Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ENRICHING SCHOOL CONNECTION AND LEARNING IN AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN YOUTH: THE IMPACT OF A SERVICE LEARNING FEASIBILITY PROJECT IN INNER CITY PHILADELPHIA

In this paper the researcher describes the impact of an inner city service-learning pilot study conducted in the city of Philadelphia. African American youth were taught the principles of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as a part of their science and service learning classes as a way to improve their understanding of ecology, environment, and health. Students then worked closely with teachers to develop informative IPM presentations which they disseminated to school peers and residents in the surrounding community. It was hypothesized that compared to matched controls, students participating in the SL project would report (1) feeling more committed to their school, (2) greater recognition from their teachers, (3) greater pro-social commitment, and (4) less social anxiety. The vast majority of service-learning youth expressed interest in getting more involved with their school and communities in the future. Moreover, students in the service-learning group also reported a higher degree of parental involvement with the schools than students in the control group.
Sleep duration and sleep disturbances partly explain the association between depressive symptoms and cardiovascular mortality: the Whitehall II cohort study

Depressive symptoms are associated with an increased risk of death, but most of this association remains unexplained. Our aim was to explore the contribution of sleep duration and disturbances to the association between depressive symptoms, all‐cause and cardiovascular disease mortality. A total of 5813 (4220 men and 1593 women) aged 50–74 years at baseline, participants of the British Whitehall II prospective cohort study, were included. Depressive symptoms, sleep duration and disturbances were assessed in 2003–04. Mortality was ascertained through linkage to the national mortality register until August 2012, with a mean follow‐up of 8.8 years. Depressive symptoms were associated with an increased risk of mortality from all causes [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.51; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.16–1.97)] and cardiovascular diseases (HR = 1.63; 95% CI: 1.01–2.64) after adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics. Further adjustment for sleep duration and disturbances reduced the association between depressive symptoms and cardiovascular mortality by 21% (HR = 1.53; 95% CI: 0.91–2.57). Sleep seems to have a role, as a mediator or confounder, in explaining the association between depressive symptoms and cardiovascular mortality. These findings need replication in larger studies with longer follow‐up.
Within- and between- sample tests of preference stability and willingness to pay for forest management

The assumption of the stability of preferences is a fundamental one in the theory of the consumer. Many papers within the stated preferences literature have tested this assumption, and have found mixed results. Individuals may become more sure of their preferences as they repeat a valuation task or purchase decision; they may also learn more about prices and quantities of substitutes or complements over time, or about other relevant characteristics of both the good being valued and alternatives in their choice sets. In this paper, we test for the stability of preferences and willingness to pay for attributes of forest management both within and between samples. The within-sample test compares a set of responses from individuals over the sequence of a survey; the between-sample test compares responses from the same people over a period of 6 months. We find that respondents’ preferences differ more within a sample (comparing their first 12 with their second 12 choices) than across samples. This may imply that preference learning and/or fatigue effects within choice experiments are more important than changes in preferences over time in this data.
Agreement Learning for Automatic Accent Annotation

Automatic accent annotation is important in both speech synthesis and speech recognition. Existing statistical learning algorithms rely heavily on a sufficiently large set of labeled training samples that are expensive and time consuming to collect. For unlabeled data, unsupervised learning can be initiated with a small set of manually labeled data. This paper shows that the accuracy of automatic accent annotation can be improved by augmenting a small amount of manually labeled data with a large pool of unlabeled data. We introduce an agreement-learning algorithm for this propose. Experimental results show that it is possible to reduce human-labeling effort significantly while reducing up to 50% errors.
A synthesis for testability scheme for finite state machines using clock control

A new method is proposed for improving the testability of a finite state machine (FSM) during its synthesis. The method exploits clock control to enhance the controllability and observability of machine states. With clock control it is possible to add new state transitions during testing. Therefore, it is easier to navigate between states in the resulting test machine. Unlike prior work, where clock control is added to the circuit as a post-design step, here, clock control is considered in conjunction with a symbolic scheme for encoding the states of the FSM. The encoding is shown to result in significant reductions in the interstate distances in the benchmark FSM's. Further, the observability of the encoded states can be improved by adding two primary outputs to the circuit such that a fixed input sequence forms a distinguishing sequence for all states. Theoretical results show that for a large class of FSM's, the testability improvements are comparable to those achievable by scan designs. Experimental results show that available test pattern generation tools are able to take advantage of the enhanced testability in producing shorter test sequences, particularly for machines with poor connectivity of states.
Exploring the significance of domestic investment for foreign direct investment in China: A city-network approach

This article uses a network approach and a negative binomial regression model (NBRM) to shed light on the association between Domestic Investment (DI) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in interlinking Chinese cities in a space of flows. The empirical analysis is based on 2743 FDI and 9315 DI projects covering 77 Chinese cities. We address the question of what the association is between DI network measures and city attractiveness for FDI, and if the geographic distance of DI matters. While the physical distance of DI activity is found to have a negative association with FDI, city functional proximity and structural position in the DI network are found to have a positive association. We conclude that strategic policies to stimulate cross-territorial economic ties between Chinese cities should be advantageous in attracting inward foreign investment.
Longitudinal autopilot design for agile turn using mixed H2 / H∞ control

In this paper, we propose a missile pitch autopilot design for a high angle-of-attack maneuver using multi-objective control via linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. For 180° heading reversal maneuver for an agile missile after launch phase, angle-of-attack controller is considered to achieve a fast response. The proposed autopilot can satisfy the mixed H2 / H∞ performance conditions for multi-models that are derived from local linearization at different operating angle-of -attack points with a certain Mach number. Therefore, we can find one controller that can guarantee a tracking performance and robustness with respect to aerodynamic variation and uncertainty that occur during agile turn phase. To also compensate variation of Mach number, we use a set of controllers, each satisfying H2 / H∞ performance criteria and robustness for a specified operating Mach number, with a command blending method. Numerical simulation results show the validity of the proposed controller.
M-kernel merging: towards density estimation over data streams

Density estimation is a costly operation for computing distribution information of data sets underlying many important data mining applications, such as clustering and biased sampling. However, traditional density estimation methods are inapplicable for streaming data, which are continuously arriving large volume of data, because of their request for linear storage and square size calculation. The shortcoming limits the application of many existing effective algorithms on data streams, for which the mining problem is an emergency for applications and a challenge for research. In this paper, the problem of computing density functions over data streams is examined. A novel method attacking this shortcoming of existing methods is developed to enable density estimation for large volume of data in linear time, fixed size memory, and without lose of accuracy. The method is based on M-Kernel merging, so that limited kernel functions to be maintained are determined intelligently, The application of the new method on different streaming data models is discussed, and the result of intensive experiments is presented. The analytical and empirical result show that this new density estimation algorithm for data streams can calculate density functions on demand at any time with high accuracy for different streaming data models.
Correlation between transmission-line-pulsing I-V curve and human-body-model ESD level on low temperature poly-Si TFT devices

The relations between human-body-model (HBM) electrostatic discharge (ESD) waveform and transmission line pulsing (TLP) I-V curve on low temperature poly-Si (LTPS) thin film transistor (TFT) have been investigated in this paper. By using ESD zapper and TLP system, the ESD waveforms and TLP I-V curves on the LPTS TFT devices under different device dimensions have been measured. From the experimental results, the turn-on resistances of TFT devices during HBM zapping and TLP stress are almost the same. Such experimental results have shown a good correlation between HBM ESD level and TLP measurement on LTPS TFT devices.
SMTP: An Optimized Storage Method for Vehicle Trajectory Data Exploiting Trajectory Patterns

Recent advances in location-acquisition and mobile sensing technologies have enabled tracking of vehicle movements (i.e., trajectory data). Massive trajectory datasets are processed routinely (often in real-time) to provide support for many new types of IoV (Internet of Vehicles) applications (e.g., traffic congestion management, and load-coordination across electric vehicle charging stations). High-volume, high-velocity data emitted by IoV applications introduces issues with efficient spatial and temporal queries over massively redundant datasets, typically represented as a collection of longitude-latitude tuples. In this paper we present SMTP, a new storage method based on the recognition of trajectory patterns to reduce the storage space for the trajectory data. An adaptive algorithm for mining trajectory patterns from the data is developed, and it recognizes frequent trajectories as patterns according to the geo-space relationships between trajectories. A combinatorial optimization algorithm is then introduced to decide which trajectory patterns should be used for trajectory storage, thereby removing redundant data and saving space. The recognized and saved patterns also help to accelerate queries to the trajectory data. Several large IoV datasets from the real world are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Experimental results show that storage space for trajectory data can be reduced by 38% while a typical query to the data can be accelerated by approximately 40%.
Effect of Thermal Stimulation on Upper Extremity Motor Recovery 3 Months After Stroke

Background and Purpose— To examine the effect of thermal stimulation (TS) on upper extremity (UE) motor recovery in patients at least 3 months after stroke. Methods— Participants were randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control group. In addition to regular rehabilitation programs, the experimental group received an UE-TS protocol for 30 minutes per day (3 days/week for 8 weeks); the control group received the same TS protocol on lower extremity. The UE subscale of the Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement and the Action Research Arm Test were primary outcome measures. The Modified Ashworth Scale and the Barthel Index were secondary outcome measures. All measures were administered at baseline, after TS, and at 1-month follow-up. Results— Twenty-three participants (12 in the experimental group) completed the study. After treatment, the experimental group showed significant improvement compared to the control group in the scores of the UE subscale of the Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement and Action Research Arm Test. At follow-up examination, a significant improvement in the experimental group was observed on the UE subscale of the Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement. Conclusions— The 8-week additional UE-TS protocol improved UE motor recovery for stroke patients 3 months after onset.
Fully Unsupervised Discovery of Concept-Specific Relationships by Web Mining

We present a web mining method for discovering and enhancing relationships in which a specified concept (word class) participates. We discover a whole range of relationships focused on the given concept, rather than generic known relationships as in most previous work. Our method is based on clustering patterns that contain concept words and other words related to them. We evaluate the method on three different rich concepts and find that in each case the method generates a broad variety of relationships with good precision.
E-STOS: Extending Smart Traffic Online System with traffic laws time delays

Guidance and driving direction traffic systems are being used increasingly and becoming popular more among Geographical Information Systems. Yahoo maps, MapQuest, and Google Earth are examples of online Internet applications. Vehicles navigation systems are also very popular examples. Calculating the best driving path (shorter in distance or faster in time) between two addresses is subject to many factors like distances, road situation, road traffic, road legal rules and others. STOS (Smart Traffic Online System), our previous work, presents an intelligent solution for finding a fast path between addresses using smart algorithms. However, STOS does not recognize the delays caused by traffic legal rules and laws like traffic lights, stop signs, and others. This paper presents the driving traffic problem, factors affecting the problem, and previous solutions. We extend our previous smart solution, STOS, by adding the traffic legal rules delays.
Provably Secure Remote Truly Three-Factor Authentication Scheme With Privacy Protection on Biometrics

A three-factor authentication scheme combines biometrics with passwords and smart cards to provide high-security remote authentication. Most existing schemes, however, rely on smart cards to verify biometric characteristics. The advantage of this approach is that the user's biometric data is not shared with remote server. But the disadvantage is that the remote server must trust the smart card to perform proper authentication which leads to various vulnerabilities. To achieve truly secure three-factor authentication, a method must keep the user's biometrics secret while still allowing the server to perform its own authentication. Our method achieves this. The proposed scheme fully preserves the privacy of the biometric data of every user, that is, the scheme does not reveal the biometric data to anyone else, including the remote servers. We demonstrate the completeness of the proposed scheme through the GNY (Gong, Needham, and Yahalom) logic. Furthermore, the security of our proposed scheme is proven through Bellare and Rogaway's model. As a further benefit, we point out that our method reduces the computation cost for the smart card.
Elimination of paediatric HIV in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: large-scale assessment of interventions for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission.

OBJECTIVE To report the rates of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and the coverage of interventions designed to prevent such transmission, in KwaZulu-Natal. METHODS Mothers with infants aged ≤ 16 weeks and fathers or legal guardians with infants aged 4-8 weeks who, between May 2008 and April 2009, attended immunization clinics in six districts of KwaZulu-Natal were included. The mothers' uptake of interventions for the prevention of MTCT was explored. Blood samples from infants aged 4-8 weeks were tested for anti-HIV antibodies and, if antibody-positive, for HIV desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). FINDINGS Of the 19,494 mothers investigated, 89·9% reported having had an HIV test in their recent pregnancy. Of the 19,138 mothers who reported ever having had an HIV test, 34.4% reported that they had been found HIV-positive and, of these, 13.7% had started lifelong antiretroviral treatment and 67.2% had received zidovudine and nevirapine. Overall, 40.4% of the 7981 infants tested were found positive for anti-HIV antibodies, indicating HIV exposure. Just 7.1% of the infants checked for HIV DNA (equating to 2.8% of the infants tested for anti-HIV antibodies) were found positive. CONCLUSION The low levels of MTCT observed among the infants indicate the rapid, successful implementation of interventions for the prevention of such transmission. Sampling at immunization clinics appears to offer a robust method of estimating the impact of interventions designed to reduce such transmission. Large-scale elimination of paediatric HIV infections appears feasible, although this goal has not yet been fully achieved in KwaZulu-Natal.
Does My Step Look Big In This? A Visual Illusion Leads To Safer Stepping Behaviour

Background Tripping is a common factor in falls and a typical safety strategy to avoid tripping on steps or stairs is to increase foot clearance over the step edge. In the present study we asked whether the perceived height of a step could be increased using a visual illusion and whether this would lead to the adoption of a safer stepping strategy, in terms of greater foot clearance over the step edge. The study also addressed the controversial question of whether motor actions are dissociated from visual perception. Methodology/Principal Findings 21 young, healthy subjects perceived the step to be higher in a configuration of the horizontal-vertical illusion compared to a reverse configuration (p = 0.01). During a simple stepping task, maximum toe elevation changed by an amount corresponding to the size of the visual illusion (p<0.001). Linear regression analyses showed highly significant associations between perceived step height and maximum toe elevation for all conditions. Conclusions/Significance The perceived height of a step can be manipulated using a simple visual illusion, leading to the adoption of a safer stepping strategy in terms of greater foot clearance over a step edge. In addition, the strong link found between perception of a visual illusion and visuomotor action provides additional support to the view that the original, controversial proposal by Goodale and Milner (1992) of two separate and distinct visual streams for perception and visuomotor action should be re-evaluated.
Yet We Live, Strive, and Succeed: Using Photovoice to Understand
 Community Members’ Experiences of Justice, Safety, Hope, and Racial
 Equity

Residents’ experiences provide rich insight into the factors that drive widening social and health disparities, and those experiences are not homogeneous. Only through attending to people’s lived experiences will society begin to see these as issues of the entire community, and only by engaging residents in the process of community change can the kinds of change that are needed ever be achieved. Photovoice is a participatory qualitative research method that gives voice to participants’ experiences and perspectives while simultaneously facilitating critical consciousness-raising for social action and social change. This study employed a Photovoice process to explore experiences and perspectives of residents and people working in organizations that serve West Louisville, and to facilitate dialogue and action leading to social change. Forty-three individuals across eight groups completed the Photovoice project, representing youth, older adults, LGBTQ people, faith leaders, educators, activists, and two groups of Black men. Analysis of photos and group dialogue within and across the eight groups identified several common themes that pointed at the historical and present structural racism in the community, the city’s lack of concern for the Black community, the importance of Black history, and the need for collective community action. The public Photovoice exhibit helped inform the subsequent agenda for the city’s Center for Health Equity.
Aprender y enseñar con las TIC: expectativas, realidad y potencialidades

El objetivo de este capítulo es analizar el impacto de las TIC en la educación escolar a partir de una revisión de los estudios sobre la incorporación de estas tecnologías (ordenadores, dispositivos y redes digitales) a la educación y de sus efectos sobre los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje. El énfasis recae en el desfase existente entre, por una parte, las elevadas expectativas de cambio y mejora de la educación escolar generadas por estas tecnologías y, por otra, los limitados avances conseguidos hasta el momento. Nuestro argumento principal, sin embargo, es que este desfase no debe llevarnos a rebajar las expectativas depositadas en la capacidad de las TIC para transformar la enseñanza y mejorar el aprendizaje. Al contrario, las expectativas están, a nuestro juicio, plenamente justificadas. Lo que sucede es que la capacidad de transformación y mejora de la educación de las TIC debe entenderse más bien como un potencial que puede o no hacerse realidad, y hacerse en mayor o menor medida, en función del contexto en el que estas tecnologías son efectivamente utilizadas. Son, pues, los contextos de uso, y en el marco de estos contextos la finalidad que se persigue con la incorporación de las TIC, los que determinan su capacidad para transformar la enseñanza y mejorar el aprendizaje.
Exposure of the Human Body to Professional and Domestic Induction Cooktops Compared to the Basic Restrictions

We investigated whether domestic and professional induction cooktops comply with the basic restrictions defined by the International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). Based on magnetic field measurements, a generic numerical model of an induction cooktop was derived in order to model user exposure. The current density induced in the user was simulated for various models and distances. We also determined the exposure of the fetus and of young children. While most measured cooktops comply with the public exposure limits at the distance specified by the International Electrotechnical Commission (standard IEC 62233), the majority exceeds them at closer distances, some of them even the occupational limits. The maximum current density in the tissue of the user significantly exceeds the basic restrictions for the general public, reaching the occupational level. The exposure of the brains of young children reaches the order of magnitude of the limits for the general public. For a generic worst‐case cooktop compliant with the measurement standards, the current density exceeds the 1998 ICNIRP basic restrictions by up to 24 dB or a factor of 16. The brain tissue of young children can be overexposed by 6 dB or a factor of 2. The exposure of the tissue of the central nervous system of the fetus can exceed the limits for the general public if the mother is exposed at occupational levels. This demonstrates that the methodology for testing induction cooktops according to IEC 62233 contradicts the basic restrictions. This evaluation will be extended considering the redefined basic restrictions proposed by the ICNIRP in 2010. Bioelectromagnetics 33:695–705, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.