Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancing Students’ Accuracy in Tests and Understanding of the Main Ideas of Reading Materials by Retrieval Cues in the Textbook

Since understanding reading assignments is important to succeeding in school, improving the way that text is arranged in books would be an efficient way to help students better understand the material and perform well on tests. In this study, we asked students to read two original and two rearranged historical passages, in which rephrased questions from the test of the passage were embedded in the reading. Those restated questions were embedded into the corresponding sections in the text where the answers for the questions were located. After the reading, they were tested on their understanding of the material with multiple choice questions. All participants took an identical test. According to the results, both groups’ accuracy was higher for the questions of the two rearranged passages in each group. In other words, the textbook makers should consider putting retrieval cues for the test into the textbook in order to make the textbooks more readable. Thus, the students’ retrieval of the concept and their performance on the test will be enhanced.
How can we link teaching with research in our engineering courses? The case of an ecological modelling course in two European Universities

ABSTRACT We present a teaching methodology to answer the question ‘How can we link teaching with research in our engineering courses? ’ Due to the combination of hybrid Problem Based Learning with Research Tutored/Oriented Teaching, the methodology enables the students to acquire the skills of ‘problem solving’, ‘working in teams’, ‘analytic’, ‘written communication’, ‘planning my own work’, ‘organization’, ‘learning more deeply’, ‘tackling with unfamiliar problems’ and ‘innovation’; the last two are directly related to the Scientific Research Process and are considered important for modern engineers. We apply the methodology in the course ‘Ecological Modelling of Surface Waters’ that we teach in TUM and NTUA following the teaching sequence ‘Scope of modelling – Background knowledge – Simple model – Tutorial – Real case’. Due to its simplicity, the proposed methodology can be easily applied by University researchers, who are usually not familiar with the theoretical aspects of learning.
REMOTE VISUALIZATION USING 2D ARRAY OF IMAGES

While remote visualization means interactive viewing of three dimensional scientific data sets over the network. Because scientific data sets are in the gigabyte size range(or larger), it is difficult to send the entire data set over the network. Extraction, processing, network latency and rendering times add up and make the proposition of near real-time interactive visualization a challenge. Moreover, the client may have a limited amount of memory and CPU power for viewing and interacting with the data. Remote visualization can be classified into categories: specialized systems and general purpose visualization systems.
Fluctuations in population abundance in two anurans from Central Serbia

We monitored the population size of the agile frog (Ranadalmatina) and the common toad (Bufobufo) from 2011 or 2012, respectively, to the year 2017 at a syntopic breeding site in the vicinity of Belgrade. Adult R.dalmatina population size had minor fluctuations during the years of study (from 351 to 108 frogs). On the contrary, the adult B.bufo population was widely fluctuating towards decline (from 1158 to 141 toads). In both species, population fluctuations were not significantly related to variation of meteorological parameters (air temperature, humidity, precipitation). Density dependence effects on population size were not detected in either species. Apart from possible effects of climate change, the indicated trend towards decline of the monitored B.bufo population could also be the outcome of common population fluctuations or of increasing anthropogenic impact (vicinity of settlement and agricultural land). More years of monitoring more than one population are required to obtain precise information. Nevertheless, our results seem to be coherent with other studies that recommend conservation action for this species.
The Clarity of the Information Regarding the Bioeconomy: An Analysis of the Reports Published by the Organizations

Bioeconomy is a material potential source of sustainable growth that calls for new approaches in research and innovation to bring about concrete improvements in Europe’s social, economic and environmental wellfare. The purpose of our research is to evaluate the clarity of reports published by organizations. The assessment of the clarity of the published reports is done for both financial and non-financial information (containing elements related to bioeconomy). The steps of this research are: (i) the investigation of the clarity of the information included in the sustainability reports, and (ii) explanation of the atypical evolution of the clarity score, using the characteristics of the cultural dimensions of the home country. We analysed 77 reports published on the websites of 17 organizations in three environmentally-sensitive activity domains in 11 countries. Using content analysis, we determine an annual score of information clarity for each organization. The results of the research show that after switching to integrated reporting in 2013 the score of information clarity was improved for 65% of the companies. Eleven organizations have a degree of information clarity for the reports published in 2013 and 2016 better than for those published in 2010. We find five atypical cases for which the score of information clarity remains the same for all the three periods under investigation. These cases have been analyzed from the point of view of the cultural characteristics existing in the organization’s home country. Through our research we provide feedback to organizations on how they can improve the clarity of their published reports.
Laila is in a Meeting: Design and Evaluation of a Contextual Auto-Response Messaging Agent

The ease of smartphone communications has created an expectation of constant connectivity. While the adoption of virtual assistants has improved, their capabilities for handling proactive communication tasks remain underexplored. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a Contextual Auto-Response agent to communicate users’ situational awareness. The agent creates auto-responses by modeling availability using smartphone sensors and sharing contextual information on behalf of the user. In a two-week study with 12 participants, we evaluated the perception of this agent and its impact on device usage behavior. Many participants found the agent useful for signaling unavailability, with some caveats. Participants also reported altering device and agent usage based on their understanding of its functions. Our findings indicate the importance of transparency in proactive agent designs and the need for personalization to enable an enhanced and cooperative human-agent interaction.
X-SSD: A Storage System with Native Support for Database Logging and Replication

Transaction logging and log shipping are standard techniques to provide recoverability and high availability in data management systems. They entail an update to a local log file at every transaction and sending such an update to a remote site in a coordinated fashion. Modern databases have leveraged technologies such as Persistent Memory (PM) and RDMA-enabled networking to perform these updates as fast as possible. This mix of technologies, however, presents several drawbacks: some technologies are not portable, restricting deployments to a single class of machines; they make the data path more contrived; and they force very low-level APIs to interoperate, posing severe correctness issues. In this paper, we introduce the X-SSD, an SSD architecture that mixes NAND Flash and PM and that offers similar top performance while avoiding these issues. X-SSD devices can take transaction log writes in a fast, PM-backed data path and offer Data Propagation Services that move these writes to remote sites and eventually to NAND Flash storage. To validate this new architecture, we design and implement an actual reference X-SSD device called Villars. Our experiments show that the Villars device can manage PM and remote transfers on behalf of the database in a faster, more straightforward, and more robust way. We believe that our new architecture and reference implementation can reignite the conversation between the database and storage communities about the potential of co-designed devices.
dCAM: Dimension-wise Class Activation Map for Explaining Multivariate Data Series Classification

Data series classification is an important and challenging problem in data science. Explaining the classification decisions by finding the discriminant parts of the input that led the algorithm to some decision is a real need in many applications. Convolutional neural networks perform well for the data series classification task; though, the explanations provided by this type of algorithms are poor for the specific case of multivariate data series. Addressing this important limitation is a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel method that solves this problem by highlighting both the temporal and dimensional discriminant information. Our contribution is two-fold: we first describe a convolutional architecture that enables the comparison of dimensions; then, we propose a method that returns dCAM, a Dimension-wise Class Activation Map specifically designed for multivariate time series (and CNN-based models). Experiments with several synthetic and real datasets demonstrate that dCAM is not only more accurate than previous approaches, but the only viable solution for discriminant feature discovery and classification explanation in multivariate time series.
MindPhone: Mindful Reflection at Unlock Can Reduce Absentminded Smartphone Use

We present MindPhone, a mindfulness-based intervention to tackle absentminded and excessive smartphone use. At unlock, MindPhone prompts one of two questions: what the user intends to do with the smartphone, or what the user intends to do in the real world after using their smartphone. Users may respond actively by writing, or passively by mentally reflecting. We evaluated the effectiveness of the two questions and two response modes in a mixed-method, 2x2 mixed field study with 28 participants over two weeks. Our results show that the real-world prompt significantly reduces absentminded use and encourages a quicker return to the real world, independent of the response mode. Asking about smartphone use intentions raises awareness of reasons for smartphone use. For everyday use of MindPhone, users wish to set the question and response mode based on context. We discuss including awareness of the physical world in future smartphone use interventions.
Neural Subgraph Counting with Wasserstein Estimator

Subgraph counting is a fundamental graph analysis task which has been widely used in many applications. As the problem of subgraph counting is NP-complete and hence intractable, approximate solutions have been widely studied, which fail to work with large and complex query graphs. Alternatively, Machine Learning techniques have been recently applied for this problem, yet the existing ML approaches either only support very small data graphs or cannot make full use of the data graph information, which inherently limits their scalability, estimation accuracies and robustness. In this paper, we propose a novel approximate subgraph counting algorithm, NeurSC, that can exploit and combine information from both the query graphs and the data graphs effectively and efficiently. It consists of two components: (1) an extraction module that adaptively generates simple yet representative substructures from data graph for each query graph and (2) an estimator WEst that first computes the representations from individual and joint distributions of query and data graphs and then estimates subgraph counts with the learned representations. Furthermore, we design a novel Wasserstein discriminator in WEst to minimize the Wasserstein distance between query and data graphs by updating the parameters in network with the vertex correspondence relationship between query and data graphs. By doing this, WEst can better capture the correlation between query and data graphs which is essential to the quality of the estimation. We conduct experimental studies on seven large real-life labeled graphs to demonstrate the superior performance of NeurSC in terms of estimation accuracy and robustness.
Relationship between Verticillium dahliae inoculum and sunflower wilt in Argentina

Abstract Leaf mottle and wilt (LM) of sunflower caused by Verticillium dahliae is the most important disease in Argentina. LM is a monocyclic disease where microsclerotia in the soil are the primary inoculum source and have an important impact on symptom expression (incidence and severity) and yield. The inoculum (microsclerotia/g of soil) and disease relationship is affected by several factors, such as temperature and soil moisture. The objective of this work was to determine the regression model that best fits the relationship between V. dahliae microsclerotia in soil and sunflower LM, over a wide environmental range. Sunflower plants were exposed to different microsclerotia densities in pasteurized and non-pasteurized soils in pots under greenhouse and field conditions. The microsclerotia in soil and LM relationship regression models were also tested in the field with natural soil borne microsclerotia infestation, in different sunflower cultivars and locations. After the flowering stage (± 8 days), disease severity was affected by inoculum density at every evaluation time (P-value≤0.0009). A 45% increase in the area under the disease progress curve was shown by soil pasteurization. Power regression model showed the highest concordance and Pearson correlation coefficients, parameter significance and no difference with the lowest Akaike index criterion value among all tested models in all experiments. This study provides a model (LM = 11.6*inoculum density^0.57) which describes the inoculum density and LM relationship. The use of this model might help farmers to predict an LM risk before sowing and to choose the appropriate field and the resistance level of the sunflower hybrid to be used.
A Phenomenological Study of Perspectives on Teacher Diversity and the Lived Experiences of Black Public School Teachers

The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives and lived experiences of Black public school teachers as related to the underrepresentation of Black teachers in the teaching profession. Data were collected through interviews with ten teachers who identified as Black and were employed by two school districts in northeastern Rhode Island. Through phenomenology as a methodology, and autoethnography as a method, this study sought to explore the lived experiences of Black teachers in contemporary public school settings and their perspectives on teacher diversity. This study provides an in-depth and intimate understanding of what it is like and what it means to be a Black teacher and the various emotionally charged and sensitive topics experienced by members of the group experiencing this phenomenon. This study focuses on what can be learned from the stories that each person brought to the research encounter and how to improve diversity in the teacher workforce.
PENERAPAN MEDIA AUDIO VISUAL PADA MODEL PEMBELAJARAN STUDENT FACILITATOR AND EXPLAINING (SFAE) DALAM MENINGKATKAN HASIL BELAJAR IPS SISWA KELAS IV SDN KAMULAN II KECAMATAN TALUN KABUPATEN BLITAR

The purpose of this study is to describe the validity and reliability of science process skills based test instruments and the quality of science process skills based on test instruments is viewed from the level of difficulty, power difference, and deception in material objects and their properties for Grade V SDN 010 Tarakan. The type of research used in this research is Formative Evaluation Research and Development design. Research Results there are 30 items in the form of multiple choice, the initial steps are validation by a team of experts in a very feasible category. The one to one trial was conducted in conjunction with the validation of the one-to-one trial experts to get 90% of students' responses in the very effective category. The results of the SPSS 21 program analysis show 20 questions in the valid category, the reliability is r11 = 0.585> r table = 0.284. The results of the analysis of the AnatesV4 program show the level of difficulty with difficult categories of 1 item problem (3.3%), the level of difficulty of the questions that are in the easy category a number of 1 items (3.3%), the level of difficulty of the questions which are in the category of very easy number 2 items of questions (6.7%), the level of difficulty of the questions in the moderate category, 26 items of questions (86.7%), the results of the average power difference with a good criterion of 12 questions (40%), and an effective deceiver as many as 28 items (93.3%).
Language and Task Switching in Polish-english Bilinguals

The study investigated the relationship between the efficiency of switching languages and non-linguistic tasks in non-proficient Polish-English bilinguals. The participants performed picture naming that involved switching between L1 and L2 in both directions and a shape or color decision on visually presented figures, which required switching and mixing two different tasks. No relationship between the efficiency in switching languages and non-linguistic tasks was observed. However, increased language switching efficiency was related to high task mixing efficiency, indicating that maintaining two languages and two non-linguistic tasks active is mediated by equivalent control processes. Also, switching from L2 to L1 was more time-consuming than in the opposite direction and participants with the greatest L1 switching disadvantage were the fastest task switchers. These findings suggest that nonproficient bilinguals inhibit their stronger language while switching between L1 and L2 and equivalent inhibitory mechanisms can be responsible for the facilitation of their task switching performance.
Cultural Practices Affecting Season-Long Weed Control in Irrigated Corn (Zea mays)

Season-long weed control has been a goal of some producers of irrigated corn (Zea mays L.) to reduce competition, lessen weed seed production, facilitate crop harvest, improve water efficiency (particularly with furrow irrigation), and improve aesthetic properties of fields. Field experiments were conducted for 3 yr on sprinkler-irrigated corn on a loamy fine sand. Five herbicides applied at layby generally provided season-long control of grass weeds and reduced weed seed production up to 100%. Pendimethalin [N-(1-ethylpropyl)-3,4-dimethyl-2,6-dinitrobenzenamine] was particularly effective. Yields of irrigated corn were not increased by layby herbicide application. Use of corn rows spaced 91 cm apart and use of a shorter, early-maturing, horizontal-leaf corn cultivar resulted in greater weed growth and weed seed production than did use of 76-cm rows and a taller, full-season, upright-leaf corn cultivar. After nearly complete weed control with herbicides for 2 yr, withholding herbicide use in the third year allowed weed growth which reduced corn yield. Indications were that weed control efforts need to be continuous in irrigated corn production.
Joint Exploitation of TDOA and PCL Techniques for Two-Dimensional Target Localization

This paper is focused on noncooperative target position estimation via the joint use of two-dimensional (2-D) hyperbolic and elliptic passive location techniques based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) and passive coherent locator (PCL) measurements, respectively. A fusion strategy is laid down at the signal processing level to obtain a reliable estimate of the current target position. With reference to the scenario with a single transmitter of opportunity, the mathematical model for joint exploitation of TDOA and PCL strategies is formulated. Then, the Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the Cartesian coordinates of the target is established and the theoretical performance gains achievable over the localization technique using only TDOA or PCL observations are assessed. Finally, TDOA-PCL hybrid 2-D localization algorithms are provided and their performance in terms of root-mean-square error is compared with the square root of the CRLB.
Metabolic Effects Of Cyproterone Acetate And Corticosterone In The Chicken Callus Domesticus

تمت مقارنة التأثيرات الأيضية لعقار خلات السيبروتيرون وهو يستخدم كمثبط لنشاط الغدة الكظرية مع هرمون الكورتيكوستيرون في الدجاج . وقد أدت المعالجة بهرمون الكروتيكوستيرون إلى زيادة ملحوظة في مستوى المصل من الجلوكوز والجلسريدات الثلاثية والجلوبيولين وحامض البوليك . ولم يكن هناك تغيرات ملحوظة في مستوى المصل من الكوليستيرول الكلي والدهون البروتينية عالية الكثافة ومنخفضة الكثافة والالبيومين . كما لوحظ أن عقار خلات السيبروتيرون لم يكن مؤثرا إطلاقا على أي من مكونات المصل المدروسة . ويستنتج من هذا البحث أن عقار خلات السيبروتيرون ليس له أي نشاط مشابه للكورتيكودات السكرية ويمكن إستخدامه لتثبيط نشاط الغدة الكظرية في الدجاج بفاعلية بدون إحداث تأثيرات أيضية .
Intermittent pneumatic compression on top of pharmacological thromboprophylaxis in intensive care: added value or added cost?

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a leading cause of in-hospital morbidity and mortality, particularly in patients at intensive care units (ICU) (1). Hypercoagulability, venous stasis and vascular injury, but also the frequent use of highly coagulable catheters and extracorporeal support devices predispose this patient group to thromboembolic complications. Therefore, efficient strategies for the prevention of thrombosis that do not cause excessive bleeding are paramount in critically ill patients.
Genotype Imputation in Genome‐Wide Association Studies

Genotype imputation infers missing genotypes in silico using haplotype information from reference samples with genotypes from denser genotyping arrays or sequencing. This approach can confer a number of improvements on genome‐wide association studies: it can improve statistical power to detect associations by reducing the number of missing genotypes; it can simplify data harmonization for meta‐analyses by improving overlap of genomic variants between differently‐genotyped sample sets; and it can increase the overall number and density of genomic variants available for association testing. This article reviews the general concepts behind imputation, describes imputation approaches and methods for various types of genotype data, including family‐based data, and identifies web‐based resources that can be used in different steps of the imputation process. For practical application, it provides a step‐by‐step guide to implementation of a two‐step imputation process consisting of phasing of the study genotypes and the imputation of reference panel genotypes into the study haplotypes. In addition, this review describes recently developed haplotype reference panel resources and online imputation servers that are capable of remotely and securely implementing an imputation workflow on uploaded genotype array data. © 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.