Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring Competitive Musical Creativity in Digital Composition Games

This paper reports on two digital games being developed in an effort to explore real-time interactive composition in a competitive game setting. The games allow players of any experience level to exercise musical creativity via symbolic gameplay interactions with a stochastic music generation system, but critically depart from related media by positioning the player in contest with an opposing compositional agent. We address the context of these works, describe their game and music systems, and frame the two designs as contrasting explorations of competitive, game-based composition. We then identify key human-computer co-creative dialogues ex-pected to emerge from player interaction with the games before discussing their wider implications for Musical Metacre- ation (MuMe). Our plans to formally evaluate the systems by gathering user perceptions of musical creativity, control, and competition are also outlined.
3D Point clouds for forestry applications

This article gives an overview of the state of the art 3D data acquisition systems (i. e. airborne laser scanning and digital aerial cameras) and the derivation of forestry related information from the derived 3D points clouds. The described examples are focusing on forest area delineation, growing stock and biomass estimation, forest growth assessment, forest road extraction as well as its changes. The shown examples are located in the Alpine space and discuss the possibilities and limitations of integrating these data sources into operational forestry applications.
Estrutura populacional de capivaras na Estação Ecológica do Taim, Brasil, RS

A capybara population (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) was monitored in a borderline region between Taim Ecological Station and southernmost areas of rice cultivation located in the State of Rio Grande do Sul (RS, Brazil). The aim of this study was to characterize the structure, density, and reproductive periods of this population. A total of 25 censuses, obtained through direct count technique, were performed from August 2003 to August 2005. The samplings were performed in a 4000-meter length transect on the margins of Mangueira lagoon. The abundance was obtained considering the sex and age class of the animals. The abundance registered was of 608.6±27.9 individuals, and the average density was 5.1±0.2ind. ha-1. A variation in number of animals was observed between the first and the second year of sampling. This number was significantly higher in the last year. An average of 22.0±0.8 groups was identified in the sampling area, including female adults (47.5%), juveniles (24.8%), young (17%) and male adults (7.7%). The abundance of animals varied according to spatial distribution, and its highest value (9.5ind. ha-1) was registered in Taim Ecological Station. Seasonal fluctuations in the population recruitment were also observed during this study. The highest densities of young were registered in autumn. Population structure was similar to those registered in different areas of distribution, but it has presented a high potential of population growth.
COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT MODEL FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY SPECIALISTS

Having worked as an engineer and department manager in a manufacturing company the author of the research faced with the employers’ and the employees’ formal attitude towards occupational safety, which increases the likelihood of accidents. The occupational safety specialists’ competence develops in the educational environment, in the work environment and outside of them. It is essential that identifying and minimising the work environment risk factors will lead to avoiding extreme or unpredictable situations, thus ensuring employees’ health and wellness. Self-learning evaluation and reflective practice occur with the sense of the necessity to obtain new skills, which can be described as mastery and it can lead to the solution of the problem regarding formal attitude toward work and civil protection regulations. The aim of the research was to create a competence development model for occupational safety specialists. In the current research the author used reflection of personal experience as well as analysis and evaluation of opinions of the publications relevant to the research context, modelling, unstructured observations, talks, discussions and interviews. As a result of the research the occupational safety specialists’ competence development model was created.
Prototype-based compression of time series from telecommunication data

This thesis explores a technique and use-cases for compressing time series data by the development of prototypes. The methods explored revolve primarily around the idea that a large group of time series can be represented by a much smaller number of prototypes and the calculated residual values between the time series. We evaluate different clustering techniques to develop prototypes, transform the data by forming residual time series, and explore storage of the transformed dataset to file. This is implemented and compared to two general-purpose compression techniques: Snappy and Zstandard. Our techniques outperform Snappy and Zstandard for nonconstant time series, with significant improvements using an error restricted lossy algorithm we present. This thesis further evaluates the use of the compressed format for the prediction of missing data and discusses applications.
T UNING S PHINX TO O UTPERFORM G OOGLE ’ S S PEECH R ECOGNITION API ∗

: In this paper, we investigate whether the open-source speech recognizer Sphinx can be tuned to outperform Google’s cloud-based speech recognition API in a spoken dialog system task. According to this target domain, we use data from CMU’s Let’s Go bus information system comprising 258k utterances of telephony speech recorded in the bus information dialog system of Pittsburgh. By training a domain-speciﬁc language model on the aforementioned corpus and tuning a number of Sphinx’s parameters, we achieve a WER of 51.2%. This result is signiﬁcantly lower than the one produced by Google’s speech recognition API whose language model is built on millions of times more training data.
Enhancing AIDS intervention research through deep ethnography

This research is based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Lesotho, Africa between 2007 and 2009. The article shows how cultural competence in intervention research can be improved through ethnographic fieldwork, borrowing primarily from anthropological research protocols. Through an exploration of the challenges of caring for AIDS orphans and children with HIV/AIDS, I demonstrate that deep ethnography is an effective way to gain the necessary in-depth cultural insight, particularly in the initial design stages of culturally competent interventions. This is particularly true for rural or remote communities where structural barriers, such as poverty, are pronounced. This interdisciplinary approach provides both valuable information for those interested in orphan care in rural sub-Saharan Africa, and also demonstrates the importance of the ethnographic approach for intervention research in social work.
Deep Embedded Cluster Tree – Supplementary

1 Pre-train autoencoder 2 Create root node of tree 3 for iter ∈ [0, . ,MaxIterations] do 4 foreach n ∈ Nodes do 5 if wn < pruningThreshold then 6 Remove node and replace parent node with the sibling node (see Section II-G) 7 end 8 end 9 if iter%SplitInterval == 0 then 10 Grow tree by splitting the leaf node with sum of highest squared distances (see Section II-F) 11 end 12 Select minibatch from dataset 13 Assign data points to leaf nodes and split nodes (see Section II-B) 14 Determine loss according to Eq. 6 15 Optimize parameters with an gradient based optimizer and Eq. 3 16 end
Grammar and Corpora – past, present, and future

In recent years, the availability of large annotated and searchable corpora, together with a new interest in the empirical foundation and validation of linguistic theory and description, has sparked a surge of novel and interesting work using corpus-based methods to study the grammar of natural languages. However, a look at relevant current research on the grammar of the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages reveals a variety of different theoretical approaches and empirical foci, which can be traced back to different philological and linguistic traditions. Still, this current state of affairs should not be seen as an obstacle but as an ideal basis for a fruitful exchange of ideas between different research paradigms.
Investigation on the Effects of Various Protein Levels with Constant Ratio of Digestible Sulfur Amino Acids and Threonine to Lysine on Performance, Egg Quality and Protein Retention in Two Strains of Laying Hens

An experiment was conducted to determine the possibility of using various levels of crude protein (CP) by providing laying hens with constant levels of digestible sulfur amino acid, threonine and lysine to improve performance and egg quality. The experiment was conducted as a completely randomized block design in a factorial arrangement (4×2) with 8 replicates of 10 hens in each. Factors included 4 levels of CP (18.5%, 17.5%, 16.5% and 15.5%) and 2 strains (LSL and Hy-Line W-36) of laying hens. Hens were fed experimental diets from 25 to 33 weeks of age. Production performance was measured for eight weeks and egg quality characteristics were determined at 29 and 33 weeks of age. Protein reduction decreased egg weight, egg mass and hen body weight linearly (P≤0.01). Egg production was not affected by protein reduction but feed efficiency, and average daily feed intake increased significantly (P≤0.01). Lohmann Selected Leghorn laying hens showed significantly higher egg production, egg weight, egg mass, weight gain, feed efficiency and feed intake compared to the W-36 laying hens (P≤0.01). Shell thickness increased linearly as protein levels decreased (P≤0.05). There were significant differences between two strains on the egg quality characteristics (P≤0.01). Significant (P≤0.05) CP × strain interactions were observed for hen weight, albumen height, Haugh units, yolk and shell percentage. Based on the results of this experiment, a reduction in dietary protein level (from 18.5% to 15.5%), without any alteration in digestible TSAA and Thr: Lys ratio, led to inferior egg mass and feed conversion ratio during the peak production period.
Michele Matteazzi.indd

This paper deals with the application of Geographical Information Systems to landscape archaeological studies and, in particular, with researches that follow an archaeomorphological approach. The study outlines the analytical potential especially for studying ancient land divisions. The case study presented here, drawn from a Phd project, is specifically dealing with the contribution that such Systems can bring to the archaeomorphological study of a wide stretch of the alluvial plain extended to the south of the city of Padua, with the Venice Lagoon to the east and the Euganei Hills to the west (Fig. 1): in this area, the analysis of landscape features highlights the traces of ancient territorial structures organized by orthogonal axes. We think they could be recognised as land divisions carried out during Roman times.
Domon L, an Immunopotentiating Agent, Acts as an NF-κB Activator

Domon L, a heat-treated component of gram-negative bacterium Achromobacter stenohalis, is used for the treatment of infectious diseases of animals. Here, we investigated the immunopotentiating potential of Domon L. In vitro studies showed that Domon L enhanced nitric oxide (NO) formation from murine macrophage RAW264.7 cells in concert with interferon (IFN)-γ. The effect of Domon L on NF-κB activation was investigated, in order to understand the molecular mechanisms of enhanced NO formation by Domon L. Domon L induced translocation of NF-κB to the nucleus in RAW264.7 cells. Induction of NF-κB dependent gene expression by Domon L was further confirmed using a transfectant containing an NF-κB-luciferase reporter gene. In vivo injection of Domon L elevated both serum IL-6 and mucoprotein, whose gene expression is partly under the control of NF-κB. The spleen cells of rats treated with Domon L produced much more NO when stimulated with LPS + IFNg than spleen cells of untreated rats. These results suggest that Domon L acts as an anti-infectious agent via NF-κB activation.
Party Systems, the Selection and Control of Politicians and Corruption

This paper examines why democracy and electoral competition can sometimes fail to secure clean government in the interest of the people. Our argument is that party system features, which shape the effectiveness of elections as tools to select and control politicians, play a critical and overlooked role in conditioning the scope for corruption. We conceptualise governmental corruption as a classical principal-agent problem for voters, which is mediated by the extent to which party systems enable the electorate to select politicians who are likely to curb corruption and to hold accountable those who do not. We test this argument through a controlled comparative analysis of corruption in 80 democracies around the world and find broad support for our hypotheses. We gratefully acknowledge the very helpful comments on earlier versions of this article from Nic Cheeseman, Philip Keefer, Herbert Kitschelt, Mona Lyne, Edward Morgan-Jones, Simon Persico, and Nicolas Sauger. Dr Schleiter’s research for this project was supported by the British Academy (Grant Reference Number SG090658).
Evaluation of Vocal-Facial Based Emotion Primitives

: Emotion detection gains improved importance in man-machine interaction. There are two approaches to represent emotion: ﬁrst, discrete elementary emotions like fear or joy might be deﬁned, or an emotion space is used in which the discrete emotions deﬁne a point or a cluster. In this paper the latter method is used with a three-dimensional space spanned by the emotion primitives valence , dominance , and activation . Synchronously, sequences of speech and facial expressions are extracted from a TV talk-show to generate an audio-video data base of authentic emotions. From these recordings, three data subsets have been generated: video alone, audio alone and combined audio-video. Investigations have shown that the emotions expressed by facial parameters change with a time constant of roughly 1 sec. Thus an additional subset of segmented video data has been generated. These data have been evaluated by 15 persons, i.e., they estimated the intensity of the emotion primitives in the range from -1 to +1 using so-called Self Assessment Manikins (SAM). To test the reliability of these estimates, the correlation coeﬀcients of the estimates of the individual evaluators have been calculated. As a second measure, the standard deviation of the estimates for the four subsets and the three emotion primitives has been calculated. These measures have been used to decide whether or not the evaluated data base can be used as the ground truth for automatic emotion classiﬁcation.
Optimizing the Canopy Photosynthetic Rate by Patterns of Investment in Specific Leaf Mass

Given the total leaf mass per ground area in a laterally homogeneous vegetative canopy (of a crop, even-aged stand, or clonal plant), how should this mass be distributed with depth to maximize the canopy's photosynthetic rate? That is, how should the specific leaf mass, m (mass per unit of leaf area), vary with cumulative-leaf-area index, L? We present a formal solution using the calculus of variations, an analytical solution for simple cases, and general numerical methods. The predicted optimal gradients in m(L) are large but broadly comparable with those seen in field crops. Optimizing m(L) gives typically 5% greater photosynthesis than the best possible choice of a constant m(L). More significantly for competitive growth, optimizing m(L) upholds canopy photosynthesis down to very low average m; hence, it allows a high leaf-area index and attendant capacity to shade competitors. Photosynthetic gains from m(L) optimization are remarkably insensitive to leaf angle. Equally surprisingly, daily average canopy photosynthesis is also predicted to be insensitive to leaf angle, contrary to the predictions of earlier models. The accuracy of accounting for diffuse skylight interception appears crucial. We further analyze the ecological and agricultural significance of leaf angle, and we outline research needs for related problems of light interception, canopy developmental patterns, water-use efficiency, and nitrogen-use efficiency.
Identification of ontogenetic growth models for squid

Several ontogenetic growth models were fitted to size-at-age data of twelve species of squid from the recent suborders Myopsina and Oegopsina. These squid represent different habitats of the world ocean – from shelf to meso- and bathypelagic waters and from tropical to polar regions. Two main criteria were used in selecting the squid: large sample size (>150 individuals) and wide range of ontogenetic coverage (>2/3 of the whole ontogenesis). The growth models used were the exponential, Gompertz, Schnute and ad hoc two-stage models. They were fitted to size-at-age data using maximum likelihood for estimation and Akaike weights for identification. In all species, the 4-parameter Schnute or the 3-parameter Gompertz models provided the best fit. Size at the inflection point of the growth curve for most squid was smaller than size at 50% maturity, suggesting that maturation is not a major cause of the change in growth rate for these species. Mathematical and statistical procedures to calculate standard measures of growth, such as the instantaneous relative rate of growth, G, which are valid for all continuous growth models, are also presented.
A Note on Hierarchical Deterministic Keys for EC-KCDSA on Curve25519

Cryptocurrencies using a transactional model similar to that in Bitcoin [6] make use of asymmetric key-pairs to prove ownership of specific funds. Sending funds from one user to another is done by creating a transaction to an “address” generated by the receiver. The address is, for example, the hash of a public key along with a checksum, encoded in some human-readable format such as Base58 or Bech32. Spending those funds requires a signature on the spending transaction from that public key, proving both ownership and integrity of the spend transaction.
Taxonomic uncertainty of Stachytarpheta (Verbenaceae) in the Asia-Pacific and implications for invasive weed recognition and management

Stachytarpheta indica has been regarded as an agricultural weed occurring throughout south-east Asia. In Australia, it is classified as a prospective invasive weed by the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (Brown et al. 2008). After examining several papers from the 1990’s, we conclude that there is no evidence to support S. indica being in this region at all and that the name has been historically misapplied to several other species of Stachytarpheta. A table of characters is provided for four species of Stachytarpheta showing major character differences and highlights the confusion still surrounding some of the species. Additionally, Stachytarpheta cayennensis should be added to the flora of Christmas Island, while the taxonomic status of S. urticifolia needs to be examined in further detail.
On the “Online and Offline” Hybrid Teaching Mode of College English

hybrid teaching is a kind of teaching that combines online teaching with traditional teaching, which is defined as "online and offline". Through the organic combination of these two teaching forms, students' learning can be from shallow to deep. The purpose of College English is to make the present college students have good English comprehensive ability, so that they can effectively use English communication in their future study and life, so as to meet the needs of our social development and international communication. In order to achieve this goal, the adoption of "online and offline" hybrid teaching mode is a necessary trend, whichcan help college students to learn English better to some extent, and also help teachers to update teaching concepts and improve teaching effect in time.
IDENTIFICATION OF TWO NEW α-THALASSEMIA MUTATIONS IN EXON 2 OF THE α1-GLOBIN GENE

The most common causes of α-thalassemia are deletions that remove one or both of the functional α-globin genes. In addition, more than 30 different point mutations and small deletions/insertions have been reported for the α-globin genes. Here, we describe two new mutations occurring in exon 2 of the α1-globin gene. One mutation is an insertion of 21 bp that gives rise to a predicted α-globin chain containing a duplication of amino acid residues 93–99. The second mutation is a 33 bp deletion resulting in a predicted α-globin chain that is missing amino acid residues 64–74. Neither mutation results in a detectable hemoglobin variant, indicating that the variant α-globin chains are highly unstable. Carriers of these mutations have mild microcytosis and the phenotype of α+-thalassemia trait.
Supporting and Analyzing Loosely-Structured Collaborative Processes by means of Knowledge Representation, Management and Mining Models

—A knowledge-based framework for supporting and analyzing loosely-structured collaborative processes (LSCPs) is presented in this paper. The proposed framework is based on a number of knowledge representation, management and mining models that meaningfully exploit recent process mining techniques of traditional Workflow Management Systems (WfMS). In order to support the enactment, analysis and optimization of LSCPs in an Internet-worked virtual scenario , we illustrate a flexible integration architecture , coupled with a knowledge representation and discovery environment, and enhanced by ontology-based knowledge processing capabilities . In particular, an approach for restructuring logs of LSCPs is proposed. This approach allows to effectively analyze LSCPs at varying abstraction levels via process mining techniques, originally devised to analyze well-specified and well-structured workflow processes. Finally, the capabilities of the proposed knowledge-based framework are experimentally tested against several settings focusing on knowledge management models and methodologies in real-life large organizations, even in an inter-organizational manner.
Evidence for the Evolution of Unpalatability Through Kin Selection in the Heliconinae (Lepidoptera)

The relative palatabilities of seven species of heliconiine butterflies from Trinidad studied by Brower, Brower, and Collins (1963) correlate with variables directly related to individual dispersal and presumably inbreeding. The more unpalatable a species, the greater the number of geographic races and the higher the probability that populations will form site-specific roosting aggregations indicative of home-range behavior and inbreeding. These correlations are expected if kin selection has been important in the evolution of unpalatability in the Heliconiinae, but not if individual selection has been of overriding importance. The evidence supports the hypothesis that genes responsible for the production of unpalatability gain their advantage in part by having individuals carrying genes identical by descent nearby, so that a predator attacking one of these individuals will learn subsequently to avoid attacking other related individuals in the same area.