Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of vowel informativity on vowel duration in Japanese

Research on English has shown that vowels that contain more information tend to be longer (Aylett & Turk 2004). This research is evolving into a general thesis that speakers articulate a segment with more information more robustly. While this hypothesis seems plausible from the perspective of communicative efficiency, previous support for it has come mainly from English. The current study thus examines this hypothesis in Japanese, using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (the CSJ). Consonant-conditioned Shannon’s entropies were calculated, and their effects on vowel duration examined, together with other linguistic factors that are known from previous research to affect vowel duration. In addition to finding several linguistic factors affecting vowel duration, the current study reveals rather complex effects of informativity on vowel duration in Japanese.
Concurrent Access Algorithms for Different Data Structures: A Research Review

Algorithms for concurrent data structure have gained attention in recent years as multi-core processors have become ubiquitous. Several features of shared-memory multiprocessors make concurrent data structures significantly more difficult to design and to verify as correct than their sequential counterparts. The primary source of this additional difficulty is concurrency. This paper provides an overview of the some concurrent access algorithms for different data structures.
A New Culling Scheme for Low Power 3D Graphic Processors

Recently, portable devices employ applications using 3D graphics such as 3D games and 3D navigations. The portable devices require small area and low power consumption. We propose an efficient culling scheme for low power 3D graphics processors. The proposed culling scheme consists of the selection and back-face culling in the geometry engine and the elimination of pixels outside in the rasterizer engine. The new scheme reduced both the hardware complexity and the number of operation cycles of culling operations. We design a 3D graphic pipeline using Verilog-HDL according to the proposed scheme, and verify it on an FPGA prototyping board. The latency of the proposed architecture is reduced by 15 cycles and the gate count of the synthesized result is reduced by 8%.
An Empirical Reflection of Organisational Processes in a Government Department

The purpose of this study was to explore the underlying factors that influence organisational performance in a government department. A quantitative design using the cross-sectional survey approach was used in which a two-section structured questionnaire was administered to managers and employees of a South African government department. Respondents were recruited using a blend of purposive and convenience sampling methods. Data were analysed using SPSS (Version 21.0). Organisational process factors were extracted using exploratory factor analysis. Four factors; namely, organisational structure, organisational change, organisational teamwork and organisational leadership that influence organisational performance in a government department were extracted. Mean-score ranking of these factors revealed that organisational teamwork exerted the highest impact on organisational performance. The factors identified in this study may be used as reference points in the diagnosis of performance problems in public sector organisations. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n8p218
Congener specific assessment of the global atmospheric PCB pool

An attempt has made to establish a Global atmospheric inventory on PCBs, based on atmospheric field data from 1990 until 2000 of individual PCB congenrs. Different approached have been applied in order to obtain an overview on the possible advantages and disadvantages of these approaches on the model. On the Northern Hemisphere a negative latitudinal correlation is observed, which is in agreement with the pseudo-enthalpies for evaporation of the congeners. On the Southern Hemisphere, due to lack of sufficient data, this correlation is not observed. Moreover, new data from the Islands of Hawaii shows very low PCB concentrations in this part of the Pacific Ocean. Since it seems that remote sites on the Northern Hemisphere are under influence of potential source areas, the Northern Hemisphere is divided in a part of ́continental influence ́ and one without this influence. Further more, a vertical gradient on PCB concentration was applied. The calculated Global inventories show in general 2-3 times higher PCB amounts on the Northern Hemisphere than on the Southern Hemisphere. The Global inventory for ∑PCB is 63 tonnes and 32 tonnes for the model without and with the vertical PCB gradient. Implication of OH radical concentrations and calculated reaction rates between PCB and OH give very high PCB sink, which is primarily caused by both high PCB and OH concentrations in the tropical zones. These sinks have to be compensated by very high PCB emission, which does not occur. Implication of calculated residence times shows PCB loss which are closer to the annual estimated emission.
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND ACCOUNTING IRREGULARITIES: Evidence from the Two-tiered Board Structure in Indonesia

This study aims to investigate the extent to which the Indonesian corporate governance mechanism acts as an effective tool for protecting financial statements users against accounting irregularities. Considering that accounting irregularities might occur in between error and the fraud act, this study reviews the literature on minimizing the seriousness of these reporting incidences. The level of seriousness in misstatements is more severe when: (1) there is absence of financial expert(s) on supervisory boards and audit committees, (2) companies have short tenured-CEOs and poor internal control systems, and (3) auditors are solely appointed by firms’ BOCs without agreement of block holders (known as referral). In addition, an examination of simultaneous effects of each corporate governance dimension reveals a general weakness of the BOCs and their audit committees. However, the BOC and audit committee could be an effective tool in mitigating reporting incidences, especially when they show high-quality collaboration.
Empirical Perspectives on the Cognitive Penetrability of Perception

The problem of the cognitive penetrability of perception pertains to whether perceptual processing may be impacted by higher-order cognitive processes. It may be understood in a twofold sense: 1) whether what a perceptual system computes may be altered in a way that is semantically coherent to one’s cognitive states; 2) whether perceptual experience may be influenced by cognitive processes. It has been argued that the cognitive penetrability problem is not scientifically tractable since we have no direct access to other persons’ subjective experiences and, therefore, we have to rely on their reports, which are mediated by higher-order processes (e.g., judgments). In this paper, I analyze the scope of methods harnessed in contemporary work on the penetrability of perception, focusing particularly on methods from experimental psychology and neuroscience. Among them, I indicate the most promising techniques and paradigms, as well as those that are inadequate to successfully tackling the problem. I also discuss experimental results which unequivocally suggest direct influences on perception which have not been addressed to date by supporters of the view that perception is impenetrable. I also describe the predictive processing theory of cognition, focusing on how it contributes to our understanding of cognitive penetrability, and discuss scientific results validating the theory. In conclusion, converging empirical evidence seems to suggest that perception is cognitively penetrable and we seem to be at the dawn of the ultimate solution of the problem.
Characterizing and Predicting Early Reviewers for Effective Product Marketing on E-Commerce Websites

Online reviews have become an important source of information for users before making an informed purchase decision. Early reviews of a product tend to have a high impact on the subsequent product sales. In this paper, we take the initiative to study the behavior characteristics of early reviewers through their posted reviews on two real-world large e-commerce platforms, i.e., Amazon and Yelp. In specific, we divide product lifetime into three consecutive stages, namely early, majority, and laggards. A user who has posted a review in the early stage is considered as an early reviewer. We quantitatively characterize early reviewers based on their rating behaviors, the helpfulness scores received from others and the correlation of their reviews with product popularity. We have found that (1) an early reviewer tends to assign a higher average rating score; and (2) an early reviewer tends to post more helpful reviews. Our analysis of product reviews also indicates that early reviewers’ ratings and their received helpfulness scores are likely to influence product popularity. By viewing the review posting process as a multiplayer competition game, we propose a novel margin-based embedding model for early reviewer prediction. Extensive experiments on two different e-commerce datasets have shown that our proposed approach outperforms a number of competitive baselines.
Running Head: NONRESIDENT FATHERS AND ADOLESCENT WELL-BEING Nonresident Fathers’ Contributions to Adolescent Well-Being VALARIE KING The Pennsylvania State University

Using nationally representative data from Wave 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households, this study examines how multiple dimensions of nonresident father involvement are associated with different dimensions of child well-being for a sample of 453 adolescents. Prior research has frequently focused on father contact and payment of child support, but we pay particular attention to the quality of father-child ties and father’s responsive parenting, aspects of the father-child relationship (whose incidence we find varies greatly among nonresident fathers) that may be more directly linked to child outcomes. We also assess the relative influence of mother-child and father-child ties. Although we find no direct link between contact and adolescent outcomes, contact is an important predictor of father-child relationship quality and responsive fathering. Relationship quality and responsive fathering, in turn, are modestly associated with fewer externalizing and internalizing problems among adolescents. Furthermore, father involvement is equally beneficial for different groups of children (e.g., boys and girls). At the same time, however, the quality of the mother-child relationship has stronger, more consistent effects on child well-being. Nevertheless, even if adolescents have weak ties to their mothers, those who have strong ties to nonresident fathers exhibit fewer internalizing problems than their peers who have weak ties to both parents. Indeed, we find that adolescents are worst off on a wide range of outcomes when they have weak ties to both their mothers and nonresident fathers.
An Empirical Study of Writing Feedback Analysis of Non-English Majors in China with Natural Language Processing Technologies

English essay writing is a very essential skill for university students to master. This is particularly true for those non-English major students in China. Those students represent a large population of Chinese English as Second Language (ESL) learners and often do not receive timely written feedback on their writing from teachers since the size of their class is big. Therefore, it would be very useful if we can build an automated feedback tool for supporting writing. In order to understand the relationship between textual features and human teacher feedback, and how well those features were used for predicting feedback rating, we conducted a corpus analysis of 84 Chinese non-English majors’ essays with teachers’ feedback, by using Coh-Metrix, a computational linguistic tool, to extract rich semantic features from their writing. The study results demonstrated that teachers tend to give more local feedback, such as grammar and spelling, to Non-English majors. The local feedback are more predictable since the feedback was moderately correlated to some textual features (e.g. word count and frequency of content words were related to sentence diversity feedback). Consequently, this study is considered as a case study which should shed light on the construction of automated writing feedback tool for Non-English majors.
An Invitation to Quantum Computing

When a computer scientist attempts to understand quantum computing, he may stumble over the physics that seems to be a prerequisite. As a result, the attempt may be abandoned. This little pedagogical essay is aimed to help with this problem. We present the specific example of Grover’s search algorithm, but we put computation first and postpone physics.
Advanced Cascade Multilevel Converter with Reduction in Number of Components

In this paper a novel converter structure based on cascade converter family is presented. The suggested multilevel advanced cascade converter has benefits such as reduction in number of switches and power losses. Comparison depict that proposed topology has the least number of IGBTs among all multilevel cascade type converters which have been introduced recently. This characteristic causes low cost and small installation area for suggested converter. The number of on state switches in current path is less than conventional topologies and so the output voltage drop and power losses are decreased. Symmetric and asymmetric modes are analyzed and compared with conventional multilevel cascade converter. Simulation and experimental results are presented to illustrate validity, good performance and effectiveness of the proposed configuration. The suggested converter can be applied in medium/high voltage and PV applications.
Interannual variability in atmospheric mineral aerosols from a 22‐year model simulation and observational data

[1] Mineral aerosols are important atmospheric constituents owing to their interactions with climate and biogeochemistry. The interannual variability in atmospheric mineral aerosols is evaluated using a model simulation of 1979–2000 and mineral aerosol observations. Overall, the variability in monthly means between different years is not as large as the variability within a month for column amount, surface concentration, and deposition fluxes. The magnitude of the variability predicted in the model varies spatially and appears similar to that seen in the available observations, although the model is not always able to simulate observed high- and low-dust years. The area over which the interannual variability in the observing station data should be representative is estimated in the model simulation and is shown to be regional in extent. However, correlations between modeled surface concentrations at the stations and modeled deposition in the surrounding region is often low, suggesting that the observations of the variability of surface concentrations are difficult to extrapolate to variability in regional deposition fluxes. The correlations between modeled monthly mean optical depth and modeled deposition or mobilization are low to moderate (0.2–0.6) over much of the globe, indicating the difficulty of estimating mobilization or deposition fluxes from satellite retrievals of optical depth. In both the model and observations there are relationships between climate indices (e.g., North Atlantic Oscillation, El Nino, and Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and dust, although a 22-year simulation is not long enough to well characterize this relationship. In this model, simulation of 1979–2000, dust concentration variability appears to be dominated by transport variability and/or transport and source covariance rather than source strength variability.
The Americanization of European football

Will European football keep leagues open, or adopt the American system of closed leagues? Would this reform be to the benefit of consumers? This paper develops a framework to analyse the consequences of the structure of competition - whether teams play in both national and international competitions or not - and the effects on performance of revenue sharing among teams within the same league. The authors argue in favour of the creation of a European Superleague and against teams playing both in the Superleague and in national leagues. They derive a number of policy conclusions and examine various regulatory issues in European football. Copyright Centre for Economic Policy Research, Centre for Economic Studies, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme 1999.
Identification of Molecules Involved in the Vulture Immune Sensing of Pathogens by Molecular Cloning

Vultures may have one of the strongest immune systems of all vertebrates (Apanius et al., 1983; Ohishi et al., 1979). Vultures are unique vertebrates able to efficiently utilize carcass from other animals as a food resource. These carrion birds are in permanent contact with numerous pathogens and toxins found in its food. In addition, vultures tend to feed in large groups, because carcasses are patchy in space and time, and feeding often incurs fighting and wounding, exposing vultures to the penetration of microorganisms present in the carrion (Houston & Cooper, 1975). Therefore, vultures were predicted to have evolved immune mechanisms to cope with a high risk of infection with virulent parasites. Despite the potential interest in carrion bird immune system, little is known about the molecular mechanisms involved in the regulation of this process in vultures. The aim of this chapter is to describe the molecular cloning and characterization of two key molecules involved in the immune sensing of pathogens: a griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus) orthologue of TLR1 (CD281) and an orthologue of the alpha inhibitor of NF-κB (IκB┙). The toll-like receptor (TLR) family is an ancient pattern recognition receptor family, conserved from insects to mammals. Members of the TLR family are vital to immune function through the sensing of pathogenic agents and initiation of an appropriate immune response (Takeda & Akira, 2005). The rapid identification of Toll orthologues in invertebrates and mammals suggests that these genes must be present in other vertebrates (Takeda, 2005). During the recent years, members of the multigene family of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) have been recognised as key players in the recognition of microbes during host defence (Hopkinsn & Sriskandan, 2005). Recognition of pathogens by immune receptors leads to activation of macrophages, dendritic cells, and lymphocytes. Signals are then communicated to enhance expression of target molecules such as cytokines and adhesion molecules, depending on activation of various inducible transcription factors, among which the family NF-kappaB transcription factors plays a critical role. The involvement of NF-κB in the expression of numerous cytokines and adhesion molecules has supported its role as an evolutionarily conserved coordinating element in organism's response to situations of infection, stress, and
Tutorial: Building Secure and Trustworthy Blockchain Applications

Beyond cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies have shown great potential in enabling a wealth of decentralized applications (DApps), including but not limited to trustworthy auction, election, autonomous organization. While public blockchains are well recognized to allow participants mutually unbeknownst to achieve consensus, financial/business organizations also find great interest in consortium blockchains for better organizational collaborations. We will touch both types of blockchain and corresponding applications in this tutorial. In particular, we will summarize existing blockchain technologies and applications, elaborate the principles of designing and implementing secure DApps, and analyze the security concerns therein. Through concrete examples, we will discuss common practices and pitfalls, such as on-chain/off-chain interaction, randomness generation, and various corner cases. If time permits, we will also go through the implementation of the cloud-based blockchain backbone that powers this tutorial, possibly covering a layered architecture, and discuss deployment choices and security issues along the way. The tutorial will be interspersed with revisiting the security and implementation rules, so that participants are expected to readily apply the tutorial content into real-world practice. The design principles elaborated in this tutorial will be transferable to participants' development of secure and trustworthy blockchain applications and systems in their own workplaces.
Spatio-temporal structure of femtosecond Bessel beams from spatial light modulators

We numerically investigate the spatio-temporal structure of Bessel beams generated with Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs). Grating-like phase masks enable the spatial filtering of undesired diffraction orders produced by SLMs. Pulse front tilt and temporal broadening effects are investigated. In addition, we explore the influence of phase wrapping and show the spatio-temporal structure of SLM-generated femtosecond Bessel beams is similar to Bessel X-pulses at short propagation distance, and to subluminal Pulsed Bessel Beams at long propagation distance. 1.Introduction
The Modular Color Palette: Systems of Color Selection in the Paintings of James Mai

Limited color palettes have been employed by artists for centuries, but most have lacked a rigorous organization sufficient to permit color relationships to compete in clarity and complexity with compositional relationships. Artist James Mai proposes new, systematic methods for color selection in his modular color palettes, limited palettes whose colors conform to discrete positions within the range of color variables. These modulated colors are used to create general palette-types, each of which can yield multiple palette-versions. Modular color palettes are built from precise modulations of the intrinsic dimensions of color—hue, value, and intensity—and offer new possibilities for color-motivated painting. In this paper, the author elucidates the dimensional structure of color, explains the development of his palette-types and palette-versions, and examines how modular color palettes are employed in a selection of his paintings.
FORMULATION AND IN VITRO EVALUATION OF LIPOSOMES LOADED WITH MUPIROCIN

FORMULATION AND IN VITRO EVALUATION OF LIPOSOMES LOADED WITH MUPIROCIN B. R. Srinivas Murthy* , K.Vishakha, P. Prakash, D. Jamal Basha, T. Govardhan, Muni Sai Prathap *Department of Pharmaceutics, Sri Padmavathi School of Pharmacy, Tiruchanoor, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh India. Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, Sri Padmavat hi School of Pharmacy, Tiruchanoor, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India. Department of Pharmacognosy, Sri Padmavathi School of Pharmacy, Tiruchanoor, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India.
CODESNA_HRV, a new tool to assess the activity of the autonomic nervous system from heart rate variability

The analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) is widely used in the field of exercise training to assess the athlete’s response to training load. HRV analysis yields insights the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) known to be involved in the training response [1-2]. HRV analysis could also be used to highlight an endurance training effect, [3-4] to tailor the training program, [5]) or to avoid overreaching / overtraining [6-8].