Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study Abroad Influencing Factors: An Investigation of Socio-Economic Status, Social, Cultural, and Personal Factors

The purpose of this study was to determine what factors (socio-economic status, social, cultural, and personal factors) most influence undergraduate decisions to study abroad. An online survey was completed by a target sample of 128 UNC students. The 49-item questionnaire consisted of items measuring student awareness of study abroad offerings, factors that influence students to study abroad, and financial ability/socio-economic status. Analysis included Pearson’s correlation tests, descriptive statistics, and cross-tab analysis. Results revealed that students prefer to study abroad in European countries and in countries that speak English. Results revealed a high awareness of study abroad offerings at the university. Cultural factors were the most important factors influencing student decisions to study abroad. Despite varying socio-economic status, most respondents indicated they would need financial aid to study abroad. Overall this study revealed that awareness levels, cultural factors, and financial ability most influence student decisions to study abroad.
A Study Paper on Detecting Spam Zombies

In this paper we aim to detect the compromised machines in a network that are involved in the spamming activities, widely known as spam zombies. Given that spamming provides a key economic incentive for attackers to recruit the large number of compromised machine, we develop a spam zombie detection system named SPOT by keeping track of outgoing messages in a network. SPOT is designed based on a powerful statistical tool called Sequential Probability Ratio Test (SPRT), which has bounded false positive and false negative error rates.
INTELLIGENT DATA FUSION MODEL IN GINISSENSE ARCHITECTURE

Data fusion has been important field of exploration, brought to light under the influence of new technologies and the emerging need for information integration and knowledge extraction from heterogeneous data sources. The main focus of this paper will be set particularly on sensor data fusion. Our current focus is on designing and developing an intelligent data fusion component for a Sensor Web based architecture that will enable combining different environmental data into coherent information. For addressing the problem efficiently we will give an overview of present data fusion models and then incorporate the most appropriate model into existing Sensor Web based architecture GinisSense for monitoring environment and collecting environmental data. In this way we will have an intelligent data fusion system. Furthermore we will explain in detail the fusion process in GinisSense architecture and give an example of its usage.
A learning rule eliminating local minima in multilayer perceptrons

Convergence problems in the case of the generalized delta rule are discussed. On the basis of the analysis performed, a modification to the nonlinearity of processing elements is proposed; this modification is shown to smooth the cost function to be minimized during the learning phase. A variation to the generalized delta rule learning procedure, required by the introduced modification, is discussed. Extensive tests have been performed on several examples proposed in the technical literature. The tests show the effectiveness of the proposed procedure in improving the convergence properties of the backpropagation algorithm. In particular, it has been verified that the proposed modification virtually eliminates nonconvergence problems of a moderate eta value is used. <<ETX>>
Power prediction on broadband channels

The fading envelope in mobile communications causes rapid variations of the receiving conditions. Fast radio resource allocation and planning require accurate predictions of the changing received power. To form a prediction of the fading power, the individual taps of the channel are predicted and their squared magnitude are summed. The dynamics of the taps can be modeled as subsampled autoregressive or ARMA-processes, leading to the different linear predictors studied. The prediction performance is evaluated on measured mobile radio channels at 45 locations with a bandwidth of 6.4 MHz and Doppler frequencies in the range 30-110 Hz. With the proposed predictors the normalized mean square error for the power prediction is below one percent for prediction ranges up to 2.5 ms, for a majority of the measured channels.
Bibliometric analysis of scientific production in badminton

The aim of the present study was to analyse the scientific production in the sport of badminton. Publications were collected from the main collection of “Web of Science” platform, specifically from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Art & Humanities Citation Index (AH Asian and European countries have the highest productivity index, both continents with great trend in badminton, coinciding, in turn, with institutions and first authors; health and training are the most studied thematic areas, whose main disciplines are sports medicine and theory of sports training. This type of studies provides baseline information on future research directions in badminton.
Efficiency of packet reservation multiple access

Packet-reservation multiple access (PRMA) is viewed as a merger of slotted ALOHA and time-division multiple access (TDMA). Dispersed terminals transmit packets of speech information to a central base station. When its speech activity detector indicates the beginning of a talkspurt, a terminal contends with other terminals for access to an available time slot. After the base station detects the first packet in the talkspurt, the terminal reserves future time slots for transmission of subsequent speech packets. The influence of several variables on PRMA efficiency, defined as the number of conversations per channel, is examined. The number of channels is the ratio of transmission rate to speech coding rate. It is found that with 32-kb/s speech coding and 720-kb/s transmission (22.5 channels), PRMA supports up to 37 simultaneous conversations, or 1.64 conservations per channel. The number of conversations per channel is at least 1.5 over a wide range of packet sizes (8 ms of speech per packet to 34 ms) and for all systems with 16 or more channels (transmission rate >or=512 kb/s, with 32-kb/s speech coding). Other factors studied are the sensitivity of the speech activity detector, the retransmission probability of the contention scheme, and the maximum time delay for the transmission of speech packets. >
Personal factors supporting intercultural communication in e-learning of information sciences

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the personal factors for both the students and the lecturers that support intercultural communication in library and information science (LIS) e-learning. Research was conducted to explore the factors supporting intercultural communication in LIS e-learning. Design/methodology/approach – Using case study, the opinion of students of two LIS curricula about the factors that support intercultural communication in e-learning has been determined. The data have been collected using e-interviews and document analysis. Document analysis and constant comparative analysis method were used for analysing collected data. Findings – Intercultural communication in the e-learning of LIS curriculum was supported by pedagogical, personal, cultural and technological factors. In this paper, the personal factors are emphasised. These factors are the supporting characteristics of the students and lecturers, their motivation, similarities between co-students and the competence o.
An evaluation of the use of correspondence analysis for the analysis of herbivore-habitat selection

The necessity for finding an objective method for the identification and evaluation of the salient factors affecting habitat selection in large-herbivore/habitat relationships served as motivation for the present study. A number of habitat parameters were recorded for eight important large herbivores in the Kruger National Park and subjected to correspondence analysis. This method yielded satisfactory results and illustrated animal species associations, based on the selection for similar habitat factors, and the habitat factors most favoured by each species. Analysis of this nature holds much promise for more advanced in-depth studies of animal/habitat relationships.
Performance Profiling of Cache Systems at Scale

Large scale in-memory object caches such as memcached are widely used to accelerate popular web sites and to reduce the burden on backend databases. Operation and development teams tuning a cache tier would benefit from knowing answers to questions such as “how much total memory should be allocated to the cache tier? ” and “what is the minimum cache size for a given hit rate? ” We propose a new lightweight online profiler, MIMIR, that hooks into the replacement policy of each cache server and periodically produces histograms of the overall cache hit rate as a function of memory size. It predicts smaller cache sizes with 99% accuracy on average at high performance. In order to predict the hit rate for larger cache sizes than the current allocation, the metadata for some evicted keys must be available. Keeping track of the metadata for all evicted keys is memory expensive and under intensive workloads will fill up the disk space quickly. We propose a new, fast and memory efficient method for storing a specific amount of evicted metadata with automatic flushing using Counting Filters, an extension of Bloom Filters to support removals. This method predicts the hit rate of a larger cache with 95% accuracy on average. Experiments on the profiler within memcached showed that dynamic hit rate histograms are produced with relatively low drop in throughput. Thus our evaluation suggests that online cache profiling can be a practical tool for improving provisioning of large caches. Arangursvoktun a storum flýtiminniskerfum Trausti Saemundsson Mai 2014
Modeling and Design of an Electric All-Terrain Vehicle

This book describes and evaluates the conversion of a conventional gasoline powered all-terrain vehicle (ATV) to an electric ATV. Preliminary studies are performed to obtain initial power and torque requirements for the vehicle. A detailed simulation model of the mechanical load is written and compared to manufacturer supplied data. The load model is then combined with a comprehensive electronic drive and motor simulation using an electromagnetic transient simulation program (PSCAD). A prototype of the vehicle is constructed by selecting the main components, an electric traction motor, batteries and a custom motor drive, using the simulation results. The results of both the simulation and prototypes are compared and evaluated.
Load Distribution for Embedded Smart Cameras based on Mobile Agents

In third generation video surveillance systems the overall processing is distributed among the whole system. Current technology provides enough computational power to digitize, analyze, and process video data directly on the cameras of the surveillance system. The SmartCam project is dedicated to the development of such a high-performance camera that is equipped with multiple digital signal processors (DSPs) for video processing and an XScale network processor. The network processor controls the DSPs and is responsible for intraand inter-camera communication. In a typical surveillance system many cameras are deployed and a lot of different surveillance tasks have to be executed. The cameras are grouped into clusters in order to support the allocation of these tasks to cameras. Not every task is executed on every camera of a cluster. Since there is no dedicated central system, the allocation of tasks to cameras has to be managed in a decentralized way. This work focuses on the design of a dynamic load distribution system for such embedded smart cameras. The load distribution is realized using mobile agents. Mobile agents represent surveillance tasks and can migrate from one camera to another at runtime. The mobile agent system is implemented on the network processor running under GNU/Linux. The image processing is done on the DSPs, hence the DSP applications are included in the agent’s payload. The load distribution problem is modeled as a distributed constraint satisfaction problem that is solved in parallel on all cameras of a cluster. The partial solutions are then merged resulting in a set of complete allocations of agents to the cameras of the cluster. To select the optimal solution, costs are assigned to the different placements of the agents. The proposed load distribution mechanisms were implemented in a prototype system. Various experiments demonstrated the feasibility of this load distribution mechanism.
Binocular Stereo Localization Using Two Pan-Tilt-Zoom Cameras

(Abstract) The traditional binocular stereo vision is mainly based on stationary cameras. Compared with stereo vision using dual-stationary cameras, binocular stereo vision using two pan-tilt-zoom cameras is more challenging since the camera parameters may change when the camera motion. Few literatures focused on this work. In this paper, we propose an improved pan-tilt-zoom camera model, which parameterizes camera projection with the camera’s pan-tilt angles. Two different methods are presented to calibrate the camera model. Stereo vision using two pan-tilt-zoom cameras can be converted to traditional stereo vision via a homography matrix defined in the proposed model. Therefore, a lot of algorithms used in traditional converged stereo vision can be valid for stereo vision using pan-tilt-zoom cameras. We use the binocular stereo to get three-dimensional information of object on the dual-arm mobile robot platform. The experiment results show that the proposed approach is promising and is able to locate the targets with high accuracy.
Anlaysis of Eukaryotic Sequence Pattern using GenScan

Sequence homology analysis in the substances in the phenomenon of life is to create database by sorting and indexing and to demonstrate the usefulness of informatics. In this paper, Markov models are used in GenScan program to convert the pattern of complex eukaryotic protein sequences. It becomes impossible to navigate the minimum distance, complexity increases exponentially as the exact calculation. It is used scorecard in amino acid substitutions between similar amino acid substitutions to have a differential effect score, and is applied the Markov models sophisticated concealment of the transition probability model. As providing superior method to translate sequences homologous sequences in analysis using blast p, Markov models. is secreted protein structure of sequence translations.
Structure diagnostics of dispersive two-phase systems using speckle correlation technique

This work describes the results of analysis of the developing porous systems and foamed liquids using full-filed speckle correlometry. The relationship between the dynamics of structure formation of the model porous matrices and the correlation time of multiple scattered laser light is studied. Partially isolated foam samples were used as model scattering objects. The observed increase in the correlation time of speckle intensity fluctuations is caused by a variety of physical processes occurring in the evolving foam (in particular, the gas diffusion between neighboring pores). The obtained results can serve as the physical basis for advanced probing techniques in various areas of modern applied science related to synthesis of highly porous functional materials.
Lightweight location update strategy for reducing signaling and database loads in PCS networks

In this paper, a lightweight registration strategy is proposed for reducing database loads and signaling traffic due to location tracking. An analytic model is developed and numerical examples are given to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. Compared to the standard approach and other proposed strategies, the strategy not only reduces the access rate to the home location register (HLR) significantly, but keeps the loads on the visitor location register (VLR) and the signaling loads low as well. Results show that our strategy outperforms the standard strategy, the replication strategy, and the local anchoring strategy over a wide range of system parameters.
The Relationship Between Aggression and Depression: Testing the Moderating Effects of Age and Gender

vi LIST OF TABLES . ix LIST OF FIGURES . x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW . 4 Theories Explaining Aggression . 4 Biosocial Perspectives of Aggression . 10 Aggression Typologies and Definitions . 12 Behavioral/Personality Abnormalities . 16 Brain Structures and Aggression . 18 Neurochemicals and Aggression . 22 Theories Explaining Depression . 27 Biosocial Perspectives of Depression . 33 Depression typologies and Definitions . 36 Behavioral/Personality Abnormalities . 40 Brain Structures and Depression. 45
Nonlinear Electrical Transport in Dirac and Semi-Dirac Systems

In this thesis, we investigate some properties of nonlinear electrical transport in Dirac and Semi-Dirac systems. In the first part, we used incident fields to derive the non-linear conductivity for a general material. More specifically, we examined the conductivity for one incident field and two incident fields with both different intensity and frequency. More recently, graphene has attracted the attention of many researchers around the world because of its superior properties. In more detail, we used a recursive method (the expansion of the Fermi-Dirac distribution up to higher orders) to find both the linear and nonlinear conductivity results for one incident field. Our result suggest that both the single frequency and frequency tripled nonlinear conductivity become different to the linear conductivity under a moderate electric field strength of 10 V/cm in both their real and imaginary components. Next, we used the same method of one incident field for two incident fields in the calculation of conductivity, then we examined the transmission properties in the thin film. The results showed that the transmission of graphene is significantly altered depending on elements of electric fields and frequencies. In the second part, we investigated the nonlinear optical response in Semi-Dirac System. The semi-Dirac material has confirmed its existence in a TiO2/VO2 multilayered structure. By using a semi-classical approach where the quantum mechanically calculated energy dispersion is used to derive the velocity in the presence of an applied field of 10 − 10 V/cm along the x or y direction. This unique system can find out many physical properties of bilayer graphene. The optical current is found in both Cartesian coordinates, following both the longitudinal and transverse current. It was found that the ratio of the third order non-linear response to the linear optical response is significantly dependent on both temperature and chemical potential. In more detail, in the terahertz regime, the third order response is comparable to the linear response under an applied field of 10 − 10 V/cm. Furthermore, the non-linear response in linear direction persists at room temperature along the linear direction. The results may have applications where different current response is required along different directions in THz regime. List of Publications
The Pedagogical Evaluation of Q: Skills for Success Textbooks as Perceived by EFL Instructors at Taibah University

This study evaluated Q: Skills for Success textbooks for first year students from EFL instructors’ perspectives at Taibah University to find practical implications for stressing major strengths and avoiding weak points in these textbooks and consequently developing students’ growth in EFL learning. The participants consisted of fifty EFL instructors teach these textbooks at Taibah University. They were asked to answer the questionnaire which was developed by the researcher to discover their beliefs about adopting the new textbooks. The question of the study was about instructors’ beliefs regarding pedagogical value of Q: Skills for Success in terms of objectives, contents, methods, and evaluation. Results revealed that these textbooks helped students in improving their proficiency in English, developing self-confidence and improving their overall education. English instructors, according to their responses, agreed on the suitability of Q: Skills for Success textbooks in terms of objectives, contents, methods and techniques and ways of evaluation. However, the findings revealed some negative points concentrated on the appropriateness of content and pictures to the local culture of the students in addition to the absence of instructors’ participation in the selection of objectives. In light of the findings, the researcher suggested other researchers to conduct similar studies in other regions to find out if there are cultural differences concerning teaching Q: Skills for Success textbooks.
EXPLOITING QUERY CLICK LOGS FOR UTTERANCE DOMAIN DETECTION IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING Dilek Hakkani-T¨ ur Larry Heck Gokhan Tur

In this paper, we describe methods to exploit search queries mined from search engine query logs to improve domain detection in spoken language understanding. We propose extending the label propagation algorithm, a graph-based semi-supervised learning approach, to incorporate noisy domain information estimated from search engine links the users click following their queries. The main contributions of our work are the use of search query logs for domain classification, integration of noisy supervision into the semi-supervised label propagation algorithm, and sampling of high-quality query click data by mining query logs and using classification confidence scores. We show that most semi-supervised learning methods we experimented with improve the performance of the supervised training, and the biggest improvement is achieved by label propagation that uses noisy supervision. We reduce the to error rate of domain detection by 20% relative, from 6.2% to 5.0%.
CREATIVE PLATFORM METHODOLOGY: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR STUDENT CREATIVITY DEVELOPMENT IN COLLEGE STUDIES

In recent years, researchers have focused on the manifestations of students’ creativity, on the factors that impact its development, as well as on the conditions, means and methods that can facilitate students’ creativity in various fields of study. In the present investigation, the existing definitions of creativity, creativity development, the concept of Creative Platform and prior research conducted in the field have been analysed. The theoretical framework of the Creative Platform methodology, developed by the Danish researchers Christian Byrge and Søren Hansen (2009), is based on previous studies of creativity development (Amabile, 1998; Csikszentmihalyi, 2006; Stenberg, 1996; etc.). This methodology is currently used as a didactic model in higher education institutions across the globe, including Malta, Spain, China, and other countries. The present investigation presents a model based on the Creative Platform methodology. It is designed to develop students’ creativity in college studies via a specific teaching process during which students develop extra confidence, concentration, and motivation necessary for freeing themselves from the professional, social, or cultural stereotypes.