements of the items and the test as a whole, and these translate into requirements for the statistical model that one uses to scale the items—these requirements can then be satisfied by using items that adhere to the structure of the Rasch model. Thus, one’s philosophy of measurement leads one to use a statistical analysis model that will guide the development and selection of items—the statistical model is being used as a means of quality control of the items. This is in contrast to the most common alternate approach (e.g., Hambleton, Swaminathan, & Rogers, 1991) where the statistical model is augmented by parameters that are designed to accommodate the characteristics of the item set—one could say that the statistical model is being used to describe the items. Thus, one person’s oversimplification is another person’s strong measurement philosophy. I follow, roughly, the order of the book’s parts, commenting on their contents and usefulness. At the end, I comment on some topics that are not covered and then consider the contribution of the book as a whole. The book begins with a long preface (17 pages! ) where the authors give personal accounts of how they came to appreciate the value of using a Rasch approach and their motivations for writing this book. If I had had this described to me before I read it, I would most likely have predicted that it would be a distraction at best, perhaps an embarrassment, in an
Feature decorrelation methods in speech recognition. a comparative study

In this paper we study various decorrelation methods for the features used in speech recognition and we compare the performance of each one by running several tests with a speech database. First of all we study the Principal Components Analysis (PCA). PCA extracts the dimensions along which the data vary the most, and thus it allows us to reduce the dimension of the data point without significant loss of performance. The second transform we study is the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). As it will be shown, it is an approximation of the PCA analysis. By applying this transform to FBE parameters we obtain the MFCC coeficients. A further step is taken with the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), which, not only reduces the dimensionality of the problem, but also discriminates among classes to reduce the confusion error. The last method we study is Frequency Filtering (FF). This method consists of a linear filtering of the frequency sequence of the log FBE that both decorrelates and equalizes the variance of the coeficients.
Speech signals separation: a new approach exploiting the coherence of audio and visual speech

We present a new approach to the source separation problem in the case of multiple speech signals. The method is based on the use of automatic lip reading: the objective is to extract an acoustic speech signal from other acoustic signals by exploiting its coherence with the speaker's lip movements. For this aim, a statistical model is used to quantify this coherence. The results, while very preliminary, are encouraging. They show that this method can achieve a good separation of a speech source in the case of simple 2/spl times/2 additive mixtures. Moreover, it presents some interesting complementarity with traditional pure audio techniques.
Voltage Coordination via Communication in Large-Scale Multi-Area Power Systems. Part I: Principal

This two-part paper deals with the coordination of the control actions in a network of many interacting components, where each component is controlled by independent control agents. As a case study we consider voltage control in large electric power systems, where ever-increasing pressures from the liberalization and globalization of the electricity market has led to partitioning the power system into multiple areas each operated by an independent Transmission System Operator (TSO). Coordination of local control actions taken by those TSOs is a very challenging problem as poorly coordinated operation of TSOs may endanger the power system security by increasing the risk of blackouts. This coordination problem involves many other issues such as communication, abstraction and last but not least optimization. This first part of the paper is devoted to the principals of the coordination control, addressing some of those issues using as a case study the problem of coordination control for avoiding voltage collapse in large-scale multi-area power systems.
Comparative Research Methodology: Cross-Cultural Studies

Abstract Cross-cultural research can make contributions to theory development by identifying groups of people who seem not to behave according to established theories and by increasing the range of independent variables available for study in any one culture. A major methodological orientation to such studies, developed over the last 10 years, is the emic-etic distinction. An emic analysis documents valid principles that describe behavior in any one culture, taking into account what the people themselves value as meaningful and important. The goal of an etic analysis is to make generalizations across cultures that take into account all human behavior. Examples of these approaches are given from studies on ingroup-outgroup relations in Greece and the United States; and studies on the need for achievement and its relation to the need for affiliation. A specific method to document emic and etic principles is presented which involves the development of core items to measure concerns in all cultures under stud.
Evidence-based medicine: its roots and its fruits.

The Roots of EBM The practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) in the United States dates back to at least the 1980s. Some would argue, however, that the concept of “burden of proof” has undergirded medical decision-making since the days of Hippocrates. The basic premise of the Hippocratic oath, “primum non nocere,” or “first, do no harm,” challenges practitioners to evaluate the benefit of a therapeutic decision for a patient prior to implementation. In the modern era, the basis for analytical medical research includes inference testing that begins with a null hypothesis — a statement declaring the lack of effectiveness of the treatment in question — that must be rejected with a high degree of certainty to support the implementation of the treatment.1 The widespread acceptance of randomized clinical trials as the gold standard research design for generating the best evidence regarding treatment decisions was championed in the early 1970s by Archie Cochrane, an epidemiologist from Great Britain.2 Today the Cochrane Collaboration is an international group of physicians and researchers that offers health care providers carefully researched systematic review articles covering thousands of clinical questions, enabling busy practitioners to make evidence-based decisions without spending the time needed to appraise the evidence individually.3 The term EBM was introduced to US health care providers in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1992 by Gordon Guyatt of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. In the article, Guyatt and colleagues from the Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group discussed the importance of a shift in medical practice from relying on personal expertise and experience to a more objective, data-driven approach to medical practice.4 In the two decades since then, EBM has come to be defined as “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. ”5 EBM is now taught in medical schools, residency programs, and physician assistant (PA) programs around the country. Students and medical practitioners are learning to develop a clinical question based on a specific patient problem, search the medical literature for articles that address the issue, critically review the quality of the evidence in the articles, apply the findings to their specific patient as appropriate,6 and then evaluate the clinical results and the effectiveness of the process.2 While the introduction and application of EBM principles have substantially changed the practice of western medicine, wholesale adoption of evidencebased practice is not without its challenges. Despite increased access to just-in-time evidence available at the bedside, a lack of consistent and reliable evidence for all encounters, time and resource constraints, barriers to the practice of high-quality medicine, and the misperception that it is an “ivory-tower concept”7 challenge implementation. One opponent to Feature Editors’ Note:
The impact of false sharing on shared congestion management

Several recent proposals for sharing congestion information across concurrent flows between end-systems overlook an important problem: two or more flows sharing congestion state may in fact not share the same bottleneck. In this paper, we categorize the origins of this false sharing into two distinct cases: (i) networks with QoS enhancements such as differentiated services, where a flow classifier segregates flows into different queues, and (ii) networks with path diversity where different flows to the same destination address are routed differently. We evaluate the impact of false sharing on flow performance and investigate how false sharing can be detected by a sender. We discuss how a sender must respond upon detecting false sharing. Our results show that persistent overload can be avoided with window-based congestion control even for extreme false sharing, but higher bandwidth flows run at a slower rate. We find that delay and reordering statistics can be used to develop robust detectors of false sharing and are superior to those based on loss patterns. We also find that it is markedly easier to detect and react to false sharing than it is to start by isolating flows and merge their congestion state afterward.
Identification of RNA polymerase III-transcribed Alu loci by computational screening of RNA-Seq data

Of the ∼1.3 million Alu elements in the human genome, only a tiny number are estimated to be active in transcription by RNA polymerase (Pol) III. Tracing the individual loci from which Alu transcripts originate is complicated by their highly repetitive nature. By exploiting RNA-Seq data sets and unique Alu DNA sequences, we devised a bioinformatic pipeline allowing us to identify Pol III-dependent transcripts of individual Alu elements. When applied to ENCODE transcriptomes of seven human cell lines, this search strategy identified ∼1300 Alu loci corresponding to detectable transcripts, with ∼120 of them expressed in at least three cell lines. In vitro transcription of selected Alus did not reflect their in vivo expression properties, and required the native 5′-flanking region in addition to internal promoter. We also identified a cluster of expressed AluYa5-derived transcription units, juxtaposed to snaR genes on chromosome 19, formed by a promoter-containing left monomer fused to an Alu-unrelated downstream moiety. Autonomous Pol III transcription was also revealed for Alus nested within Pol II-transcribed genes. The ability to investigate Alu transcriptomes at single-locus resolution will facilitate both the identification of novel biologically relevant Alu RNAs and the assessment of Alu expression alteration under pathological conditions.
Elementary English Education: An Arena of Social Struggle for Professional Chinese Parents

In response to the national and individual needs for English instruction, China mandated English provision in elementary schools in 2001. Grounded in the work of Bourdieu, this study examines professional Chinese parents' language attitudes in relation to their social positions. It draws data from interviews with 20 professional Chinese parents and joint classroom observations with their children in an urban public elementary school in Beijing, China. The findings of this study include that professional Chinese parents hold the instrumental, integrative, and affective language attitudes. Elementary English education is an arena for socioeconomic struggle. It is a field of competition in terms of educational resources and parents' social positions. This study highlights that English is a carrier of inequality and injustice. It is a means of escaping social injustice in China. The study indicates contradictions and conflicts among the English language policy for elementary schools, parental language attitudes, private tutoring, and children's English learning.
The Assessment of Spatial Orientation Using Virtual Reality Techniques

Visual-spatial ability has been identified as one of the primary factors of intelligence. Numerous tests, including paper-and-pencil tasks and laboratory experiments, have attempted to provide an accurate measure of this ability. However, the majority of these tests serve only as surrogate measures of visual-spatial ability and may not provide a precise prediction of the individuals' performance in a real environment. We propose a new approach for evaluating spatial ability. In this article, we introduce the use of virtual reality (VR) or virtual environments (VEs) as a new method to measure human spatial orientation. We then discuss the advantages of using VR or VE over traditional measures. We also comment on their limitations and their future direction.
The use of mobile phones by older adults: a Malaysian study

Mobile phone has become essential parts of personal and business life. The recent growth of mobile phone usage is an observable fact that crosses all age and gender boundaries. It can potentially play a significant role in assisting older people in many ways especially in terms of maintaining social relationship, providing sense of safety and accessibility. However, older people seem to be a neglected user group in the design of mobile phone devices and services. Hence, this paper attempts to report the issues which are related with the design of mobile devices and services for older people aged 56 years old and over in Malaysia. The findings may serve as a reference to mobile device manufacturers and service providers when designing mobile devices and services for older Malaysians. This research uses a survey instrument to gather data from older peoples across all the states in Malaysia with the total of 176 older peoples responded. The questionnaires were mainly distributed to older persons who use mobile phones independently in their daily routines
Corpus-based approaches to language description for specialized academic writing

Language description is a fundamental requirement for second language (L2) syllabus design. The greatest advances in language description in recent decades have been done with the help of electronic corpora. Such language description is the theme of this article. The article first introduces some basic concepts and principles in corpus research. It then reviews some recent corpus studies of relevance to the teaching of English for specific purposes (ESP) writing. The speech focuses on four different types of corpora: expert professional corpora, expert student corpora, L2 learner corpora, and lingua franca corpora. It also discusses application of the corpus approach, including indirect applications and direct applications. In a final section, it presents some caveats of the corpus approach for future language teaching research.
Properties of LYSO and recent LSO scintillators for phoswich PET detectors

The luminescence and nuclear spectroscopic properties of the new cerium-doped rare-earth scintillator lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate (Lu/sub 0.6/Y/sub 1.4/Si/sub 0.5/:Ce, LYSO) were investigated and compared to those of both recent and older LSO crystals. UV-excited luminescent spectra outline important similarities between LYSO and LSO scintillators. The two distinct Ce1 and Ce2 luminescence mechanisms previously identified in LSO are also present in LYSO scintillators. The energy and timing resolutions were measured using avalanche photodiode (APD) and photomultiplier tube (PMT) readouts. The dependence of energy resolution on gamma-ray energy was also assessed to unveil the crystal intrinsic resolution parameters. In spite of significant progress in light output and luminescence properties, the energy resolution of these scintillators appears to still suffer from an excess variance in the number of scintillation photons. Pulse-shape discrimination between LYSO and LSO scintillators has been successfully achieved in phoswich assemblies, confirming LYSO, with a sufficient amount of yttrium to modify the decay time, to be a potential candidate for depth-of-interaction determination in multicrystal PET detectors.
Adiponectin gene polymorphisms and their effect on the risk of myocardial infarction and type 2 diabetes: an association study in an Italian population

Objective: While many studies have shown an association between the gene coding for adiponectin (ADIPOQ) and adiponectin levels, much more controversy surrounds its association with metabolic traits such as insulin resistance, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, very few studies have looked into the relations between ADIPOQ variants and risk of cardiovascular disease. The present study assessed the influence of four common ADIPOQ Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), rs17300539 (-11391G→A), rs266729 (-11377C→G), rs2241766 (+45T→G) and rs1501299 (+276G→T) on the risk of myocardial infarction and type 2 diabetes. Methods and Results: A large genetic association case-control study was conducted in 2008 Italians, including patients with myocardial infarction, type 2 diabetes, or both, and a reference group of healthy controls. Homozygotes TT for the rs1501299 (+276) had half the risk of either myocardial infarction alone or in association with type 2 diabetes when compared to the carriers of the G allele (OR = 0.58, p =0.01, and OR = 0.55, p =0.006 respectively). SNPs rs17300539 (-11391), rs266729 (-11377) and rs2241766 (+45) showed no significant association with any of the three case groups. Conclusions: These results suggest that homozygotes TT for the adiponectin polymorphism rs1501299 (+276) are protected from the risk of myocardial infarction.
A handover prediction mechanism based on LTE-A UE history information

In response to the rapidly developing of wireless communication technology, the deployed of eNB is denser and more complex. The research of how to handover accurately and fast in LTE-A are discussed much in recent years . In 3GPP Release 8, the UE History Information recorded by eNB was first proposed, it's proposed to provide eNB to judge the target eNB when handover. The history information includes the Cell ID and Time UE stayed in cell. We proposed an advance UE history information, reducing the handover failure rate and ping-pong handover rate by using the history information like Region-Domain, Time-Domain and Time To Trigger.
Effects of Consultation on the Ward Atmosphere in a State Psychiatric Hospital

The Ward Atmosphere Scale was used to assess the development of a therapeutic milieu in a clinical ward converted to a research unit at a state psychiatric hospital. The designated ward had been considered a “problem ward” with low staff moral, a high incidence of violence by patients, and high incidence of injuries to patients and staff. The scale was administered to patients and staff on two occasions. The results of the first administration were presented to staff, and from these consultation sessions, a therapeutic milieu developed. The scale was readministered 3 mo. after the implementation of the therapeutic milieu. Significant improvements were seen in staff's perception of the ward environment, incidence of patients' assaults, and staff use of seclusion and restraints.
Interactive Simulation and Visualization

Most researchers who perform data analysis and visualization do so only after everything else is finished, which often means that they don't discover errors invalidating the results of their simulation until post-processing. A better approach would be to improve the integration of simulation and visualization into the entire process so that they can make adjustments along the way. This approach, called computational steering, is the capacity to control all aspects of the computational science pipeline. Recently, several tools and environments for computational steering have begun to emerge. These tools range from those that modify an application's performance characteristics (either by automated means or by user interaction) to those that modify the underlying computational application. A refined problem-solving environment should facilitate everything from algorithm development to application steering. The authors discuss some tools that provide a mechanism to integrate modeling, simulation, data analysis and visualization.
Using node ordering to improve Structure MCMC for Bayesian Model Averaging

In this thesis, I address an important problem of estimating the structure of Bayesian network models using Bayesian model averaging approach. Bayesian networks are probabilistic graphical models which are widely used for probabilistic inference and causal modeling. Learning the structure of Bayesian networks can reveal insights into the causal structure of the underlying domain. Owing to the super exponential structure space, it is a challenging task to find the most suitable network model that explains the data. The problem is worsened when the amount of available data is modest, as there might be numerous models with non negligible posterior. Therefore, we are interested in the calculation of posterior of a feature like presence of an edge from one particular node to another or a particular set being a parent of a specific node. The contribution of this thesis includes a Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation approach to sample network structures from a posterior and then using Bayesian model averaging approach to estimate the posterior of various features.
Aggressive driving: A consumption experience

In this paper, the literature on aggressive driving tendencies as a consumption experience is reviewed. Two studies test a comprehensive model that includes personality, attitudinal, and value antecedents to such behavior. The research supports the role of most of the antecedents. However, personality and attitudinal constructs were found to be stronger predictors of aggressive driving than values. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that aggressive driving tendencies increase incidences of law breaking. Suggestions for future research and practical implications are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.