Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Growing Evidence that Perceptual Qualia are Neuroelectrical Not Computational

: Computational neuroscience attributes coloured areas and other perceptual qualia to calculations that are (as recently argued) realizable in multiple cellular forms. This faces serious issues in explaining how the various qualia arise and how they bind to form overall perceptions. Qualia may instead be neuroelectrical. Growing evidence indicates that (1) perceptions correlate with neuroelectrical activity spotted by locally activated EEGs, (2) the different qualia correlate with the different electrochemistries of unique detector cells, (3) a unified neural-electromagnetic field binds this activity to form overall perceptions, and (4) this field interacts with sensory circuits to help attentively guide perception. The coloured areas in images may thus be seated in the electrochemistry of unique cells, while constancy mechanisms and other multiply realizable computations just help refine these images behind the scenes. This theory is ultimately testable.
Course Transformation Using Mobile Technology

A course transformation grant was awarded by the university to implement the PC Tablet, wireless access, and WebCT in a senior level soils and foundations class for the fall semester 2003. The course is housed in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering Technology (CAET), the School of Engineering, Technology, and Computer Science (ETCS), Indiana-Purdue University Ft. Wayne (IPFW). The grant was a university “pilot” project as a first step in investigating more widespread use of mobile technology across the university curriculum. Each of the 18 students enrolled in the course received a COMPAQ Tablet for their use for the semester. The instructor was also provided a Tablet. Seven specific transformation initiatives were identified, and seven specific impacts on student learning were predicted with the use of mobile technology. The project assessment was defined by a series of detailed surveys throughout the semester, culminating in an extensive student survey that measured the impact of the Tablet on student learning. As the semester evolved, other issues related to the use of the Tablet were identified and became part of the final evaluation. This paper presents the results of the course transformation project assessment and makes recommendations related to the use of the PC Tablet for this particular course, for the department, for the school, and for the university community in general. Many issues related to effective implementation of mobile technology were discovered which will prove invaluable to university administrators as they evaluate potential models for more widespread implementation.
Relative Responsiveness Of Trade Flows To A Change In Prices And Exchange Rate In Developing Countries

In 1950 Orcutt conjectured that a countryi¯s trade flows could respond to a change in exchange rate quicker than they do to a change in relative prices. Previous research that supported Orcutti¯s hypothesis employed non-stationary data rendering the results to suffer from spurious regression problem. When we account for stationarity of the data by using cointegration and error-correction modeling, no strong evidence is found in support of the Orcutti¯s hypothesis. The findings in this paper for developing countries are similar to those found for developed countries.
Taking Advantage From The Increased Construction Liberalization Under Akfta To Indonesia’s Economic Growth

The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of the increased liberalization level of construction services under AKFTA on the Indonesian economy and on the performance of the construction service sector. The method used in this research is CGE with processing data through GTAP simulation. The GTAP simulation is divided into two parts: Simulation I, measures the impact of services sector liberalization in AKFTA and Simulation II, measures the impact of increased levels of liberalization specifically for the construction services sector in AKFTA. The Simulation I shows that welfare, GDP and the performance of construction services of Indonesia are increasing. Subsequently, Simulation II also shows the impact higher than Simulation I. Thus, it can be concluded that the increased liberalization of the construction services sector under AKFTA has a positive impact in Indonesia’s Economy. Keywords—Construction Liberalization; GTAP Simulation;
Improved Named Entity Recognition Through SVM-Based Combination

Named Entity Extraction (NER) consists in identifying specific textual expressions, which represent various types of concepts: persons, locations, organizations, etc. It is an important part of natural language processing, because it is often used when building more advanced text-based tools, especially in the context of information extraction. Consequently, many NER tools are now available, designed to handle various sorts of texts, languages and entity types. A recent study on biographical texts showed the overall indices used to assess the performance of these tools hide the fact they can behave rather differently depending on the textual context, and could actually be complementary. In this work, we check this assumption by proposing two methods allowing to combine several NER tools: one relies on a voting process and the other is SVM-based. Both take advantage of a global text feature to guide the combination process. We extend an existing corpus to provide enough data for training and testing. We implement an open source flexible platform aiming at benchmarking NER tools. We apply our combination methods on a selection of NER tools, including state-of-the-art ones, as well as our custom tool specifically designed to process hyperlinked biographical texts. Our results show both proposed combination approaches outmatch the individual performance of all the considered standalone NER tools. Of the two, the SVM-based approach reaches the highest performance.
Highly Effective and Noninvasive Near‐Infrared Eradication of a Staphylococcus aureus Biofilm on Implants by a Photoresponsive Coating within 20 Min

Biofilms have been related to the persistence of infections on medical implants, and these cannot be eradicated because of the resistance of biofilm structures. Therefore, a biocompatible phototherapeutic system is developed composed of MoS2, IR780 photosensitizer, and arginine–glycine–aspartic acid–cysteine (RGDC) to safely eradicate biofilms on titanium implants within 20 min. The magnetron‐sputtered MoS2 film possesses excellent photothermal properties, and IR780 can produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) with the irradiation of near‐infrared (NIR, λ = 700–1100 nm) light. Consequently, the combination of photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT), assisted by glutathione oxidation accelerated by NIR light, can provide synergistic and rapid killing of bacteria, i.e., 98.99 ± 0.42% eradication ratio against a Staphylococcus aureus biofilm in vivo within 20 min, which is much greater than that of PTT or PDT alone. With the assistance of ROS, the permeability of damaged bacterial membranes increases, and the damaged bacterial membranes become more sensitive to heat, thus accelerating the leakage of proteins from the bacteria. In addition, RGDC can provide excellent biosafety and osteoconductivity, which is confirmed by in vivo animal experiments.
Improved Nonparametric Bootstrap Tests of Lorenz Dominance

Abstract One income or wealth distribution is said to Lorenz dominate another when the Lorenz curve for the former is nowhere below that of the latter, indicating a (weakly) more equitable allocation of resources. Existing tests of the null of Lorenz dominance based on pairs of samples of income or wealth achieve the nominal rejection rate asymptotically when the two Lorenz curves are equal, but are conservative at other null configurations. We propose new nonparametric bootstrap tests of Lorenz dominance based on preliminary estimation of a contact set. Our tests achieve the nominal rejection rate asymptotically on the boundary of the null; that is, when Lorenz dominance is satisfied, and the Lorenz curves coincide on some interval. Numerical simulations indicate that our tests enjoy substantially improved power compared to existing procedures at relevant sample sizes. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Studying the enactment of School-Based Curriculum Development (SBCD) in Singapore

ABSTRACT Background: To help equip students with 21st century competencies, one popular strategy adopted by governments and schools worldwide is to move from less formal to more engaging school environments through School-Based Curriculum Development (SBCD). In Singapore, the governmental call to Teach Less and Learn More has galvanised SBCD in schools nationwide. Schools have been given more autonomy and greater flexibility to develop diverse approaches in innovating their own curriculum frameworks. Purpose: This study aims to provide a nuanced, retrospective account of the enactment of SBCD via Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-integrated, theme-based programmes in a primary school in Singapore. The research questions that guide this study are: (1) How do the school stakeholders enact SBCD? (2) How does the enactment affect the school stakeholders? Method: This study looked into curriculum innovation using a retrospective lens and employed a case study approach to examine the enactment of SBCD in the school. Five focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with the major stakeholders of the school, including two school leaders, ten key personnel and ten teachers across different subjects and grade levels. Thematic analysis of the data was undertaken. Findings: Four themes and twelve associated sub-themes were identified from the analysis of the FGDs. The four themes include experimentation, support, growth and challenges. This whole-school approach to curriculum innovation had a clear focus on mobilizing the school community to tackle the uncertainties of implementing an innovative curriculum. The stakeholders played diverse but intertwined roles throughout different stages of the enactment process, producing strong collegiality amongst the stakeholders. This prevailing collegiality, as embedded in the active participation of the stakeholders in a multiplicity of collective sharing and learning practices, seems likely to help the school achieved desired outcomes. Conclusions: The whole-school approach to curriculum innovation in the case school is promising from the perspectives of teaching-learning and student outcomes, but cannot provide a panacea for all the challenges encountered in the enactment process.
Dialogic Lessons and Triadic Relationship Among Pupils, Learning Topic, and Teacher

This paper argues that a teacher should and can be not only the organizer of a lesson as well as participant in a dialogue who has the equal right with pupils vis-à-vis the truth of the learning material in order to make lessons dialogic. To analyze such a teacher’s way of being in the lesson, the concept of a triadic relationship among pupils, learning material, and a teacher was introduced. The teacher can learn something new in the pupils’ learning material as the pupils can do. The teacher can discover an unknown question that she/he does not know its answer or even its existence in pupils’ wrong or irrelevant thoughts about the learning material. This sort of teacher’s learning makes classroom lessons dialogic as pupils and a teacher exercise the equal rights vis-à-vis the truth of the learning material in the lesson. Here, pupils and teachers learn about the learning material from each other. The importance of this sort of teacher’s learning for dialogic lessons has been rarely emphasized in dialogic pedagogy research. These arguments are advanced in this paper based on the analysis of the Japanese elementary teachers’ knowledge of practices. This paper focuses mainly on the pedagogical view named Saitou pedagogy developed by Kihaku Saitou and his colleagues, and studies their thoughts and classroom lessons to investigate teacher’s work to make lessons dialogic. To provide a theoretical basis for the analysis, theories of dialogue, developmental psychology and dialogic pedagogy were reviewed to understand how these theories had studied the triadic relationship and were compared with Saitou pedagogy. The result demonstrated that Bakhtin’s perspective on the dialogic author was useful in analyzing the teacher’s way of being in Saitou pedagogy. It was also suggested that Saitou pedagogy’s view of the unknown question would give Bakhtinian theories of dialogue a hint for new area of study.
PROTOTYPE APPLICATIONS OF A GENERALIZED SHORELINE CHANGE NUMERICAL MODEL

Three case studies are described in which long-term shoreline response was simulated using a numerical model. One project was along Kachemak Bay, Alaska and involved evaluation of design alternatives that included a detached breakwater, beach fill, and a revetment. The second project was on the north New Jersey coast and characterized by a long seawall and numerous groins. The third project was a model test of shoreline change behind three detached breakwaters Lake Erie. The shoreline response model used, called GENESIS, is demonstrated to have applicability to a wide range of commonly encountered shore protection situations.
Understanding Cruise Tourists' Satisfaction by Analysing Their Online Ratings and Reviews

Associating online ratings with reviews provides a potentially cost-effective way for cruise tourism managers to capture satisfaction and quality improvement information from customers so as to facilitate the sustainable development of the tourism industry. For this purpose, this study proposes an integrated approach that leverages text mining and empirical modeling to quantitatively correlate online ratings with reviews. From TripAdvisor.com, 4248 pairs of rating and review regarding Chicago’s First Lady Cruises were examined, with major topics identified. Subsequently, multilinear regression was employed to screen out the most impactful factors that influence overall ratings. Managerially, the idea of triggering the synergistic benefit from customer ratings and reviews is referential for market practitioners both within and beyond the tourism industry.
Gas Chromatography Study of Sulfur Removal from Jet Fuel Using Nanoporous Materials

Gas Chromatography Study of Sulfur Removal from Jet Fuel Using Nanoporous Materials by Samantha Kathiuska Samaniego Andrade Adsorptive desulfurization has been studied as a promising process to produce low-sulfur liquid fuels that achieve more stringent regulations. Although the process has proved to be effective to remove sulfur compounds from liquid fuels, a deep understanding of how the desulfurization occurs is still missing. In this work, gas chromatography coupled with Pulsed Flame Photometric Detector, GCPFPD, is used to analyze the sulfur content of Jet Fuel samples before and after adsorptive desulfurization using nanoporous adsorbents at different temperatures (30°C 180°C). The work aims to investigate if the adsorptive removal is selective to a certain fraction of sulfur compounds in the matrix of Jet Fuel. Also, the effect of temperature on the sulfur removal is studied. It was observed that on jet fuel, sulfur removal increases with temperature, reaching the highest sulfur removal at 180°C when using CuNa-Y zeolite (Dias da Silva, Samaniego Andrade, Zygourakis, & Wong, 2019). Sequential desulfurization experiments were done to see if the adsorbent can remove all sulfur compounds from jet fuel. At first, selectivity for the lighter sulfur compounds was observed, but after 4 desulfurization steps, all sulfur compounds were removed. This showed the adsorbent can remove all types of sulfur compounds in the matrix of jet fuel no matter their size. Additionally, other materials were tested to evaluate their performance at desulfurization of jet fuel. The materials of choice were three metal organic frameworks (MOFs); the first one is UiO-66, and the other two materials were a modified version of UiO-66, named UiO-66-10 and UiO-66-25, which were prepared with a higher content of hydrochloric acid (HCl), 10% and 25% respectively, to create defects in the structure of the pristine UiO-66. UiO-66 was selected for this work because of its high porosity and for having a pore size bigger than that of CuNa-Y zeolite. In the series of UiO-66 materials, UIO-66-10 showed the best sulfur removal which also increased with increasing temperature, reaching its maximum capacity at 180°C. However, CuNa-Y zeolite still achieves a higher sulfur capacity than UIO-66-10. All the treated samples were analyzed through GC-PFPD to check on any change in the sulfur matrix of jet fuel. In the case of UIO-66 materials, selectivity towards lighter sulfur compounds was observed and this increases as the temperature of treatment increases. This behavior was also observed for the samples treated with CuNa-Y zeolite.
Comparative Study on the Prediction of Symptomatic and Climatic based Malaria Parasite Counts Using Machine Learning Models

Dynamics of Malaria parasite diagnosis is complex and been widely studied. Research is on-going on the effects of climatic variations on symptomatic malaria infection. Malaria diagnosis can be asymptomatically or symptomatically low, mild and high. An analytical program is needed to detect individual malaria parasite counts from complex network of several infection counts. This study adopted the experimental malaria parasite counts collected from selected hospitals in Minna Metropolis, Niger State, Nigeria and Climatic data collected at the time the experiment was conducted from NECOP, Bosso, FUT Minna, Niger State, Nigeria. One thousand and two hundred (1,200) experimental data were collected and two classifiers Support Vector Machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) do the prediction. Experimental results indicated that SVM produced Accuracy 85.60%, Sensitivity 84.06%, Specificity 86.49%, False Positive Rate(FPr) 0.1351% and False Negative Rate(FNr) 0.1594% than Neural Network model of Accuracy 48.33%, Sensitivity 60.61%, Specificity 45.48%, low False Positive Rate (FPr) 0.5442% and False Negative Rate(FNr) 0.3939% as depicted in their respective confusion matrix.
Advances the Forward Security in Parallel Network File System using An Efficient and Reliable Key Exchange Protocols

In parallel file system we can disperse data over numerous nodes to permit simultaneous access by various errands of a parallel application. By play out the numerous errands in a parallel system is commonly to reduce execution and solid access to substantial data sets. In this work, we research the issue of secure many to numerous correspondences in substantial scale network file systems that bolster parallel access to different storage devices. That is, we consider a correspondence model where there are countless getting to various remote and conveyed storage devices in parallel. Especially, we concentrate on the most proficient method to trade key materials and set up parallel secure sessions between the clients and the storage devices in the parallel Network File System the present Internet standard in a productive and versatile way. In this paper we are proposed convention for performing key trade and furthermore build up parallel secure session amongst clients and storage devices. In this paper we are likewise proposed another idea for encryption and decoding of put away data. By actualizing this procedure we are utilizing mixture encryption and decoding calculation. By actualizing those ideas we can enhance execution of network and furthermore give greater security of put away data in the put away devices.
Drag and Noise Reduction of Flatback Airfoil by Span-wise Wavy Trailing Edge

Title of dissertation: DRAG AND NOISE REDUCTION OF FLATBACK AIRFOIL BY SPAN-WISE WAVY TRAILING EDGE Seung Joon Yang Doctor of Philosophy, 2019 Dissertation directed by: Professor James D. Baeder Department of Aerospace Engineering The flatback airfoil is a promising idea for future large wind turbine blade structure design; however, it causes notable drag increase and low frequency tonal noise due to the presence of span-wise coherent standing flow and Karman vortex shedding at the trailing edge. Current dissertation proposes a span-wise wavy trailing edge design as a solution to flatback airfoil drag and noise, and provides relevant CFD results. Proposed span-wise wavy trailing edge prevents the span-wise coherent standing flow and vortex shedding, and results in a decrease of the tonal noise and pressure drag of the airfoil. Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation is employed in HPC environments. In-house developed N-S solvers, OVERTURNS (CPU-based) and GPURANS3D (GPGPU) are used for the computation. A design parametric study for the span-wise wavy trailing edge is conducted in the first half of the dissertation. Aerodynamic and aeroacoustic performance of a particular flatback airfoil (FB3500-1750, tTE is 17.5% of a chord length) and various span-wise wavy trailing edge modifications are investigated, regarding the influence of the major wave design parameters. A total of 16 design variations of the wavy trailing edge are investigated. For a Reynolds number 666,000 and Mach number 0.3, the best trailing edge wave design is a combination of the less portion more than 0.25c length shallow wave depth; the best design reduces 60% (maximum) of the flatback airfoil with only 7% lift loss, and results in about 150% (maximum) of lift/drag ratio increase. Measured tonal noise is also reduced by about 20-25dB(SPL) with the best performance design. In the second half of the dissertation, the isolated rotor simulation is performed for a straight-flat trailing edge wind turbine blade and its wavy trailing edge modification. In the simulation, the Blunt-Wavy trailing edge (a combination of te augmentation and wavy modification) is proposed and applied at the inboard of baseline blade (SNL100-03FB). Applying the best performance wavy design, overall turbine power generation is increased by 2.62% and tonal noise is decreased by 5-15dB. DRAG AND NOISE REDUCTION OF FLATBACK AIRFOIL BY SPAN-WISE WAVY TRAILING EDGE
The Relationship between Social Intelligence and Political Skill: Evidence from Undergraduate Students in Thailand

The objective of this present study was to examine the association between social intelligence and political skill. Data were gathered from sixty undergraduate students who enrolled in management program in a selected public university in Bangkok, Thailand through a survey questionnaire. Modified versions of Tromso Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS) and The Political Skill Inventory were employed for data collection. Results demonstrated no significant correlation between overall social intelligence and overall political skill. However, when considered social intelligence sub-scales, this study found that social information process was positively correlated to political skill at an intermediate level while social awareness had an intermediate negative connection to political skill. Analysis of multiple regressions indicated that three sub-scales of social intelligence: social information process, social skills, and social awareness could explain 57.3% of variance to political skill (R2 = .573, F (3, 60) = 25.056, p <. 01). Nevertheless, only social information process and social awareness were significant predictors. In short, findings revealed that social information process (? = .423) significantly influenced political skill, as did social awareness (? = -.489).