Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The validity, interpretation and use of school value-added measures

This thesis examines the validity of school value-added measures and the validity of arguments for their interpretation and use. The opening chapters review the development of school value added measures, existing evidence on their properties and validity and their current use in research, policy and practice. The empirical results are based on four studies using English National Pupil Database data and a large, nationally-representative dataset of teacher-assessed attainment data for English pupils aged from 7 to 13. The findings all relate to the properties of school value-added measures and the seriousness of a number of threats to their validity. The four empirical studies examine the following issues: observable bias and error, inter-method reliability when compared to estimates from a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity design, stability of school value added scores and of specific cohorts over time, and consistency of school value-added scores within cohorts and between different school cohorts at a single point in time. The closing chapters discuss the validity of value-added measures in general and in relation to the areas of use identified. Individually and collectively, the results advance understanding of numerous threats to validity and have substantial implications for the use of value-added measures in research, policy and practice.
A fuzzy selection based constraint handling method for multi-objective optimization of analog cells

In this paper, a constraint handling technique for multi-objective optimization of analog cells is presented. Selection-based constraint handling and fuzzy membership functions are combined to construct a new constraint handling method, multi-objective fuzzy selection (MOFS). This is integrated with multi-objective sizing, which has the following two advantages: (1) enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of handling specifications distinctly; (2) specializes in solving multi-objective analog sizing problems mimicking the designer's interactive design process, avoiding inflexibility of crisp constraint sizing methods.
Detection of CdS Nanoparticles and Implications for Cadmium Yellow Paint Degradation in Edvard Munch’s The Scream (c. 1910, Munch Museum)

1. School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. 2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry & UD Surface Analysis Facility, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA. 3. Cornell Center for Materials Research, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. 4. The Munch Museum, Tøyen, Oslo, Norway. 5. Department of Conservation, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NL. 6. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA. 7. Kavli Institute for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Ahorrar: Indoor Occupancy Counting to Enable Smart Energy Efficient Office Buildings

Office buildings have a vast carbon footprint from the energy consumed for heating/cooling, ventilation (HVAC) and lighting. The basic limitation in becoming more energy efficient is in the management of these operations. In particular, the ventilation has been the "holy grail" in building operations and occupancy based control of ventilation can lead to sizeable reduction in energy use. However, building occupancy sensors. generally, report presence or not of occupants and not actual numbers of occupants in the different building zones rather than real occupancy numbers. Hence, ventilation is set to expected, rather than actual, occupancy levels leading to very inefficient building operation. None of the available occupancy based solutions for building automation fully meet the needs of maintenance free adequate accurate occupancy estimation at sufficiently low cost. In this paper, we present Ahorrar, a framework that uses sustainable techniques to inform the occupancy levels in HVAC zone to the building automation system (BAS). Using existing infrastructure and capabilities of consumer devices, Ahorrar can use participatory sensing to compute a real time occupant distribution map within the office building and enable energy saving without additional hardware. In this position paper, we present the building blocks of Ahorrar and the research results that can support the implementation of a sufficiently accurate occupancy mapping system.
Performance of a spectrum sharing system over Nakagami-m fading channels

In this paper, we derive the probability density function and cumulative distribution function of packet transmission time in a spectrum sharing system. In combination with the time-out characteristics of packets, we further study the outage probability and average transmission time under peak power interference constraint over Nakagami-m fading channel. Especially, we employ the M/G/1 queuing model to calculate the average waiting time of packets and average number of packets waiting in the queue of a secondary user. The numerical results show the importance of the peak interference power constraint on the delay of packets at the secondary user.
Composite Spatio-Temporal Event Detection in Multi-Camera Surveillance Networks

In this paper, we present a composite event detection system for multicamera surveillance networks. The proposed framework is able to handle correlations between primitive events that are generated from either a single camera view or multiple camera views with spatial and temporal variations. Composite events are represented in the form of full binary trees, where the leaves nodes represent primitive events, the root node represents the target composite event, and the middle nodes represent defined rules. The multi-layer design of the composite events provides a great extensibility and flexibility to users in different applications. A standardized XML-style event language is designed to describe the composite events, such that inter-agent communications and event detection module construction are conveniently achieved. In our system, a set of graphical interfaces are developed for users to easily define both primitive and high-level composite events. The proposed system is designed in the distributed form, where different components of the system can be deployed on separate processors and communicating with each other over the network. The capabilities and effectiveness of our system have been demonstrated in several real life applications.
Combination of Garcinia cambogia Extract and Pear Pomace Extract Additively Suppresses Adipogenesis and Enhances Lipolysis in 3T3-L1 Cells

Background: Inhibition of adipogenesis has been a therapeutic target for reducing obesity and obesity-related disorders such as diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, and cancer. For decades, anti-adipogenic potential of many herbal extracts has been investigated. One example is Garcinia cambogia extract (GE) containing (-)-hydroxycitric acid as an active ingredient. GE is currently marketed as a weight loss supplement, used alone or with other ingredients. Pear pomace extract (PE), another natural product, has been also shown to have anti-adipogenic activity in a recent report. Objective: It was tested if the mixture of PE and GE (MIX) would produce more effective anti-adipogenic activity than PE or GE alone. Materials and Methods: Differentiation of 3T3-L1 preadipocyte was induced by adding insulin, dexamethasone, and isobutylmethylxanthine and lipid accumulation was measured by Oil Red O staining. Cellular markers for adipogenesis and lipolysis such as CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (C/EBP-α), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-γ), fatty acid synthase (FAS), and hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) was measured using immunocytochemistry. Results: MIX, compared to PE or GE alone, showed greater inhibition of lipid accumulation. Furthermore, MIX reduced the expression of adipogenesis-related factors C/EBP-α, PPAR-γ, and FAS more than PE or GE alone did. In contrast, the expression of HSL the enzyme required for lipolysis was further enhanced in MIX-treated adipocytes compared to the PE or GE alone treated groups. Conclusions: Anti-adipogenic effect of PE and GE appears synergistic, and the MIX may be a useful therapeutic combination for the treatment of obesity and obesity-related diseases. Abbreviations used: CEBP-a: CCAT/enhancer binding protein alpha, CI: Combination Index, FAS: Fatty acid synthase, GE: Garcinia cambogia extract, HSL: Hormone sensitive lipase, PE: Pear pomace extract, PPAR-γ: Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma.
Tibetan-Chinese Cross Language Text Similarity Calculation Based onLDA Topic Model

Topic model building is the basis and the most critical module of cross-language topic detection and tracking. Topic model also can be applied to cross-language text similarity calculation. It can improve the efficiency and the speed of calculation by reducing the texts' dimensionality. In this paper, we use the LDA model in cross-language text similarity computation to obtain Tibetan-Chinese comparable corpora: (1) Extending Tibetan-Chinese dictionary by extracting Tibetan-Chinese entities from Wikipedia. (2) Using topic model to make the texts mapped to the feature space of topics. (3) Calculating the similarity of two texts in different language according to the characteristics of the news text. The method for text similarity calculation based on LDA model reduces the dimensions of text space vector, and enhances the understanding of the text's semantics. It also improves the speed and efficiency of calculation.
Comparative Study of Live Virtual Machine Migration Techniques in Cloud

Virtualization technology is currently becoming increasingly popular and valuable in cloud computing environments due to the benefits of server consolidation, live migration, and resource isolation. Live virtual machine migration is the process of moving virtual machine from one physical host to other without disturbing the users. Effective migration of virtual machine requires the movement of storage, memory, process states and network connectivity. Live migration of virtual machines has been a powerful tool to facilitate system maintenance, load balancing, fault tolerance, and powersaving, especially in clusters or data centers. During the process of migration, services are running in the virtual machines, hence it requires minimum total migration time, down time in order to avoid service degradation. This paper introduced discussion of various techniques for effective live virtual machine migration to reduce both downtime and total migration time. This paper also present the various scenarios, where the live migration of virtual machines can takes place.
New developments in the InterPro database

InterPro is an integrated resource for protein families, domains and functional sites, which integrates the following protein signature databases: PROSITE, PRINTS, ProDom, Pfam, SMART, TIGRFAMs, PIRSF, SUPERFAMILY, Gene3D and PANTHER. The latter two new member databases have been integrated since the last publication in this journal. There have been several new developments in InterPro, including an additional reading field, new database links, extensions to the web interface and additional match XML files. InterPro has always provided matches to UniProtKB proteins on the website and in the match XML file on the FTP site. Additional matches to proteins in UniParc (UniProt archive) are now available for download in the new match XML files only. The latest InterPro release (13.0) contains more than 13 000 entries, covering over 78% of all proteins in UniProtKB. The database is available for text- and sequence-based searches via a webserver (), and for download by anonymous FTP (). The InterProScan search tool is now also available via a web service at .
The shifting dimensions of language learner autonomy

Second language (L2) learning in the 21st century, perhaps more than in the last, will see shifting perspectives, priorities and tendencies. Whereas the late 20th century saw the rise to pre-eminence of English as the international language of communication, the decades to come may chronicle a challenge to that dominance as other world languages, such as Chinese and Spanish, jostle for supremacy. New technologies may accelerate the injection of alternative ways of delivering a second language curriculum. The profile of the L2 learner, already a complex and diverse one, may undergo fundamental changes as new societal, cultural, political and professional demands are imposed on the individual. Within all these developments the concept of the autonomous language learner may also shift, indeed it is shifting already. Yet it would seem to me important to safeguard a number of constants, particularly those regarding the right of self-determination of the individual. With this in mind, this chapter elaborates on a model of autonomy first proposed in Macaro (1997). The model proposed 3 dimensions of L2 autonomy: autonomy of language competence; autonomy of language learning competence; autonomy of learner choice. In returning to this theme more than ten years later I find I still have in mind an L2 learner who is young and not that far advanced on his or her L2 learning path. This is not only because my professional experience lies with this group of learners but also because this group is still under-represented, perhaps even disenfranchised, in the second language acquisition and L2 pedagogy literature. I will examine each of these dimensions in turn and then try to pull them together in the concluding remarks.
Antigenic variation in African trypanosomes: the importance of chromosomal and nuclear context in VSG expression control

African trypanosomes are lethal human and animal parasites that use antigenic variation for evasion of host adaptive immunity. To facilitate antigenic variation, trypanosomes dedicate approximately one third of their nuclear genome, including many minichromosomes, and possibly all sub‐telomeres, to variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) genes and associated sequences. Antigenic variation requires transcription of a single VSG by RNA polymerase I (Pol‐I), with silencing of other VSGs, and periodic switching of the expressed gene, typically via DNA recombination with duplicative translocation of a new VSG to the active site. Thus, telomeric location, epigenetic controls and monoallelic transcription by Pol‐I at an extranucleolar site are prominent features of VSGs and their expression, with telomeres, chromatin structure and nuclear organization all making vitally important contributions to monoallelic VSG expression control and switching. We discuss VSG transcription, recombination and replication control within this chromosomal and sub‐nuclear context.
Zero-error tracking control of nonlinear systems with input saturation

This paper is concerned with the problem of tracking control for strict feedback nonlinear systems in the presence of input saturation. A transformation nonlinear function is employed to guarantee the saturation constraint. Then, to deal with the transformed system with nonaffine structure, an auxiliary integrator is introduced such that the use of backstepping is feasible in the control design. It is rigorously proven that the proposed control scheme can ensure that all closed loop signals are globally bounded, and the tracking error is asymptotically converge to zero. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified through a numerical example.
A feature-transform based approach to unsupervised task adaptation and personalization

This paper presents a feature-transform based approach to unsupervised task adaptation and personalization for speech recognition. Given task-specific speech data collected from a deployed service, an “acoustic sniffing” module is built first by using a so-called i-vector technique with a number of acoustic conditions identified via i-vector clustering. Unsupervised maximum likelihood training is then performed to estimate a task-dependent feature transform for each acoustic condition, while pre-trained HMM parameters of acoustic models are kept unchanged. Given an unknown utterance, an appropriate feature transform is selected via “acoustic sniffing”, which is used to transform the feature vectors of the unknown utterance for decoding. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed in a task adaptation scenario from a conversational telephone speech transcription task to a short message dictation task. The same method is expected to work for personalization as well.
Design, analysis and performance comparison of GNRFET based 8-bit ALUs

The advancement in IC technology is primarily attributed to the MOSFET scaling theory. As the transistor size reduced, power consumption also reduced. As the process technology reached nano-meter regime, silicon CMOS started developing Short Channel Effects which led to increased power dissipation. A trade-off arose between power-dissipation and area. Alternatives to CMOS were found to avoid the trade-off. Graphene based transistor proved to be a potential replacement to CMOS. The Arithmetic and Logic Unit is the basic computing unit of all microprocessors or microcontrollers. The parallel adder forms the critical path in the ALU. The proposed work designs and compares CMOS and GNRFET based 8-bit ALU architectures. The first architecture contains 28TFA (Transistor Full Adder) and NAND based MUX design, second architecture-10TFA and NAND based MUX while third architecture-10TFA and TG (Transmission Gate) based MUX. The power dissipation and delay for three ALU architectures using GNRFET and CMOS respectively are 28TFA-ALU (0.1249pW, 24.58ps), (14.65pW, 47.908ps)), 10TFA-ALU ((0.1152pW, 18.117ps), (11.82pW, 42.964)) and TGMUX-ALU ((0.123pW, 15.799ps), (12.08pW, 37.542ps)). GNRFET based ALU shows 56%improvement in the PDPwhen compared to the CMOS based ALU.
Nuclear reprogramming

There is currently particular interest in the field of nuclear reprogramming, a process by which the identity of specialised cells may be changed, typically to an embryonic-like state. Reprogramming procedures provide insight into many mechanisms of fundamental cell biology and have several promising applications, most notably in healthcare through the development of human disease models and patient-specific tissue-replacement therapies. Here, we introduce the field of nuclear reprogramming and briefly discuss six of the procedures by which reprogramming may be experimentally performed: nuclear transfer to eggs or oocytes, cell fusion, extract treatment, direct reprogramming to pluripotency and transdifferentiation.
Lexical specificity: The importance of rich phonological representations when learning to read

How do children use phonological knowledge about spoken language in acquiring literacy? Phonological precursors of literacy include phonological awareness, speech decoding skill and lexical specificity (i.e., the richness of phonological representations in the mental lexicon). An intervention study investigated whether early literacy skills can be enhanced by training lexical specificity. Forty-two pre-reading 4-yearolds were randomly assigned to either an experimental group that was taught pairs of new words that differed minimally or a control group that received numeracy training. The experimental group gained on a rhyme awareness task, suggesting that learning phonologically specific new words fosters phonological awareness. 18This chapter has been published as: Van Goch, M. M. , McQueen, J. M. , Verhoeven, L. (2014). Learning phonologically specific new words fosters rhyme awareness in Dutch preliterate children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(3), 155-172.
Does Lower Limb Exercise Worsen Renal Artery Hemodynamics in Patients with Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm?

Renal artery stenosis (RAS) and renal complications emerge in some patients after endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) to treat abdominal aorta aneurysm (AAA). The mechanisms for the causes of these problems are not clear. We hypothesized that for EVAR patients, lower limb exercise could negatively influence the physiology of the renal artery and the renal function, by decreasing the blood flow velocity and changing the hemodynamics in the renal arteries. To evaluate this hypothesis, pre- and post-operative models of the abdominal aorta were reconstructed based on CT images. The hemodynamic environment was numerically simulated under rest and lower limb exercise conditions. The results revealed that in the renal arteries, lower limb exercise decreased the wall shear stress (WSS), increased the oscillatory shear index (OSI) and increased the relative residence time (RRT). EVAR further enhanced these effects. Because these parameters are related to artery stenosis and atherosclerosis, this preliminary study concluded that lower limb exercise may increase the potential risk of inducing renal artery stenosis and renal complications for AAA patients. This finding could help elucidate the mechanism of renal artery stenosis and renal complications after EVAR and warn us to reconsider the management and nursing care of AAA patients.
Positron Emission Tomography in Psychiatric and Neuropsychiatric Disorders

PET is potentially the most powerful tool yet available for the direct, in vivo investigation of the biologic basis of psychiatric and neuropsychiatric disorders. The fulfillment of its potential rests on the development of methodologies and study design appropriate to psychiatric disorders. To date, findings in both schizophrenia and affective disorder, using protocols largely based on resting state data acquisition, suggest altered regional metabolism. These approaches need to be extended, particularly by the application of protocols that utilize PET to obtain longitudinal data under controlled experimental situations. In two conditions traditionally ascribed to psychologic causes, OCD and PD, there is intriguing evidence of specific biologic abnormalities, which, if confirmed, would lead to a fundamental revision of their nosologic status. In neuropsychiatric disorders PET findings, although preliminary in nature, offer an alternative paradigm to traditional clinicopathologic correlations by suggesting that clinical impairments relate to physiologic effects at sites distant from structural lesions.
Agents for establishing ad hoc cross-organizational teams

Ad hoc cross-agency teams are often needed to deal with actual, imminent, or potential crises involving multiple geographic/political jurisdictions or requiring coordinated expertise from organizations with different responsibilities. Our initial ontology-based, policy-driven version of personal agents and agent-based work flows and Web services facilitates the establishment of such teams. The agents and services use and augment the existing email and office automation applications of an organization. Preliminary results indicate a potential reduction of two orders of magnitude in the time needed to form a team.
Datasets and Benchmarks for Densely Sampled 4D Light Fields

We present a new benchmark database to compare and evaluate existing and upcoming algorithms which are tailored to light ﬁeld processing. The data is characterised by a dense sampling of the light ﬁelds, which best ﬁts current plenoptic cameras and is a characteristic property not found in current multi-view stereo benchmarks. It allows to treat the disparity space as a continuous space, and enables algorithms based on epipolar plane image analysis without having to refocus ﬁrst. All datasets provide ground truth depth for at least the center view, while some have additional segmentation data available. Part of the light ﬁelds are computer graphics generated, the rest are acquired with a gantry, with ground truth depth established by a previous scanning of the imaged objects using a structured light scanner. In addition, we provide source code for an extensive evaluation of a number of previously published stereo, epipolar plane image analysis and segmentation algorithms on the database.