Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of experimental conditions on sound pleasantness evaluations

Being able to characterize and estimate the urban sound perception is a key point to improve the city dwellers environmental quality. In the past decade, various studies have focused on collecting perceived global sound pleasantness at specific locations. Some of them were carried out on field in order to evaluate the soundscape perception of the participants directly in their context. Other studies were realized in laboratory to better control the stimuli and to increase the number of participants who were subjected to the same sound environment. Most of the laboratory experiments are done in large or semi-anechoic chamber with calibrated and highly realistic audio reproduction in order to respect the ecological validity of the experiment. On one hand, even with a high immersive level, the laboratory context is not as rich as the field context and the two types of experiment could lead to different results. On the other hand, few studies exist showing the influence of decreasing ecological validity for the same experience. This work presents a short statistical analysis of perceptive evaluations of ten urban locations under 4 different test conditions. First, evaluations are carried out directly in-situ in the city of Paris. Then audio-visual recordings of these locations are evaluated in three different experimental conditions: (i) in a well-controlled acoustic laboratory in Paris region with French people, (ii) in an acoustic laboratory in Buenos Aires with Argentinean participants and lowest immersive conditions, (iii) in a habitational room with Argentinean participants and subjective calibration. The study reveals that both the 'country' factor and the experimental conditions in laboratory do not show any significant impact on the perceived sound pleasantness and perceived loudness assessments.
Direct and indirect pathways of fitness‐impact in a protozoan‐infected kissing bug

Abstract Parasites can reduce host fitness through short‐term mortality, complete or partial castration, or slight reductions in host fecundity. Hosts may reduce reproductive effort as an adaptive strategy to tolerate parasitism. However, host fitness reduction may be unrelated to host adaptation but represent a pathological side‐effect of infection. The present study evaluates experimentally the direct and indirect impact of the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi on the investment of female kissing bugs in reproductive tissue. The presence of the parasite decreases gonad weight but this effect disappears when body size is included as covariate. To examine in more detail the set of causal relationships involved, a structural equation modelling analysis is performed using body size, moulting time and nutrition as predictor variables on gonad weight in the presence and absence of the protozoan. The results obtained indicate that, irrespective of the pathway and status of infection, female kissing bugs showing a slow development tend to have lighter gonads. On the other hand, the importance of blood ingestion for gonad weight is dependent on body size and contingent on the status of infection. Uninfected individuals tend to invest more in reproductive tissue when ingesting more blood during their ontogeny, and the opposite situation is observed for infected insects. These results indicate that gonad weight reduction in T.cruzi‐infected Mepraia spinolai (Porter, 1934) is a consequence of nutrition curtailment and body size reduction rather than an adaptive strategy to cope with infection.
Journey through k-space: an interactive educational tool

In Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the information about the image is collected in the form of Radio Frequency (RF) signals with a range of frequencies and phases. The MR image is then reconstructed by performing the inverse Fourier Transform of the acquired raw data (k-space). A good understanding of the k-space offers important insight into the basic properties related to signal-to-noise ratio, image distortion, resolution and contrast in MRI. This paper presents an implementation of various MATLAB functions for exploring the different properties of k-space such as acceleration factor, filtering schemes, different kinds of artefacts, quantifying parameters. The user is also able to visualize different kinds of trajectories (Cartesian and Non-Cartesian) using animations. The main purpose of this toolbox is to present an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) using MATLAB for researchers and graduate/undergraduate students to develop better understanding of MRI. In order to evaluate the usefulness of the tool, it is used by graduate/undergraduate students in different projects. It has been observed that the students were able to use the toolbox “k-space and Interactive Educational Tool” effectively without prior background knowledge in k-space. The software toolbox is available for free download from our research group website.
El afrontamiento del dolor crónico

espanolEl dolor cronico se considera una enfermedad y como tal las estrategias de afrontamiento empleadas para hacerle frente son elementos importantes en su tratamiento. El modelo teorico transaccional planteado por Lazarus y Folkman (1984), es el habitualmente empleado para explicar la dinamica del afrontamiento. Desde esta perspectiva se realiza una revision sobre los principales aspectos que influyen en el afrontamiento: antecedentes (caracteristicas de personalidad), valoracion del dolor, instrumentos mas empleados y estrategias mas adaptativas y sus relaciones con la calidad de vida del enfermo con dolor cronico. Se ponen de manifiesto diversos problemas conceptuales, metodologicos y de aplicacion del concepto de afrontamiento. EnglishChronic pain is considered a disease and, consequently, coping strategies used are important elements in its treatment. The transactional theoretical model raised by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) is usually used to explain coping dynamic. From this perspective, we have reviewed the principal aspects influencing the coping: precedents (personality attributes), pain assessment, instruments employed, the more adaptatives strategies and its relations with the quality of life of the patient with chronic pain. Many conceptual, methodological and application problems of the coping concept are shown.
Brand culture: its antecedents and relationship to SME brand performance

Background: The study develops and empirically tests a model of the antecedents of brand culture and its effects of on brand performance in Malaysian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Objective: In this study, three research questions are addressed: (1) What effects do organizational internal factors (i.e. corporate supportive resources and market orientation) have on brand culture? (2) What effect does brand culture has on brand performance? (3) To what extent brand culture mediate relationship between organizational internal factors and brand performance? Results: Findings confirm the validity of the model. It also indicates brand culture, appears to be a key mediator in the web of relationships among organizational internal factors and brand performance. Conclusion: Corporate supportive resources and market orientation enhances brand performance indirectly via brand culture.
Athletic body stereotypes in the academic training of students in the Physical Activity and Sport Sciences

In the past years, despite advances in recent decades in terms of rights and equal opportunities between women and men, the male and female body stereotypes have not disappeared; on the contrary, they have continued to exist at an even greater scale. However, there are no current studies analyzing this phenomenon in terms of the perceptions held by future professionals in the field of physical education and sport in Spain. In this paper, we have tried to examine the stereotypes of gender that exist in the substructures of beliefs of students of physical and sports activity science in regard to the body of women in athletics. The study took place in three Andalusian public universities currently offering studies in the field of athletics (2009-2010, N= 424). Data collection was conducted through a questionnaire completed online. The analysis of data was conducted by descriptive statistics. Results show the existence of a stereotyped conception, both overt and covert, against the stated objective. Gender stereotypes detected on the woman's body on training in track and field are mainly located in physical appearance and performance, manifestations of gender in terms of the woman's body and on different events that took place . Their need to maintain beauty standards, brought under established social control, emanates from these perceptions.
Quickly Identifying FFSN Domain and CDN Domain with Little Dataset

Fast-flux net has been adopted by more and more attackers to build up bot-net, which consists of many proxy-hosts that are changing fast. With this technology, tracing and locating the C&C (control and command) host is more complex and difficult, so that how to identify whether a domain belongs to a FFSN(fast flux service net) or not is still a very challenging problem. One of these important reasons is that FFSN domains are similar to legitimate CDN(content delivery net) domains. This paper proposes a new method that uses a little dataset got by active probing, to quickly identify legitimate CDN domains and malicious FFSN domains. Aiming at quickly and effectively identifying domains with little dataset, our proposal is mainly based on FFSN domains' intrinsic characteristics,which are summarized through studying previous researches and data analysis, including features shown in the process of DNS analysis and the process of HTTP visiting. Finally, we use the CART(classification and regression tree) algorithm to train and predict dataset. And the result manifests that the proposed mechanism can be utilized to classify FFSN domains and CDN domains in a few days, which is far less than months taken by previous works, and at a quite high accuracy 90% approximately.
Diets of three copepods (Poecilostomatoida) in the southern Taiwan Strait

Gut contents of 3 copepods including Oncaea venusta, O. mediterranea, and O. conifera, of the southern Taiwan Strait were picked out using a fine needle under a stereomicroscope and then examined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The major components of the diets of the 3 copepods were the diatoms Chaetoceros sp. and Thalassiothrix sp. , although radiolarian, microzooplanktonic, and copepod debris was also found in the gut contents. The 3 copepods seemed to feed non-selectively, as the diets were determined to be diverse. The technique of examining the picked-out gut contents with SEM was developed and determined to be useful in studying the diets and feeding ecology of copepods.
Features Tagging Technique in the Sports Video Analysis

With the rapid development of computer networks and video capture technology, resulting in a large number of sports video data, how to effectively and quickly retrieve the part of coaches or athletes need from these data, as a problem to be solved. Video marked its description given according to the video semantic content embodied, on this basis, can achieve efficient video retrieval. To be precise and reliable video capture sports, it is very difficult, and it is a task of great challenging. For the research in this field, both in theory or practical aspects are of great significance. It is based on this fact, the author under the teacher's instructions, for this cutting-edge research made some attempt to achieve a simple sports-based video capture system.
Recherche de similarité dans du code source

La duplication de code source a de nombreuses origines : copie et adaptation inter-projets ou clonage au sein d'un meme projet. Rechercher des correspondances de code copie permet de le factoriser dans un projet ou de mettre en evidence des situations de plagiat. Nous etudions des methodes statiques de recherche de similarite sur du code ayant potentiellement subi des operations d'edition telle que l'insertion, la suppression, la transposition ainsi que la factorisation et le developpement de fonctions. Des techniques d'identification de similarite genomique sont examinees et adaptees au contexte de la recherche de clones de code source sous forme lexemisee. Apres une discussion sur des procedes d'alignement de lexemes et de recherche par empreintes de n-grams, est presentee une methode de factorisation fusionnant les graphes d'appels de fonctions de projets au sein d'un graphe unique avec introduction de fonctions synthetiques exprimant les correspondances imbriquees. Elle utilise des structures d'indexation de suffixes pour la determination de facteurs repetes. Une autre voie d'exploration permettant de manipuler de grandes bases indexees de code par arbre de syntaxe est abordee avec la recherche de sous-arbres similaires par leur hachage et leur indexation selon des profils d'abstraction variables. Des clones exacts de sous-arbres de forte proximite dans leurs arbres d'extraction peuvent alors etre consolides afin d'obtenir des correspondances approchees et etendues. En amont et en aval de la recherche de correspondances, des metriques de similarite sont definies afin de preselectionner les zones d'examen, affiner la recherche ou mieux representer les resultats
Dynamic Approach of Capital Structure of European Shipping Companies

The issue of capital structure of companies is one of the most debated problems of financial management. According to economic theory, capital structure determines the stock market value of firms and therefore their viability, while one of the most negative result of the crash of 2008 and the persisting crisis (excess supply in markets of labor and money) is their ongoing steep decline of lending by credit institutions and other sources. In this paper, considering the importance of the issue and motivated by the conflicting results of previous empirical studies, we attempt the analysis of capital structure of the European Maritime Enterprises (oceanic shipping). We focus on shipping companies, because of the large volume of funding that demands their main operation, due to the intensity of the assets held. The objectives of this research are firstly the identification of factors that affect the capital structure of European oceanic shipping and secondly to search for the existence of an ideal - target capital structure ratio. The determinants of capital structure are examined through static (fixed effect method and FGLS) and dynamic (GMM Methods) econometric models, using data from the financial statements of 32 listed European shipping companies for the period 2005-2010. The results suggest the prevalence of pecking order theory in our case, while a positive relationship arises between tangible assets and tax benefits (arising from sources other than borrowing) against leverage. Moreover, we observe a negative relationship between size or profitability and debt. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the decisions taken by European shipping on their capital structure.
Researching Professional Footballers: Reflections and Lessons Learned

In this article, the author reflects on the process of interviewing professional footballers about the sensitive issue of money and the lessons learned from this process. The article discusses a case study approach using in-depth qualitative interviews, which generates an innovative insight into a closed social world. The focus is on the difficulties of obtaining a sample where challenges faced are discussed. The article also focuses on the interview style employed when dealing with individuals who are experienced at being interviewed regularly. It also examines the issues of being an “insider” when conducting research and ways in which this can benefit the research process. The issue of research being a messy process is also discussed as when conducting this research, it was imperative that the author could deal with unpredictability and had to be flexible to conduct the research. Finally, the article discusses the insecurities of the participants and the issues of trust, as the current position of the author led him to be seen as an “outsider” by some participants.
Cognitive and Affective Characteristics of History Students of the University of Cape Coast

Cognitive and affective attributes are the key in any educational endeavor. They seek to give an indication of the extent to which a learner would succeed in a given subject. Given this, the paper examined the cognitive and affective characteristics of History students of the University of Cape Coast, using primary data collected via focus group discussions with a sample of History students selected through random sampling technique. Discussions were transcribed into written text and coded into themes and sub-themes. Commonalities and differences in the key themes have been presented. The study revealed that knowledge traits characterized students' cognitive abilities. The study further found that students have a negative attitude and lack of interest towards History. The results from this study calls for the need to improve the transaction of the History curriculum in the University. It is, therefore, recommended that teachers adopt and use appropriate implementation strategies that would help students develop higher intellectual abilities and the right affective attributes for the subject.
Multi-view object representation with modified 2-layer IDP decomposition

In the paper is presented one new method for multi-view object representation based on image decomposition with modified Inverse Difference Pyramid. The method offers new approach for efficient description of the multi-view images using one of them as a reference one. The decomposition has a relatively low computational complexity because it is based on orthogonal transforms (Walsh-Hadamard, DCT, etc.). The relations which exist between transform coefficients from the consecutive decomposition layers permit significant reduction of the coefficients needed for the high-quality object representation.
Principal component regression for solving multicollinearity problem

Multicollinearity often causes a huge explanatory problem in multiple linear regression analysis. In presence of multicollinearity the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators are inaccurately estimated. In this paper the multicollinearity was detected by using observing correlation matrix, variance influence factor (VIF), and eigenvalues of the correlation matrix. The simulation multicollinearity data were generated using MINITAB software and make comparison between methods of principal component regression (PCR) and the OLS methods. According to the results of this study, we found that PCR method facilitates to solve the multicollinearity problem.
Swimming Performance and Metabolism of Cultured Golden Shiners

Abstract Swimming performance and metabolism of golden shiners Notemigonus crysoleucas were examined by use of swim tunnel respirometry. The oxygen consumption and tail beat frequency (TBF) at various swimming speeds, an estimation of the standard metabolic rate (SMR), and the critical swimming speed (U crit) were determined for golden shiners that were tested in 10 groups of 5 individuals each. Oxygen consumption and TBF both increased as swimming speed increased. The mean U crit for the first, second, and third individual to fatigue in each group was 38.0, 41.7, and 47.2 cm/s, respectively. The SMR was estimated at 131 mg O2·kg−1·h−1 for fish averaging 5.3 g. The active metabolic rate averaged 150 ± 14 mg O2·kg−1·h−1 (mean ± SE) at 10 cm/s, increased to 163 ± 20 mg O2·kg−1·h−1 at 30 cm/s, and peaked at 177 ± 19 mg O2·kg−1·h−1 at 50 cm/s. Total aerobic cost of transport (0.36 cal·g−1·km−1; i.e., the metabolic cost of swimming) and net cost of transport (0.08 cal·g−1·km−1) were lowest between 30 and 40 cm/s.
From Ph.D. student to professional researcher - a scholarly community as a learning environment for doctoral studies

In order to become a researcher, participation in a scholarly community and culture is key. In other words, the quality of Ph.D. training can beconceived of as being dependent on the learning environment provided by the scholarly community. Our paper explores Ph.D. students’ ideas about themselves as a part of this community, and their perceptions of their learning environment in the context of University of Helsinki, Finland. The study is a part of a larger national research project. The present study includes data collected from four faculties: arts, medicine, psychology and education. Altogether, 602 doctoral candidates responded to the survey. Results suggested that both the definitions of “scholarly community” given by the students and their experience of membership in this very community varied considerably. About one third of the Ph.D. students did not perceive themselves as being members of any scholarly community at all. There was significant variation between the four research contexts, with the educational Ph.D. students reporting that they felt themost isolated. There appears to be an urgent need for more effective means of fostering PhD students’ experience of active agency within scholarly communities.
Impact of road surface roughness and magnetic force on the in-wheel motor magnet gap

For an in-wheel-motor drive electric vehicle, the driving motors are directly mounted in the wheels. Using this chassis structure, the road excitation can cause a magnet gap deformation in the motor. The magnet gap deformation will lead to magnetic force which not only has a negative impact on vehicle dynamics but also affects the magnet gap deformation in turn. To further analyze the impact of the road and the magnetic force on the motor magnet gap, a test platform was built, and used to simulate cases of road and composite excitation. The results show that 1) road excitation can cause motor magnet gap deformation, and when the excitation frequency is increased for a constant amplitude, the deformation degree also increases. 2) For the same road excitation frequency, the deformation degree increases with the motor speed. This not only proves the existence of the magnetic force but also indicates that the size of the magnetic force is related to the motor rotating frequency. 3) A comparison between the simulated and experimental results not only confirms the validity of the theoretical derivation and analysis but also lays the foundation for subsequent vibration control of in-wheel-motor drive electric vehicles.