Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of interactive discussions on L2 Chinese composition writing

Grounded in both interactionist and collaborative learning theories, this study empirically investigates the effects of interactive second language (L2) practice on subsequent individual L2 Chinese composition writing. In L2 classrooms, the learning of writing is often treated as an individual act. However, researchers (Hamdaoui, 2006; Susser, 1994; Weissberg, 2006) have argued that writing should be socially situated, and collaborative learning of L2 writing may generate the cognitive skills needed for the development of L2 writing ability. Two forms of interactive discussion were investigated: online text chat communication and face-to-face (FTF) oral discussion. Six third-year Chinese L2 learners participated in this study. The participants conducted five online-chat and five FTF pair discussion tasks. Upon completing each interactive task, students immediately wrote a 350-character composition independently on the topic that was addressed in the interactive session. Interviews were also conducted individually with the participants to elicit learner perception data. The primary results indicated that both mediums had benefits for the development of L2 Chinese writing in both cognitive and social dimensions, including improving L2 composition writing fluency and heightened motivation for learning Chinese writing. The collaborative pattern and the transfer process, however, differed between the two mediums. The collaborative pattern in the online chats was relatively equal, whereas the collaborative pattern in the FTF conversations was relatively unequal. The transfer process from the online chats to post-chat composition writing was more of a parallel process, whereas a more selective transfer pattern was seen from the FTF sessions to the post-FTF composition writing. The FTF conversations also stimulated a deeper thinking process and activated higher-level cognitive skills. In summary, the findings in this study support the integration of interactive practice in the learning of L2 Chinese writing.
Plane-sweep algorithm: various tools for computer vision (パターン認識・メディア理解)

Recent research on computer vision has made significant progress in 3d reconstruction and free-viewpoint video however most of these methods are not suited for real-time rendering. This paper presents a Video-Based Rendering method that provides online new viewpoints of the scene from a set of webcams. Our method follows a plane-sweep approach perfectly suited for GPU implementation. This paper mainly focuses on different implementations of this method for different purposes. Indeed, our basic plane-sweep technique uses 4 input cameras to create online new views. However this method can be modified to be used with up to 10 cameras or more by a camera selection process. This method can also be adapted to handle moving input cameras using a real-time camera calibration technique. Moreover, this method can easily render a depth map instead of a new view. Finally, we explain how the plane-sweep algorithm can be modified to create multiple new views simultaneously. This latter application is mainly designed for autostereoscopic displays application. Implementation and performance are detailed for all these plane-sweep methods.
Dynamic Routing in Networks with Unidirectional Links

Acknowledgements I would particularly like to thank Walid Dabbous, my supervisor, for all his accurate comments and feedback during the placement and while writing this report. I'm also grateful grateful to the Rodeo team and the Inria which provided me the best possible technical and human environment to make this placement a very enriching experience.
The distribution of success instants in contention trees

The thread-tension meter has a housing (1) which is divided into a reading head (2) and a remaining housing part (3). The reading head (2) can be pivoted 90 DEG relative to the remaining housing part (3), as required, so that it is possible to read off the thread tension easily in any position of the thread.
Plus ça change: analyzing performances of Chopin’s Mazurka Op. 24 No. 2

Performances of the same piece can differ from one another in innumerable ways and for many different reasons. Such differences are of considerable interest to musicologists and psychologists. The aim of the current study is to analyze the timing and dynamic patterns of numerous performances in order to explore the musical reasons for use as well as differences in use of those patterns. More specifically it investigates the relationship between 1) structural and thematic characteristics of a piece and the timing and dynamic characteristics of performances of that work and 2) the relationship between patterns of timing and those of dynamics. A new methodology is developed and applied which enables the systematic analysis and comparison of different performances by identifying patterns of performance, or performance motives, and their location in performance. The results show that, in general, the structure of a piece emerges from the performance patterns. The relationship between timing and dynamics is not direct and the sources for use of particular patterns seem to be many and varied, including structural and thematic considerations. However, the performance patterns at section ends seem to be most closely related to the surrounding long-term structural characteristics, while those within some sections seem to be closely related to the motivic patterns driven by genre-specific characteristics of the piece.
Automatic Interpretation of Raster-Based Topographic Maps by Means of Queries

A method for producing a T-shaped gate electrode of a semiconductor device including forming an insulating film on a semiconductor substrate, etching away a prescribed portion of the insulating film, depositing a metal film having a prescribed thickness, forming a first photoresist film and removing the photoresist film except where the insulating film has been removed, forming a second photoresist film, patterning the second photoresist film to expose the metal film along a side wall of the insulating film, etching away a portion of the metal film using the first and second photoresist films as a mask, depositing a gate metal and removing the first and second photoresist films and overlying gate metal by lift-off, and etching away the metal films remaining on the semiconductor substrate and the insulating film. Thereby, a T-shaped gate electrode with shortened length is formed.
Recherches sur les fractions continues

© Université Paul Sabatier, 1894, tous droits réservés. L’accès aux archives de la revue « Annales de la faculté des sciences de Toulouse » (http://picard.ups-tlse.fr/~annales/) implique l’accord avec les conditions générales d’utilisation (http://www.numdam.org/conditions). Toute utilisation commerciale ou impression systématique est constitutive d’une infraction pénale. Toute copie ou impression de ce fichier doit contenir la présente mention de copyright.
Hardware Implementation of Hexagonal Sampling based Bio-Inspired Retinal Encoder

This paper addresses hardware implementation of a power efficient retinal encoder system used in visual prosthesis equipment for blind people. The hardware architecture is inspired from the retinal receptive fields in mammalian vision system. The captured image is passed through several filter banks in different filtering stages in primate vision system. As the photoreceptors in the primate vision system are arranged in hexagonal fashion, the hexagonal tessellation scheme was found to be the most suitable sampling scheme for retinal image processing. In this work, the hardware implementation of different retinal filtering stages and final edge detection scheme is performed in Altera Cyclone II FPGA and in Synopsys Design Vision. An area efficient Cellular Logic Array Processing (CLAP) algorithm is used as the final stage edge detector. Both rectangular and hexagonal edge detection schemes were tested and their performance was analysed using Berkeley Segmentation Dataset and ROC performance scheme.
Block Save Addition with Threshold Gates

We investigate the realization of small depth feed-forward linear threshold networks capable of performing multi-operand addition. We focus on parallel designs for high performance implementations. More in particular we discuss depth-2 networks capable of reducing the multi-operand addition into a two operand addition which is performed by a high speed two operand adder for the final reduction to the sum. First we provide some background information related to the design of high performance multi-operand addition using ordinary Boolean logic. Consequently we focus on design techniques adaptable to linear threshold gates. We review existing schemes and we present some new results regarding the design of multi-operand addition with feed-forward linear threshold networks. We propose a scheme that improves the overall cost substantially for the block save addition and for entire multi-operand addition network. We estimate, for a number of block save adders of practical interest, the overall cost of an implementation by computing the number of wires (actually the number of inputs per gates) and the number of gates required for the linear threshold network. For usual dimensions of operands our estimations suggest that with equal asymptotic bounds for the cost of the network the scheme known to be the most cost effective scheme for depth-2 block save addition requires up to 2:729 more gates and up to 3:016 more wires than ours.
Clarifying specialized forms of association in UML and OML

Aggregation is primarily a modelling tool. In order to assist software developersunderstand, model and represent their application, most OO methods have identi¯ed someform of aggregation (or whole-part relationship) as being useful in many situations. Oneproblem is that the various types of aggregation discussed in refs. 4{6 (Figure 1) are notsupported explicitly at the coding level. Furthermore, when discussing aggregation withany programming language expert, the concerns are not those of the con¯gurational (wherethe parts are structurally or functionally related) or the homeomerous (where the parts areof the same substance as the whole) nature of the relationship (Figure 1) but include thoseof lifetime dependency, coincident destruction and whether to use a reference, embeddedvalue or pointer.
Evaluation of Two-Handed Multi-Finger Haptic Device SPIDAR-8;

This paper evaluates a two-handed multi-finger haptic device SPIDAR-8. The SPIDAR-8 has eight fingertip attachment devices in which each fingertip attachment device is connected with three strings. The SPIDAR-8 calculates a 3D position of each fingertip using the lengths of three strings connecting to that fingertip attachment device, and controls tensions of three strings to display a force feedback when the position of any finger comes into contact with the virtual object. It allows the user to manipulate the virtual objects in the computer simulated virtual environment with the sensation that the manipulated virtual objects are real. The experimental results of a Fit-TheFace task using SPIDAR-8 show effectiveness.
Statistical Modeling for Simultaneous Data Clustering, Features Selection, and Outliers Rejection

Model-based approaches and in particular finite mixture models are widely used for data clustering, which is a crucial step in several applications of practical importance. Indeed, many pattern recognition, computer vision, and image processing applications can be approached as feature space clustering problems. However, the use of these approaches for complex high-dimensional data presents several challenges such as the presence of many irrelevant features, which may affect the speed, and compromise the accuracy of the used learning algorithm. Another problem is the presence of outliers which potentially influence the resulting model parameters. Generally; clustering, features selection, and outliers detection problems have been approached separately. In this thesis, we propose a unified statistical framework to address the three problems simultaneously. The proposed statistical model partitions a given data set without a priori information about the number of clusters, the saliency of the features, or the number of outliers. We illustrate the performance of our approach using different applications involving synthetic data, real data, and objects shape clustering.
Gesualdo: the man and his music

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Verona, is equally celebrated as the composer of madrigals of great power and tortured complexity and as the murderer of his wife and her lover. His life and compositions are not unconnected. His neurotic sensibility found an ideal outlet in the mannerist tendencies of late Renaissance music and his works are the most extreme examples of those tendencies. Glenn Watkins' extended study of Gesualdo's life and works was originally published in 1973. Alongside detailed analysis of Gesualdo's madrigals and of his few works in different genres, this edition contains much new biographical material, particularly on the latter part of the composer's life.
Type underspecification and On-line Type Construction in the Lexicon

Many recent lexical and syntactic theories have used TYPE HIERARCHIES to model linguistic generalizations, including valence alternations, morphological generalizations, subregularities, and positive exceptions (Bobrow & Webber 1980; Flickinger et al. 1985; Hudson 1984; Lakoff 1987; Pollard & Sag 1987; Jurafsky 1992; Briscoe et al. 1994; Pollard & Sag 1994). Despite these successes, current type hierarchies are unable to model LEXICAL PRODUCTIVITY: the kind of productive patterns which occur in morphologically recursive languages, lexical borrowing and learning, and productive valence alternations (Hankamer 1989; Pinker 1989). This failure is due to the traditional conception of lexical types as generalizations over actual fully specified entries, functioning like redundancy rules. A lexical type hierarchy gives us an inventory of the word classes in a language, but does not tell us how to use productive processes like inflection to create new forms. To model lexical productivity, we propose to underspecify the type hierarchy. For example, rather than store a type for each surface form of each word of the language, we store a single type for each root and each productive morphological template. Then these types are combined on-line to build types for surface forms in processing or producing an utterance, by an algorithm we call ON-LINE TYPE CREATION. Thus some of the burden typically borne by the lexical type hierarchy is shifted to the processing component, which combines these types on-line. Although our system is embedded in the specific framework of CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR (Fillmore et al. 1988; Kay 1990; Lakoff 1987; Goldberg 1991; Goldberg 1992; Koenig 1993), it is directly applicable to any typed theory such as HPSG. In fact, we show that on-line type construction can advantageously replace mechanisms like lexical rules which are used in HPSG to model lexical productivity.
Preparing for Data-driven Infrastructure

Managing data is a strategic problem for HE institutional managers and a technical problem for IT staff. This report provides an overview of some concepts and pragmatic approaches as well as tools that can help address this strategic and technical problem. Specifically, this report: 1) describes data-centric architectures; 2) gives some examples of how organisations are already sharing data and discusses this from a data-centric perspective; 3) introduces some tools and technologies that can support data-centric architectures as well as some new models of data management; 4) concludes with a look at the direction of travel. This report also provides a glossary to help clarify key terms and a ‘References’ section listing works cited.
PADRES: A Distributed Content-Based Publish/Subscribe System

In an electrolytic cell having a membrane and vertical electrodes composed of a plurality of units, a. the electrode having one polarity is horizontally divided into a plurality of units, b. the electrode having the opposite polarity is vertically divided into a plurality of units, and c. the units of at least one of the two electrodes are adapted to be displaced by spring elements. Spacers are suitably provided between the units of that electrode which is not contacted by the membrane.
Zoomology: ComparingTwo Large Hierarchical Trees

Zoomology compares two classification datasets. In our solution the two trees are merged into a single overview, which unfolds top to bottom and left to right. Color represents rank, and the width of a classification node corresponds to the number of its descendants. Matched twin detail windows allow similarities and differences to be compared as the user navigates their hierarchies via a zoomable interface. THE ZOOMOLOGY APPROACH Our approach is a hybrid of several known techniques built within an overview and detail framework. The overview provides the “big picture” while the detail view explores substructures and nodes within the hierarchies.
BST - BGP Scalable Transport

A method to produce an electrode by coating at least a portion of a valve metal substrate sequentially with first and second liquid solutions containing different proportions of dissolved ruthenium and valve metal values; the second solution having a greater valve metal to ruthenium weight ratio than the first solution. At least a portion of the substrate is contacted with a first liquid solution containing ruthenium and the valve metal in amounts of from about 1 to about 50 milligrams per milliliter of the solution. The weight ratio of the valve metal to ruthenium in the first solution is from about 1:4 to about 2:1. The so-contacted surface is heated to oxidize the deposited ruthenium and valve metal values. Thereafter at least the oxidized surface is contacted with a second solution containing dissolved valve metal and ruthenium values in a weight ratio of from about 20:1 to about 2:1 and heated to oxidize the deposited metal values.
Aspect-Oriented Analysis and Design

"Developers who are using aspect-oriented programming will appreciate this contribution to aspect-oriented analysis and design. The authors are pioneers in this area and have elaborated on past research to produce a detailed methodology and notation for early aspects. "-Ron Bodkin, Chief Technology Officer, New Aspects of Software"Aspect-orientation is a powerful approach for programming complex systems. There is a lot to be gained from applying this approach during modeling and designing, as well. The Theme approach in this book represents an important advancement in AOP adoption by providing practitioners means to apply aspect-orientation early on. "-Ramnivas Laddad, Author of AspectJ in Action"Clarke & Baniassad have written an interesting book that shows how to use aspects to solve a difficult problem: composing independent program fragments with overlapping functionality. The included case studies well illustrate the principles. I recommend the book. -Charles B. Haley, Research Fellow, The Open University"This book presents a very useful set of techniques for helping software developers to identify the aspects. I am sure that this book will rapidly become a landmark reference for the software community! "-Joao M. Fernandes, Ph.D., Universidade do MinhoAspect-oriented software development (AOSD) is emerging as a viable approach for allowing the separate expression of multiple concerns along with "weaving" technologies for knitting together these separate expressions into coherent systems. Thanks to its great promise as an approach to simplifying the development of complex systems, many expert observers view AOSD as a worthwhile successor to the prevalent object-oriented paradigm.In this new book, two AOSD experts apply theory to the practical realm of real-world development. They explain the different kinds of aspects, help the reader identify them, and provide guidance on successful design and implementation. The result is an applicable and easy-to-digest methodology for simplifying and optimizing the development of software systems.Aspect-Oriented Analysis and Design: The Theme Approach will be particularly helpful for developers who are trying to answer the common questions of "What is an aspect? ", "Which aspects should I be coding? ", and "How do I design aspects? " Readers will come away with a starting point for thinking about aspects and accounting for them in requirements and design.Meanwhile, seasoned AO practitioners will learn more about different models of decomposition, identifying aspect functionality in requirements documentation, designing aspects, and how to map aspect designs to code. The authors' groundbreaking Theme approach to AOSD offers both a flexible way to identify aspect functionality and a UML-based design modeling language that can describe aspects independently of programming language.In short, practitioners and early adopters of AO alike will appreciate this book's practical information on how to make the significant shift to AOSD. © Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Problem-based learning: a case study in computer science

ETSE-URV, Av. del Paisos Catalans, 26, 43006, Tarragona, SpainIn engineering-related disciplines the theoretical body of knowledge is first taught to the students, whothen use what they have learnt to solve specific problems. The main drawbacks of this approach are lackof motivation and high drop-out and failure rates. This case study uses the PBL approach in anintroductory course of computer architecture to overcome the main drawbacks of more traditionalteaching schemes. Moreover, through PBL, students develop problem-solving skills, self-directed learningskills and critical thinking, all of which are very important in computer science. The students and theteachers have assessed the experience and the results are very satisfactory in both cases. The failure rate isreduced and students develop their analysis and communication skills.Keywords Problem-based learning; computer science; computer introduction
User-centered design of a tool for interactive computer-generated audiovisuals

The present study aims to design a tool for interactive computer-generated audiovisuals. In this paper, we investigate if the tools for audio- visual performance and composition have caught up with the growing interest and the practices in the field. We have adopted a user-centered design approach for our study, based on interviews and a workshop with practitioners. The interviews identified key themes – expressivity, ease of use and connection with the audience – that were explored in the workshop. During the workshop, a novel methodology was adopt- ed – reboot – which expands upon the bootlegging technique. Key ide- as regarding audiovisual performance gathered from the interviews; sketches for novel audiovisual tools resulting from the workshop; and the reboot technique, are the main contributions of this study.
A parallel net of (cid:0)(cid:1)(cid:2)NN(cid:3) K(cid:2)NN(cid:4) classifiers for optical inspection of surface defects in ferrites (cid:0)

The challenging task of optical inspection of surface defects in ferrite cores has been successfully approached with a set of methods(cid:0) In this paper the attention is paid to the k Nearest Neighbours classi(cid:1)er developed for the system(cid:0) A parallel net of two(cid:2)decision classi(cid:1)ers is presented(cid:0) The combination of the (cid:3)(cid:2)NN and k(cid:2)NN rules reduces the training time(cid:0) A great part of computations is restricted to the class overlap area(cid:0) The classi(cid:1)cation quality is signi(cid:1)cantly improved if a separate feature selectionfor each of the componentclassi(cid:1)ers is done(cid:0) A dramatic improvementof classi(cid:1)cation speedobtainedbyreferencepatternssetsreductionforcomponentclassi(cid:1)ersis vital(cid:4)asin theconsidered task the classi(cid:1)er is used for recognition