Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring Interlanguage Pragmatic Knowledge of EFL Learners

Pragmatic competence is an integral and indispensable component of overall language competence. Omitting the pragmatic dimension from language assessment is, therefore, quite unfortunate. This book describes the development and validation of three test methods designed to test the interlanguage pragmatic knowledge of EFL learners. Altogether 413 subjects participated in the development of the tests. Results showed that all three methods investigated had measured learners' inter-language pragmatic knowledge. Quantitative analyses showed that the tests tapped the intended construct and the test methods measured a similar construct. Analyses of verbal reports yielded results which supported the quantitative analyses and revealed that the construct-relevant knowledge was involved in the test takers' cognitive activities. This book ends with some pedagogical implications of this study and directions for further research.
A New Data Acquisition System for the AMRL Low Speed Wind Tunnel

Abstract : The data acquisition system in the Low Speed Wind Tunnel at the Aeronautical and Maritime Research Laboratory was recently upgraded. The MicroVAX II host computer was replaced by a Digital AlphaServer 400 running Digital UNIX, and the Bi-directional Parallel Interface data bus was replaced by ethernet and fast serial communication. The upgrade provides a system which is easier to use; includes a graphical user interface; provides a communication bus based on standard communication protocols, which achieves higher data transfer rates; is far more reliable and easy to maintain; and the system is more flexible than previous versions.
Methods of forming information streams and their interaction with text models

Analysis of interaction IPi with TMi is made, types of modification of TMi, which are made under influence of IPi are researched. It’s shown that synthesis of IPi with TMi is made on different levels of abstract reflection of interacting components. This allows ensuring correct transformations which take place in TMi, during implementation of processes of synthesis IPi with TMi. Beside semantic parameters and their values imagination about priorities which characterize separate components of text models is introduced. Such extension allows better taking into account of semantic of separate text components during making processes of synthesis of IPi with TMi, which leads to increase of abilities of adequate description of social objects by means of text models.
EAP, Business English and Swales' approach to genre analysis

One of the most influential genre scholars is John Swales. His 1990 book Genre Analysis is a point of reference in the field and he is considered one of the most widely respected and cited researchers. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how John Swales' approach to genre analysis, which was originally designed to research English in academic and research settings, can al so be used for the textual analysis of occupational genres. The theory he develops in his latest two books (1990, 2004) focussing on discourse community, methodology and genre will be considered and applied to an occupational research corpus.
Orthographic enrichment for arabic grammatical analysis

The Arabic orthography is problematic in two ways: (1) it lacks the short vowels, and this leads to ambiguity as the same orthographic form can be pronounced in many different ways each of which can have its own grammatical category, and (2) the Arabic word may contain several units like pronouns, conjunctions, articles and prepositions without an intervening white space. These two problems lead to difficulties in the automatic processing of Arabic. The thesis proposes a pre-processing scheme that applies word segmentation and word vocalization for the purpose of grammatical analysis: part of speech tagging and parsing. The thesis examines the impact of human-produced vocalization and segmentation on the grammatical analysis of Arabic, then applies a pipeline of automatic vocalization and segmentation for the purpose of Arabic part of speech tagging. The pipeline is then used, along with the POS tags produced, for the purpose of dependency parsing, which produces grammatical relations between the words in a sentence. The study uses the memory-based algorithm for vocalization, segmentation, and part of speech tagging, and the natural language parser MaltParser for dependency parsing. The thesis represents the first approach to the processing of real-world Arabic, and has found that through the correct choice of features and algorithms, the need for pre-processing for grammatical analysis can be minimized.
Contour and Texture for Visual Recognition of Object Categories: Automatic Object Recognition Using Learned Patterns of Contour and Texture

The recognition of categories of objects in images has become a central topic in computer vision. Automatic visual recognition systems are rapidly becoming central to applications such as image search, robotics, vehicle safety systems, and image editing. This work addresses three sub-problems of recognition: image classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation. The task of classification is to determine whether an object of a particular category is present or not. Object detection aims to localize any objects of the category. Semantic segmentation is a more complete image understanding, whereby an image is partitioned into coherent regions that are assigned meaningful class labels. This thesis proposes novel discriminative learning approaches to these problems. Our primary contributions are threefold. Firstly, we demonstrate that the contours (the outline and interior edges) of an object are, alone, sufficient for accurate visual recognition. Secondly, we propose two powerful new feature types: (i) a learned codebook of contour fragments matched with an improved oriented chamfer distance, and (ii) a set of texture-based features that simultaneously exploit local appearance, approximate shape, and appearance context. The efficacy of these new features types is evaluated on a wide variety of datasets. Thirdly, we show how, in combination, these two largely orthogonal feature types can substantially improve recognition performance above that achieved by either alone.
Facilitating Knowledge Sharing and Analysis in EnergyInformatics with the Ontology for Energy Investigations (OEI)

Just as the other informatics-related domains (e.g., Bioinformatics) have discovered in recent years, the ever-growing domain of Energy Informatics (EI) can benefit from the use of ontologies, formalized, domain-specific taxonomies or vocabularies that are shared by a community of users. In this paper, an overview of the Ontology for Energy Investigations (OEI), an ontology that extends a subset of the well-conceived and heavily-researched Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI), is provided as well as a motivating example demonstrating how the use of a formal ontology for the EI domain can facilitate correct and consistent knowledge sharing and the multi-level analysis of its data and scientific investigations.
Getting Started with D3

The d3 Javascript library allows us to make beautiful, interactive browser-based data visualisations. By joining standard web page elements with a well-formed data set, d3 enables us to create everything from simple bar charts to complex infographics. d3 leverages existing web technologies, allowing the data scientist to create graphics using HTML and SVG, and to style them using CSS. This book guides a practitioner through the first few steps of learning d3 through a set of tutorials, based on real-world publicly available data from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Modern Tools for Modern Software

This is a proposal for a new software configure/build tool for building, maintaining, deploying, and installing software. At its completion, this new tool will replace current standard tool suites such as ''autoconf'', ''automake'', ''libtool'', and the de facto standard build tool, ''make''. This ambitious project is born out of the realization that as scientific software has grown in size and complexity over the years, the difficulty of configuring and building software has increased as well. For high performance scientific software, additional complexities often arises from the need for portability to multiple platforms (including many one-of-a-kind platforms), multilanguage implementations, use of third party libraries, and a need to adapt algorithms to the specific features of the hardware. Development of scientific software is being hampered by the quality of configuration and build tools commonly available. Inordinate amounts of time and expertise are required to develop and maintain the configure and build system for a moderately complex project. Better build and configure tools will increase developer productivity. This proposal is a first step in a process of shoring up the foundation upon which DOE software is created and used.
Life Experience pada Wirausaha Generasi Digital

Wirausahawan didefinisikan sebagai individu yang mendirikan, mengelola, mengembangkan dan melembagakan perusahaan milik sendiri, sekaligus menciptakan lapangan kerja bagi orang lain. Berwirausaha juga merupakan suatu proses yang dilakukan individu untuk membuat sesuatu yang baru dan bernilai dengan mencurahkan waktu, tenaga dan sumber daya. Tentu saja waktu yang dibutuhkan dalam proses berwirausaha berbeda-beda dari masa ke masa. Oleh karena itu penelitian ini berfokus pada life experience wirausaha muda yang hidup di zaman digital seperti saat ini . Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk me mahami fenomena yang muncul pada wirausahawan muda dan mengapa wirausahawan muda tersebut melakukan perilaku berwirausaha serta bagaimana proses wirausahawan muda dalam membangun bisnisnya. Subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah seorang wirausaha muda berjenis kelamin perempuan berumur 22 tahun. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif . Teknik pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan wawancara semi terstruktur dan observasi pemeran serta sebagai pengamat. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa terdapat ciri dan pola-pola khusus pada wirausahawan muda yakni, lost, survive, trial-error dan kontribusi IT dalam menunjang perilaku berwirausaha pada wirausahawan muda. Kata Kunci :Generasi Digital, Life experience, Wirausaha
Linear Robust Control in Indirect Deformable Object Manipulation

Robotic platforms have several characteristics such as speed and precision that make them enticing for use in medical procedures. Companies such as Intuitive Medical and Titan Medical have taken advantage of these features to introduce surgical robots for minimally invasive procedures. Such robots aim to reduce procedure and patient recovery times. Current technology requires platforms to be master-slave manipulators controlled by a surgeon, effectively converting the robot into an expensive surgical tool. Research into the interaction between robotic platforms and deformable objects such as human tissue is necessary in the development of autonomous and semi-autonomous surgical systems. This thesis investigates a class of robust linear controllers based on a worst case performance measure known as the H∞ norm, for the purpose of performing so called Indirect Deformable Object Manipulation (IDOM). This task allows positional regulation of regions of interest in a deformable object without directly interacting with them, enabling tasks such as stabilization of tumors during biopsies or automatic suturing. A complete approach to generating linear H∞ based controllers is presented, from derivation of a plant model to the actual synthesis of the controller. The introduction of model uncertainty requires μ synthesis techniques, which extend H∞ designs to produce highly robust controller solutions. In addition to H∞ iv and μ synthesis designs, the thesis presents an approach to design an optimal PID controller with gains that minimize the H∞ norm of a weighted plant. The three control approaches are simulated performing set point regulation in MATLAB ’s simulink. Simulations included disturbance inputs and noises to test stability and robustness of the approaches. H∞ controllers had the best robust performance of the controllers simulated, although all controllers simulated were stable. TheH∞ and PID controllers were validated in an experimental setting, with experiments performed on two different deformable synthetic materials. It was found that H∞ techniques were highly robust and provided good tracking performance for a material that behaved in a relatively elastic manner, but failed to track well when applied to a highly nonlinear rubber compound. PID based control was outperformed by H∞ control in experiments performed on the elastic material, but proved to be superior when faced with the nonlinear material. These experimental findings are discussed and a linear H∞ control design approach is proposed.
Probabilistic Speech Detection

This thesis deals with the detection of speech in signals that may contain very different noise types, referred to as the 'Voice Activity Detection' (VAD) problem. The signals consist of sections of noise only and sections of speech and noise in an additive mixture; convolutive mixtures are not addressed. Two different probabilistic methods are developed to solve the VAD problem. One is a discriminant-function based method in which a linear network with a single logistic output is trained to output the probability of speech presence from a given sound signal. The other is based on modelling of class-conditional probability densities, using Independent Component Analysis (ICA) methods. The algorithms are tested extensively and comparisons are made between them. They are also compared to an industry standard VAD algorithm, namely that of the the ITU-T G.729B recommendation and one other VAD. The results show the crucial importance of considering the type of noise present with the speech for obtaining robust speech detection and that for certain noise types, performance can be bettered with the developed VAD algorithms.
Die Mortar Methode für Finite Elemente hoher Ordnung

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit einer nicht-konformen Diskretisierungsstrategie fur Finite Elemente hoher Ordnung (p-Version) zur Kopplung von Hexaeder- und Tetraederelementen. Vorgestellt wird eine speziell fur strukturmechanische Probleme angepasste Ansatzbasis fur Tetraeder. Des Weiteren werden verschiedene Mortar-Ansatze fur die Spannungen auf der Kontaktflache zwischen den nicht konformen Finite-Element-Netzen entwickelt.
The Mentee's Guide: Making Mentoring Work for You

Foreword by Carol B. Muller ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xv The Authors xvii 1 The Power and Process of Mentoring 1 2 Preparing Yourself to Make the Most of Mentoring 15 3 Finding and Getting to Know Your Mentor 39 4 Establishing Agreements with Your Mentor 55 5 Doing the Work 79 6 Coming to Closure with Your Mentor 99 7 Making the Transition from Mentee to Mentor 113 Appendix: Digging Deeper: An Annotated List of Helpful Resources 131 References 141 Index 145
Developing acoustic models for automatic speech recognition in swedish

This thesis is concerned with automatic continuous speech recognition using trainable systems. The aim of this work is to build acoustic models for spoken Swedish. This is done employing hidden Markov models and using the SpeechDat database to train their parameters. Acoustic modeling has been worked out at a phonetic level, allowing general speech recognition applications, even though a simplified task (digits and natural number recognition) has been considered for model evaluation. Different kinds of phone models have been tested, including context independent models and two variations of context dependent models. Furthermore many experiments have been done with bigram language models to tune some of the system parameters. System performance over various speaker subsets with different sex, age and dialect has also been examined. Results are compared to previous similar studies showing a remarkable improvement.
A Study of Global Ocean Data Assimilation using VAF

ARCO and TAO data which supply three dimensional global ocean information are assimilated to the background field from a general circulation model, MOM3. Using a variational Analysis using Filter (VAF), which is a spatial variational filter designed to reduce computational time and space efficiently and economically, observed ARGO and TAO data are assimilated to the OGCM-generated background sea temperature for the generation of initial condition of the model. For the assessment of the assimilation impact, a comparative experiment has been done by integrating the model from different intial conditions: one from ARGO-, TAO-data assimilated initial condition and the other from background state without assimilation. The assimilated analysis field not only depicts major oceanic features more realistically but also reduces several systematic model bias that appear in every current OGCMs experiments. From the 10-month of model integrations with and without assimilated initial conditions, it is found that the major assimilated characteristics in sea temperature appeared in the initial field remain persistently throughout the integration. Such implies that the assimilated characteristics of the reduced sea temperature bias is to last in the integration without rapid restoration to the non-assimilated OGCM integration state by dispersing mass field in the form of internal gravity waves. From our analysis, it is concluded that the data assimilation method adapted in this study to MOM3 is reasonable and applicable with dynamical consistency. The success in generating initial condition with ARGO and TAO data assimilation has significant implication upon the prediction of the long-term climate and weather using ocean-atmosphere coupled model.
FIRST DETECTION OF HYDROGEN CHLORIDE TOWARD PROTOSTELLAR SHOCKS

We present the first detection of hydrogen chloride in a protostellar shock by observing the fundamental transition at 626 GHz with the HIFI spectrometer. We detected two of the three hyperfine lines from which we derived a line opacity ⩽1. Using a non-local thermodynamic equilibrium large velocity gradient code, we constrained the HCl column density, temperature, and density of the emitting gas. The hypothesis that the emission originates in the molecular cloud is ruled out because it would imply a very dense gas. Conversely, assuming that the emission originates in the 10″–15″ size shocked gas previously observed at the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer, we obtain N(HCl) = 0.7–2 × 1013 cm−2, temperature >15 K, and density >3 × 105 cm−3. Combining these with the Herschel HIFI CO(5–4) observations allows us to further constrain the gas density and temperature, 105–106 cm−3 and 120–250 K, respectively, as well as the HCl column density, 2 × 1013 cm−2, and, finally, the abundance ∼3–6 × 10−9. The estimated HCl abundance is consistent with that previously observed in low- and high-mass protostars. This puzzling result in the L1157-B1 shock, where species from volatile and refractory grain components are enhanced, suggests either that HCl is not the main reservoir of chlorine in the gas phase, which goes against previous chemical model predictions, or that the elemental chlorine abundance is low in L1157-B1. Astrochemical modeling suggests that HCl is in fact formed in the gas phase at low temperatures prior to the occurrence of the shock; the latter does not enhance its abundance.
Annotation of disfluencies in Spanish dialogues

This paper presents the inventory of disﬂuencies and the annotation procedure for a set of 227 Spanish dialogues recorded according to the well known Wizard of Oz paradigm. A XML-like annotation scheme was designed and used, which accounted only for disﬂuencies happening in the dialogues. A ﬁrst draft of the manual for annotators was written and iteratively tested, corrected and augmented over a representative subset of dialogues. Finally the whole set of dialogues was annotated with acoustic, lexical and syntactic disﬂuencies, as well as discourse markers, using the ultimate version of the manual. Only user turns were annotated, because WoZ turns were automatically synthetized according to a collection of rules and templates. A very simple parser was implemented, which helped to locate most errors in annotations. A detailed inspection of the annotations revealed that most disﬂuencies were grouped into certain user turns. Statistics show that acoustic phenomena: noises produced by user, lengthening of sounds, silence pauses and ﬁlled pauses, were the most common disﬂuencies. On the other hand, disﬂuencies were not uniformly distributed among speakers. Some speakers were remarkably more prone to hesitate, repeat or correct fragments of speech than others.
Software for optimal design in population pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics : a comparison

Introduction: Following the first theoretical work on optimal design for nonlinear mixed effect models, this research theme has rapidly grown both in methodological and application developments. There are now several different software tools that implement an evaluation of the Fisher information matrix for population PK and PD models and proposed optimization of the experimental designs. In 2006, the Population Optimal Design of Experiments workshop was created with a meeting every year in May (www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~bb/PODE/PODE2007.html). This year at PODE07 a special session was organized to present different software tools for population PK/PD optimal design and to compare them with respect to their statistical methodology. Objectives: 1) To present the different software tools; 2) To compare the statistical methods implemented in these tools; 3) To report the conclusion of the PODE07 meeting with respect to future software development in population PK/PD design. Methods: The software tools will be compared with respect to: a) their availability, b) required language, c) library of PK or PD models, d) ability to deal with multiresponse models and/or with models defined by differential equations, e) approximations made to compute the Fisher information matrix, f) optimisation criteria, g)optimisation algorithms, h) ability to optimize design structure, i) ability to deal with constraints in sampling times, j) availability of optimisation trough sampling windows, k) assessment of user specified designs, l) ability to deal with unbalanced multiresponse designs, m) ability to deal with correlations between random effects, o) provided outputs . Results: The five software tools discussed at PODE07 are (in alphabetical order): PFIM (S. Retout & F. Mentre), PkStaMP (S. Leonov), PopDes (K. Ogungbenro & I. Gueorguieva) PopED (A. Hooker), and WinPOPT (S. Duffull). Tables comparing the software with respect to the different aspects described in the method section will be reported. The conclusions of the PODE07 meeting regarding future software development for optimal design in population PK/PD will be presented.