Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting semantic duplicates in short news items

In the paper, we examine a task of detecting text messages that borrow similar meaning or relate to the same event. The noticeable feature of the task at hand is that the considered text messages are short, about 40 words per message on average. To solve this task, we design an algorithm that is based on the vector space model, meaning that every text is mapped to a point in high-dimensional space. Text-to-vector transforming is done using the TF-IDF measure. It should be noted that even for small cases with a volume of about 800 messages the dimension of the vector space can exceed 2,000 components, and on the average the dimension is about 8,500 components. To reduce the dimension of space, the method of principal components is used. The application of this method allows us to rationally reduce the dimensionality of space and leave about 3 percent of the components from their original number. In this reduced vector space, we use agglomerative hierarchical clustering in accordance with the Lance– Williams algorithm. The actual cluster merge is done using the closest linkage algorithm. We stop merging clusters when the distance between two nearest clusters exceeds some threshold value that is given to the algorithm as a parameter. We conduct an experiment on the dataset of 135,000 news messages parsed from news aggregator feeds. During the experiment, we build the regression model for the r algorithm parameter value that allows us to predict the value of this parameter that gives good clustering results. The designed algorithm scores high in quality metrics indicating its suffi cient ability to classify a pair of messages as being duplicates or not, as well as the ability to fi nd out whole groups of duplicate messages.
A Study of the Combined USe of Differential Evolution and Genetic Algorithms

Differential Evolution (DE) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) are efﬁcient stochastic, populationbased, metaheuristics for global optimization, that are widely used in many different ﬁelds. In order to explore the qualities of each algorithm at different times of the search, we used the algorithms in an interleaved way, evaluating them on different constrained optimization test problems from the literature. With this it was possible to observe the behavior of the ﬁnal algorithm, a hybrid one, and the extent to which it alters the moment and number of times each component algorithm is used. Furthermore it was possible to perform comparisons between the proposed hybrid and the models usually adopted for the original algorithms.
Constant Tonal Alignment in Swedish Word Accent II

Studies on accentual tonal alignment of intonation languages suggest that L in rising (LH) pre-nuclear accents anchors with a specific point in the segmental string, while the timing of H varies. This study investigates if lexical accents, too, exhibit a constant alignment by testing the South Swedish word Accent II. When under the strain of tempo variability the L-target was found not to be anchored with syllable onset. The results were not fully conclusive regarding H, but no clear evidence was found against anchoring of H, which could mean that H is an important phonological event in Accent II, while L is not. Index Terms: tonal alignment, segmental anchoring, word accent, pre-nuclear accent, speech rate
THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT EXERCISE-BASED INTERVENTIONS ON FUNCTIONAL FITNESS OF OLDER ADULTS

Ageing is a multifactorial process associated with several irreversible functional and cognitive alterations of human body and determined by genetic and environmental factors. We aimed to investigate the effects of three physical activity interventions of 40 independently living older adults before and after a 3-month training period. Thirty female (69.6 ± 5.3 years) and ten male (70.6 ± 5.4 years) participants were randomly assigned into a physical exercise group (PEG; N = 9), a concurrent physical and cognitive exercise group (PEG + COG; N = 10), a physical exercise with additional 10 g of BCAA daily supplementation group (PEG+BCAA; N = 11), and a control group (CG; N = 10). All three groups performed the same physical exercise program for 12 weeks, three days a week for 45 − 60 minutes per session. Pre- and post-measurements were performed using a standardized functional fitness assessment tool for older adults i.e. Senior Fitness Test battery, upgraded with the Four Square Step Test (FSST) and Grip Strength Test (GST). When intervention groups were pooled, we found moderate to low improvements in the Chair Stand Up, Timed Up and Go, FSST and Six-minute Walk Tests (all P < .001). However, those improvements were intervention-specific with highest improvements found in the PEG for the FSST (P = .004) and Six-minute Walk Test (P = .004); in the PEG + COG for the Timed Up and Go Test (P < .001); and in the PEG+BCAA for body mass (P = .012) and the Chair Stand Up Test (P < .001). Although the sample size was low, our study provides further evidence of different interventional exercise-based programs that can benefit the population of independently living older adults.
Relating vanishing points to catadioptric camera calibration

This paper presents the analysis and derivation of the geometric relation between vanishing points and camera parameters of central catadioptric camera systems. These vanishing points correspond to the three mutually orthogonal directions of 3D real world coordinate system (i.e. X, Y and Z axes). Compared to vanishing points (VPs) in the perspective projection, the advantages of VPs under central catadioptric projection are that there are normally two vanishing points for each set of parallel lines, since lines are projected to conics in the catadioptric image plane. Also, their vanishing points are usually located inside the image frame. We show that knowledge of the VPs corresponding to XYZ axes from a single image can lead to simple derivation of both intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the central catadioptric system. This derived novel theory is demonstrated and tested on both synthetic and real data with respect to noise sensitivity.
Effect of HCl on the structure and catalytic activity of Pt/Al2O3 nanocatalyst prepared in microemulsion system

Now a day preparation of special and effective nanocatalysts is a hot research topic. Obviously the size and structure of the active site of a catalyst plays the key role in catalytic activity. In this novel research the Pt nanocatalyst supported on γ-Al2O3 was prepared in two different microemulsion systems to clarify the effect of microemulsion essence on catalyst character and activity. Two types of microemulsion systems were constructed from Triton X-100/2-butanol as surfactant and co-surfactant, n-heptane as organic phase and H2O + H2PtCl6 (or HCl(aq) + H2PtCl6) as aqueous phase to investigate the effect of HCl on the shape and structure of the prepared nanocatalysts. Shape, size and size distribution of the Pt nanoparticles on the alumina were monitored by cyclic voltammetry and SEM analysis. Activity of the nanocatalysts was determined by reduction of p-nitrophenol as a reaction model.
The Relationship between Ideal L2 Self and Willingness to Communicate inside the Classroom.

Over the past decades there has been a dramatic increase in academic research on motivation to learn a second or foreign language (L2). The present study tried to investigate the relationship between the ideal L2 self as a motivational variable and willingness to communicate in English (L2 WTC) inside the classroom. Participants were 56 university students majoring in English as a foreign language (EFL) at a private university in Ankara, Turkey. Data were collected using the Ideal L2 Self Scale and Willingness to Communicate inside the Classroom Scale. Findings of descriptive statistics indicated that 32.1% of the participants had high L2 WTC inside the classroom, 30.4% had moderate L2 WTC inside the classroom, and 37.5% had low L2 WTC inside the classroom. Findings also revealed a significant relationship between these two constructs noticing the relations at a skills specific level. The implications are discussed to present ideas to language teachers, teacher trainers, and curriculum designers to raise their awareness on the impact of ideal L2 self on willingness to communicate.
Parasitic diversity of a wild Satanoperca jurupari population, an ornamental cichlid in the Brazilian Amazon

Assessment of biodiversity is fundamental for the understanding of ecological interactions, but fish parasites were neglected in biodiversity estimates for a long time. The aim of this paper was to investigate the diversity of parasites in Satanoperca jurupari in the Amazon River system in Brazil. Of the fish examined, 90.0% were parasitized by one or more species of protozoans and metazoans, and a total of 3,110,094 parasites were collected. Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, Piscinoodinium pillulare, Sciadicleithum juruparii, Clinostomum marginatum, Posthodiplostomum sp. , Genarchella genarchella, Argulus multicolor and Ergasilus coatiarus were found. However, I. multifiliis and P. pillulare were the most prevalent, abundant and dominant parasites, while A. multicolor and G. genarchella were the least prevalent and abundant parasites. The parasites had an aggregate dispersion, but E. coatiarus and the endoparasite species had a higher aggregation pattern. The species richness of parasites varied from 1 to 8 species per host, the Brillouin index varied from 0.32 to 1.09 and evenness varied from 0.01 to 0.47. The host size did not influence the diversity indices and the abundance of parasites, which did not affect the body condition of the hosts. Satanoperca jurupari is a new host for G. genarchella.
The efficacy of financial futures as a hedging tool in electricity markets

This paper estimates and applies a risk management strategy for electricity spot exposures using futures hedging. We apply our approach to 3 of the most actively traded European electricity markets, Nordpool, APXUK, and Phelix. We compare both optimal hedging strategies and the hedging effectiveness of these markets for 2 hedging horizons, weekly and monthly using both Variance and Value at Risk. Our key finding is that electricity futures can effectively manage risk only for specific time periods when using hedging strategies that have been very successful in financial and other commodity markets. More generally, they are ineffective as a risk management tool when compared with other energy assets. This is especially true at the weekly frequency. We also find significant differences in both the optimal hedge ratios and the hedging effectiveness of the different electricity markets. Better performance is found for the Nordpool market, whereas the poorest performer in hedging terms is the Phelix market.
Study of an In-order SMT Architecture and Grouping Schemes

In this paper, we propose a simultaneous multithreading (SMT) architecture that im- proves instruction throughput by exploiting instruction level parallelism (ILP) and thread level parallelism (TLP). The proposed architecture issues and completes instructions belonging to the same thread in exact program order. The issue and completion policy greatly reduces the design complexity and hardware cost of our architecture, compared with others that employ out-of- order issue and completion. On the other hand, when the instructions belong to different threads, the issue and completion orders for those instructions may not necessarily be identical to the fetch order. The processor issues instructions simultaneously from multiple threads to functional units by exploiting ILP and TLP, and by dynamic resource sharing. That parallel execution no- tably improves performance and resource utilization with minimal additional hardware cost over the conventional superscalar processors. This paper proposes an SMT architecture with grouping as well as one without grouping. Without grouping, all threads dynamically and flexibly share most resources. On the other hand, in the SMT architecture with grouping, in which resources and threads are divided into several groups for design simplification, resources are shared only among threads belonging to the same group as those resources. Simulation results show that our processors with four and eight threads improve performance by three or more times over the conventional superscalar processor with comparable execution resources and policies, and that reasonable grouping reduces the design complexity of SMT processors with little negative effect on performance.
The effect of airborne dust on astronomical polarization measurements

In the past, it has generally been assumed that polarization observations made with ground-based telescopes are unaffected by the passage of light through the Earth's atmosphere. Here, we report observations with a new high-sensitivity astronomical polarimeter (PlanetPol) made during a Saharan dust event over the La Palma observatory in 2005 May that show excess linear polarization in the horizontal direction due to the passage of the starlight through the dust. The polarization reached a maximum value of 4.8 x 10 -5 at 56° zenith distance and varied over five nights in proportion to the change in dust optical depth. Polarization of transmitted light (dichroism) does not occur for spherical or randomly oriented non-spherical particles. Thus, these results imply that some fraction of the dust grain population aligns with a preferred orientation. We use T-matrix models to demonstrate that the observed polarization direction implies a vertical orientation for the long axis of the particles. We suggest a possible mechanism for vertical orientation resulting from the electric field in the atmosphere. These results will need to be taken into account in the design and use of future instruments for high-sensitivity astronomical polarimetry. The results also indicate possible new approaches to studying aerosol particles and their effects on the Earth's atmosphere.
The Role of Finite Element Analysis in Studying Potential Failure of Mandibular Reconstruction Methods

Defects of the mandible occur after trauma or resection after infection or tumours. There have been many methods espoused, but many methods can fail especially if the biomechanics of the mandible is not considered fully. As the only moveable, load- bearing bone of the skull, the mandible is subject to loads and stresses unique to it due to its shape, location and function. This chapter reviews the basic knowledge of the mandible necessary to perform finite element analysis, the challenges and then reviews several studies that have been done. The authors’ personal research is detailed to illustrate how finite element analysis can be used to look at potential failure of a new method for mandibular reconstruction and implant evaluation.
Reasoning of EEG waveform using Revised Principal Component Analysis (RPCA)

The analysis of brain activity and classification is a prime issue in Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal processing these days. The related exertion has been taken to estimate the brain activity on the basis of non-invasive power spectrum analysis. For this, modified approach involving Revised Principal Component Analysis (RPCA), multipliers and Support Vector Machine (SVM) Classifiers with two distinct features are contrasted to investigate the behavior of brain’s electrical activity of a visual attention. The proposed method of EEG classification can be very useful in predicting the action of brain, analysing the activity of the signal in open or in close condition and it provides better behavior of the frequency. The EEG data has been acquired from a WindDAQ Acquisition and the EEG analysis has been carried out in MATLAB platform to perform the work in this paper.
Classroom-Based Field Experiences in High School STEM Academies: Opportunities to Observe and Participate in High-Leverage Science Teaching Practices

In a scholarship program created to recruit and better prepare secondary physical science teachers, undergraduate physics majors had an opportunity to participate in an innovative classroom-based field experience. These field experiences took place in the unique classroom contexts of two STEM-focused academies within traditional public K-12 schools. In this exploratory case study, I examined the opportunities the undergraduates had to observe and participate in high-leverage science teaching practices (HLPs) during the field experience. I also examined the HLPs the undergraduates attended to in their discussions of effective science teaching before and after the experience. The types of HLPs the undergraduates had opportunities to observe and/or participate in during the experience were consistent across the two academy contexts. In particular, undergraduates were most often exposed to the HLP of facilitating classroom talk. Further, undergraduates tended to add HLPs to their visions of effective science teaching after participating. This study provides evidence that STEM academy classrooms as sites for early field experiences can expose potential physics teachers to reform-based teaching.
Social Interactions, Thresholds, and Unemployment in Neighborhoods

This paper finds that the predicted unemployment rate in a community increases dramatically when the fraction of neighborhood residents with college degrees drops below twenty percent. This threshold behavior provides empirical support for "epidemic" theories of inner-city unemployment. Using a structural model with unobserved neighborhood heterogeneity in productivity due to sorting, I show that sorting alone cannot generate the observed thresholds without also implying a wage distribution which is inconsistent with that observed in microeconomic data. Social interaction effects are thus a necessary element in any suitable explanation for the data.
Characterizations of paracompactness and Lindelöfness by the separation property

The separation property in our title is that, for two spaces X and Y, any two disjoint closed copies of X in Y are separated by open sets in Y. It is proved that a Tychonoff space X is paracompact if and only if this separation property holds for the space X and every Tychonoff space Y which is a perfect image of X x βX (where βX denotes the Stone-Cech compactification of X). Moreover, we give a characterization of Lindelofness in a similar way under the assumption of paracompactness.
Evaluation of Nutritional and Sensory Properties of Cocoa Pulp Beverage Supplemented with Pineapple Juice

One of the major unutilized by-products of cocoa is cocoa mucilage (pulp). Cocoa pulp can be fortified with nutrients such as vitamins from other sources or the juice can be blended with other fruit juices from fruits such as pineapple that are good sources of vitamins. The objective of this study is to produce Cocoa pulp beverage supplemented with pineapple juice. Cocoa Pulp (CP) was used to replace Pineapple juice (PJ) at 0, 50, 60 70, 80, 90 and 100% levels. The nutritional and sensory properties of the CP+PJ beverages were evaluated. The CP beverage contained increasing levels of calcium, iron, fat and phosphorus with increased levels of CP in the blend but lower amounts of protein, carbohydrates and vitamin C than the PJ. In the CP+PJ blends there were not any significantly effect on the pH, ash and crude fiber contents. However, Titratable Acidity increased from 5.43 to 5.92%. Of all the blends, the 50% PJ mixture received the best evaluation from panelists-higher sensory ratings-next to the 100% PJ that was the best performer in the tests. Incorporation of cocoa pulp in the new beverages added value to the cocoa by-product and offers new options of easy, convenient and highly nutritive beverages for children and adult at the local level.
Factors Affecting Structure, Conduct and Performance of Livestock Markets in Butana Area, Sudan

Structure, Conduct and Performance (SCP) is used as an analytical framework, to make relations amongst market structure, market conduct and market performance. The objective of this study was to analyze the factors, which affect SCP of livestock markets in the Butana area, Sudan in 2011. A total sample of 222 livestock traders were surveyed using structured questionnaire in seven primary and secondary markets distributed in Butana area. Both descriptive statistics and econometric methods were used to analyze data collected from traders using SPSS19 and STATA10 software. The logit regression model was employed to estimate the variables affecting the SCP of livestock markets in the area under study. Poor infrastructure of livestock markets, prices of livestock and high transaction cost had negative and significant effect (P<0.0) on structure, conduct and performance (SCP) of primary markets. As expected, lack of access to credit had negative effects (P<0.05) on SCP. Policies are required to improve livestock markets facilities, to encourage a higher price for the sale of animals at a younger age and to provide credit services to livestock traders in order to develop the sector and improve the livelihoods of pastoralists in the Butana area.
Extended maximum likelihood halo-independent analysis of dark matter direct detection data

We extend and correct a recently proposed maximum-likelihood halo-independent method to analyze unbinned direct dark matter detection data. Instead of the recoil energy as independent variable we use the minimum speed a dark matter particle must have to impart a given recoil energy to a nucleus. This has the advantage of allowing us to apply the method to any type of target composition and interaction, e.g. with general momentum and velocity dependence, and with elastic or inelastic scattering. We prove the method and provide a rigorous statistical interpretation of the results. As first applications, we find that for dark matter particles with elastic spin-independent interactions and neutron to proton coupling ratio fn/fp=−0.7, the WIMP interpretation of the signal observed by CDMS-II-Si is compatible with the constraints imposed by all other experiments with null results. We also find a similar compatibility for exothermic inelastic spin-independent interactions with fn/fp=−0.8.
Post-evaluation analysis and improvements with the L 2 F Language Verification System submitted to NIST LRE 2009

The INESC-ID’s Spoken Language Systems Laboratory (L 2 F) Language Verification system submitted to the 2009 NIST Language Recognition evaluation is introduced in this paper. Then, as a sequence of the evaluation workshop and post-analysis of the results, the set of modifications that lead to significant performance gains are reported. Main differences between the original submitted system and the post-evaluation system consist of: 1) the kind and amount of training and development data considered for language model training and calibration and fusion, 2) the improvement of the acoustic based sub-systems and the reduction of the number of sub-systems that compose the whole system, and 3) the application of a better calibration and fusion scheme. Contrastive results of the submitted and the post-evaluation language recognition system for the different conditions in the evaluation are provided.