Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Secret Is in the Processing: A Study of Levels of Explicit Computerized Feedback in Heritage and L2 Learners of Spanish.

The field of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) has expressed interest in pursuing a research agenda that expands the current heritage language (HL) strand of research to investigate how this heterogeneous population re-learns their family language, and how this experience differs from that of second language (L2) learners. This dissertation examines an unexplored aspect of this strand Depth of Processing (DOP) and its potential role in the development of the Spanish pluperfect subjunctive in contrary to fact conditional sentences in the past, in both HL and L2 learner participant populations, and how it is facilitated by computerized feedback in more and less explicit conditions. The current study focused on four main issues: 1) it investigated how Spanish HL participants processed input in their heritage language, and how it was similar or different than L2 participants; 2) it examined how the Speaker profile and/or 3) Type of feedback (i.e. +Explicit feedback, -Explicit feedback, control) had an effect on subsequent performance on assessments; and 4) it addressed the potential correlation between levels of processing on performances following the experiment. Levels of processing were measured by means of think-aloud protocols collected during the experiment. Performance was examined by way of two written assessment tasks a controlled production and a semi-spontaneous picture description task.
Distance Teaching and Learning Platforms

The knowledge explosion, the increased complexity of human life, and the ubiquitous, 24/7 nature of technology coupled with the globalization of the marketplace herald the need to embrace the most effective methods and formats of teaching and learning. Currently providing powerful educational opportunities, the science and technology of distance learning continues to multiply at unprecedented rates. Where historically traveling from village to village verbally disseminating knowledge was the only process of training those at a distance, today's learners eagerly embrace the rapidly expanding web-based delivery systems of the 21st century, which offer a plethora of educational alternatives. So, with this rapidly changing distance educational landscape, one must question, what exactly is distance teaching and learning, how has it evolved, and what is its future?
Robust Control of Robot Manipulators Using Difference Equations as Universal Approximator

This paper presents a simple and robust non inversion-based perfect tracking control strategy for robot manipulators. The proposed approach is capable to eliminate the environmental problems arising from classic feedforward control design and so guarantees an appropriate level of robustness of control system to uncertainties including external disturbances, unmodeled dynamics, and parametric uncertainty. Extensive simulation results performed using a two degree-of-freedom actuated elbow robot prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Using free model of system in control law design is a considerable point in the field of robot manipulator control.
Review of Analog-To-Digital Conversion Characteristics and Design Considerations for the Creation of Power-Efficient Hybrid Data Converters

This article reviews design challenges for low-power CMOS high-speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Basic ADC converter architectures (flash ADCs, interpolating and folding ADCs, subranging and two-step ADCs, pipelined ADCs, successive approximation ADCs) are described with particular focus on their suitability for the construction of power-efficient hybrid ADCs. The overview includes discussions of channel offsets and gain mismatches, timing skews, channel bandwidth mismatches, and other considerations for low-power hybrid ADC design. As an example, a hybrid ADC architecture is introduced for applications requiring 1 GS/s with 6–8 bit resolution and power consumption below 11 mW. The hybrid ADC was fabricated in 130-nm CMOS technology, and has a subranging architecture with a 3-bit flash ADC as a first stage, and a 5-bit four-channel time-interleaved comparator-based asynchronous binary search (CABS) ADC as a second stage. Testing considerations and chip measurements results are summarized to demonstrate its low-power characteristics.
Controle de robô para auxílio em cirurgia laparoscópica usando quatérnios duais

ROBOT-AIDED ENDOSCOPE CONTROL UNDER LAPAROSCOPIC SURGERY CONSTRAINTS USING DUAL QUATERNIONS Author: Murilo Marques Marinho Supervisor: Antônio Padilha Lanari Bó Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Sistemas Eletrônicos e Automação Brasília, april of 2014 This work is divided in two complementary contributions concerning the use of serial-link robotic manipulators in a laparoscopic surgery setting. At first, known techniques for singularity robustness and redundancy exploitation are adapted to the use of unit dual quaternions, which have some advantages over homogenous transformation matrices concerning compactness, while not having singularities natural to minimal representations. The performance of the adapted techniques is evaluated in a simple simulated task. Using those techniques, we can control a manipulator robot to aid in laparoscopic procedures. As opposed to specialized surgical robots, a serial robot might be used for different procedures, lowering the involved costs. In such scenario, the safety on the pivoting point must be assured by software. This work presents a novel control strategy for controlling laparoscopic tools attached to robotic manipulators that makes use of a programmable RCM. The tool movement references are generated intuitively by the surgeon. The method is evaluated in a simulated surgical environment and presented satisfactory results, in terms of pivoting point generation error and tool positioning error.
Developing Technologically Responsive Reflective Learning Model for Z Generation Learners

Z Generation is a generation born and grows up with the internet. Generation Z requires a learning model that is more than traditional learning. This study aims to develop a learning model for the Z-generation learners, which is called Technologically Responsive Reflective Learning. There are two main products developed, namely reflective learning model syntax and technology feature integrated to support the reflective learning process. The research was developed with R2D2 design, which has three development focuses, namely: (1) defining focus, (2) design and development focus, and (3) dissemination focus. Research data were in the form of comments, criticism, suggestions on the product, and the score of the product from expert teams, practitioners, and users of the product. The data were analyzed according to their domain to determine the product feasibility. Assessment aspects of experts and practitioners, which did not meet the eligibility were revised to fulfill the eligibility criteria. Research findings showed that after some improvements, this research product is very feasible to be implemented. Keywords—learning model, reflective learning, technologically responsive, and Z-generation
Impact of Improved Ginger Technologies on the Income of Cooperative Farmers in Southern Kaduna, Kaduna State, Nigeria

This study examined the impact of improved ginger technologies on the income of cooperative farmers in Southern Kaduna, Kaduna State. The study study specifically investigated the effect of Credit, agrochemicals, extension programmes, mechanization of ginger production and farmersâ access to ginger seedling on the income of the farmers. The population of this study was made up of 3020 members of cooperative societies in the area of study. A sample of 353 was determined for the study out of a population 3020. A structured questionnaire was administered to 353 respondents only 301 responded to the questionnaire. The data collected using the questionnaire was analysed using descriptive statistics like frequency and percentages and also inferential statistics such as regression analysis and t-test statistics. All analysis was conducted using SPSS version 23. Findings revealed that all the five coefficients (Credit, agrochemicals, extension programmes, mechanization of ginger production and farmersâ access to ginger seedling) have significant influence on the income of the farmers. The study also found that the joint effect of the explanatory variables- independent variables- in the model account for 0.860 or 86.0% of the variations in the impact of improved ginger technologies on the income of cooperative farmers. Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made: With respect to credit, the study recommends that there is need for the development of supervised agricultural credit scheme by the ministry of agriculture that will ensure consistent availability of credit for ginger production. The farmers need to sustain the adequate use of agrochemicals to ensure increase production and productivity. The ministry of agriculture should carryout regular extension programme to the farmers to ensure adequate diffusion of modern ginger technologies by the farmers. With respect to mechanization of ginger production, there is need for the government to partner with the farmers to ensure full mechanization of ginger production in the area. There is need for adequate farmersâ access to ginger seedlings by the ministry regulating agricultural production in the state. This will help to enhance sales performance and improve quality and market share of private labels.
Improving a buyer's standing at its supplier: An investigation of relationship changing episodes

In business-to-business relationships, buying firms increasingly compete for supply and access to the unique capabilities of suppliers. Due to heterogeneous markets, buying firms deploy diversified strategies to gain access to the suppliers’ resources, more particularly to become the customer of choice. Therefore, it is essential for buying companies to increase their attractiveness and ensure high supplier satisfaction. Previous research on buyer-supplier relationships identified various drivers of relationship success. However, research has not yet paid significant attention to specific actions taken which improve supplier relationships and eventually increase the likelihood of preferential supplier treatment. Towards this end, the Thesis explores the specific buyer-supplier interaction episodes which have improved their relationships. For this purpose, 43 buyers and sales employees of a variety of companies are interviewed and the episodes are analysed. For the analysis, the critical incident technique and artificial intelligence are used. The empirical findings suggest that there are two types of interaction episodes, those that are arising through external influences and those that are created with strategic intent. Furthermore, the episodes are distinguishable based on the relevance of commitment and communication in the episode. While the theoretically retrieved success drivers also shape the study’s findings, transparency, short-term loss acceptance and supportive initiatives are also significant stimulants of supplier relationship improvements. The findings further contribute to the buyer-supplier relationship context in such a way that the study demonstrates the boundaries of applying the critical incident technique and AI-based analysis tools to the underlying research context.
DECENTRALIZING OF TRANSPARENCY: USING BLOCKCHAIN TO REDUCE COUNTERFEITING

Whether online or in-store, how can consumer trust and interact with certification marks? The lack of transparency when buying a product with a certificate is one of the shadows when economic coming to growth. According to the report conducted jointly by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) on “Trade in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods: Mapping the Economic Impact”, imports of counterfeit and pirated goods are worth nearly half a trillion dollars a year, or around 2.5% of global imports. In the EU, counterfeit and pirated goods amounted to up to 5 % of imports or as much as EUR 85 billion (USD 116 billion) (OECD/EUIPO, 2016). The Increasing presence of counterfeit and non-compliant (often unsafe) products on the European market need from one side the intervention of Inspection Agencies and from the other side a Decentralizing of Transparency by using Blockchain Technology. So far, approximately 50 alerts published each week on the European Commission’s website and just over 2 000 alerts published per year about counterfeiting (Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (European Commission), 2018). In this paper, we describe a decentralized product certificate information that ensures consumer inform themselves about product specification especially the validity information of the certificate. We implement a protocol that turns a Blockchain into an automated access-control. Unlike Bitcoin, transactions in our system are not strictly financial – they are used to carry data, such as storing, querying and sharing product certificate data after that we briefly examine and substantiate short why the Industry and society need a new approach to reduce counterfeiting and improve transparency and what is the difference to the conventional way to access with a central database. Finally, we discuss possible future extensions to Blockchains that could harness them into a well-rounded solution for trusted computing problems in society. One of the main Goals of this research is we went to enable consumer to check the validity of certifications, understand their value. This would be the one of the important steps in the direction to reduce counterfeiting. Like all prior disruptive technologies there will be beneficial and detrimental aspects of Blockchain technologies that will need to be carefully considered prior to development and commercialization of the approach presented in this paper.
Arkansas beef cattle industry: 2017 self-assessment

ABSTRACT Objective The objectives of this study were 2-fold. The first was to gain insight into the strengths, weaknesses (limitations), opportunities, and threats (SWOT) for 6 segments of Arkansas’s beef industry including small commercial cow-calf ( Materials and Methods During phase I of the assessment, leaders from each segment participated in listening sessions and generated a list of SWOT comments. During phase II, up to 100 industry representatives from each segment were randomly selected to complete a survey. Results and Discussion Results of the SWOT assessment revealed 8 universal grand challenge areas including markets and marketing, land availability and cost, technology adoption, cattle genetic merit and health, government regulation, animal activism, labor, and next generation of producers. Printed extension publications was a preferred method for receiving information among producers (4 ± 0.07; where 5 = highly preferred) and industry (3.89 ± 0.11) and did not differ (P = 0.43). Group meetings and workshops were only moderately preferred among producers (3.55 ± 0.08) and industry (3.44 ± 0.13) and did not differ (P = 0.47). Based on meeting day preference response rate, stocker operators were least likely to attend meetings. Implications and Applications Industry assessments establish awareness of the challenges producers and supporters face and reveal opportunities in programming to advance industry sustainability.
Interactive streamed media in virtual environment

In our work, we are dealing with problem of displaying video content under given restrictions. This work is oriented on museums and galleries and their exhibitions. The content has to be secured so it cannot be downloaded. With technology of streaming we offer solution for museums and galleries to display their exhibitions in videos. The transferred data is protected by an encryption in order to reduce the possibility of data leakage. The second challenge is to enrich the video with non-standard interaction elements, to make the exhibition more user-friendly and more interactive. Therefore, we propose using the component called “virtual path” for better orientation in museum. This component also visualizes the process of playing the video. Visitors get the opportunity of moving around the museum in chosen order or skipping corridors, which they do not intent to visit. To do that, we suggest adding some additional information about the scene, which will be displayed on demand.
Does financial availability sustain financial, innovative, and environmental performance? Relation via opportunity recognition

Traditionally, firms tend to incline toward financial performance and profitability to surge shareholder's wealth. In the modern day, in addition to financial performance, innovative and environmental performance has also become a central effort. However, all firms are not flourished in the achievement of financial, innovative, and environmental performance, particularly small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which need adequate financial resources due to lack of resources and can search for opportunities to boost their performance. This research examines the role of financial availability in financial, innovative, and environmental performance with a mediating role of opportunity recognition. Empirical evidence is collected through structured questionnaires from 347 SMEs operating in the emerging market Pakistan. Hypotheses are tested in Analysis of a Moment Structure (AMOS) using structural equation modeling. Results indicate that satisfactory financial resources significantly contribute to financial and innovative performance but play an insignificant role in environmental performance as well. In addition, firms with enough financial capital recognize new opportunities significantly via opportunity recognition mediator, where partially mediating the relation between financial availability and financial/innovative performance. However, firms fully mediate the link between financial availability and environmental performance. Our research findings recommend CEOs and top managers to utilize their financial resources in an efficient way to achieve the advantage of the new opportunity recognition, superior financial, innovative, and environmental performance.
A business continuity management (BCM) framework for disaster resilient SMEs in Malaysia

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in the economy of most countries, crucial in terms of social inclusion, local employment and innovation. In the developed world, such as the European Union, around 99 percent of economic activities can be traced back to SMEs, accounting for almost 66 percent of all jobs in the private sector. A similar scenario can be seen in the developing world where SMEs accounted for over 90 percent of all enterprises and over 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The impact of disasters on SMEs is very high throughout the world, including both developed and developing countries. Lack of disaster resilience due to financial and expertise limitations means the impact of natural disasters to SMEs in developing countries are worst compared to developed countries in terms of casualty and economic losses. To deal with the negative impacts of natural hazards, many SMEs in developed countries such as United Kingdom, Japan and New Zealand are using Business Continuity Management (BCM) as their disaster risk reduction (DRR) approach. However, in developing countries including Malaysia, BCM is used by large and multinational companies to deal with IT issues and crisis management, rather than to help them better prepare for dealing with the threat posed by natural hazards. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to develop a BCM framework that can be used to improve the resilience of Malaysian SMEs. To develop the framework, seven interviews with academic experts, industry players and government agencies were conducted and a survey among 127 SMEs’ owners was conducted in order to examine the impacts of natural hazard to them and their understanding of BCM. Finally, once again expert interviews were conducted to validate the framework. The results of this study show that the impacts of natural hazards are severe for SMEs in Malaysia and BCM can be used as an approach to reduce the impacts of natural hazards and to achieve disaster resilience but it must be affordable and understandable by the SMEs in Malaysia. In addition, the roles of stakeholders such as the government, private companies and NGOs are also significant for SMEs’ disaster resilience.
Attributes Influencing the Reading and Comprehension of Source Code - Discussing Contradictory Evidence

Background: Coding guidelines can be contradictory despite their intention of providing a universal perspective on source code quality. For instance, five attributes (code size, semantic complexity, internal documentation, layout style, and identifier length) out of 13 presented contradictions regarding their influence (positive or negative) on the source code readability and comprehensibility. Aims: To investigate source code attributes and their influence on readability and comprehensibility. Method: A literature review was used to identify source code attributes impacting the source code reading and comprehension, and an empirical study was performed to support the assessment of four attributes that presented empirical contradictions in the technical literature. Results: Regardless participants’ experience; all participants showed more positive comprehensibility perceptions for Python snippets with more lines of code. However, their readability perceptions regarding code size were contradictory. The less experienced participants preferred more lines of code while the more experienced ones preferred fewer lines of code. Long and complete-word identifiers presented better readability and comprehensibility according to both novices and experts. Comments contribute to better comprehension. Furthermore, four indentation spaces dominated the code reading preference. Conclusions: Coding guidelines contradictions still demand further investigation to provide indications on possible confounding factors explaining some of the inconclusive results.
Elephant 2000: A Programming Language for Remembering the Past and Building on It

Elephant 2000 is a programming language to specify programs that accept user speech as text inputs and outputs speech text. The inputs and outputs are based on Dialogue Act theory which describes several forms of speech outputs, such as requests, questions, and answers. The language also relies on Named Entity Recognition to determine what types of objects a user references. These entities include persons, locations, times and so on. Using these attributes of user speech, a program is able to perform simple rule matching and pattern recognition to respond to input. The result is a programming language with English like syntax that allows a programmer to create a chat bot. The system is backed with a machine learning implementation of a moderately complex chat bot that leverages Sequence to Sequence and Long Short-Term Memory techniques. This allows programmers to have the system respond on its own if none of their rules are matched. The idea of this is to avoid system responses like “I do not know how to help you with that” and “I do not know. ” The language was implemented using a scannerless lexer and compiler called parglare in python version 3.6.
An Investigation of Financial Management Behaviors of Managers: Example of KOSGEB

Research Article Purpose The aim of this study is to analyze managers’ financial management behaviors (cash management, credit management, savings-investment and insurance). Financial management behavior, therefore, plays a key role in the success of managers and organizations. Financial management behavior refers to managers' individual and organizational decisions on and practices in financial matters such as cash, loans, savings, investments and insurance.