Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Levelling the Playing Field for Kindergarten Entry: Research Implications for Preschool Early Literacy Instruction

THE PURPOSE OF THIS paper is to consider the importance of intervening with early literacy instruction at the preschool level. Research has found phonological awareness skills in preschool to be one of the most robust predictors of early reading success in a child's first few years of formal schooling. The efficacy of phonological awareness instruction at the preschool level is discussed, as well as the research implications for best practice in teaching it. Shared book reading plays an important role in facilitating oral language development in young children. Two types of shared book-reading techniques (dialogic and non-dialogic) are reviewed, and their effect on oral language outcomes is examined. A plethora of research has examined phonological awareness intervention in preschool and kindergarten, but much less research is available on shared book-reading interventions in these settings. It is concluded that both phonological awareness and shared book reading are necessary components of a preschool early literacy intervention, as they are important prerequisite skills for decoding, spelling and reading comprehension.
Mining Temporal Patterns with Quantitative Intervals

In this paper we consider the problem of discovering frequent temporal patterns in a database of temporal sequences, where a temporal sequence is a set of items with associated dates and durations. Since the quantitative temporal information appears to be fundamental in many contexts, it is taken into account in the mining processes and returned as part of the extracted knowledge. To this end, we have adapted the classical a priori (Agrawal and Srikant, 1995) framework to propose an efficient algorithm based on a hyper-cube representation of temporal sequences. The extraction of quantitative temporal information is performed using a density estimation of the distribution of event intervals from the temporal sequences. An evaluation on synthetic data sets shows that the proposed algorithm can robustly extract frequent temporal patterns with quantitative temporal extents.
Tilburg University Does Retirement Kill You ? Evidence from Early Retirement Windows

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Researching Interest Group Politics in Europe and Elsewhere: Much We Study, Little We Know?

While understanding interest group systems remains crucial to understanding the functioning of advanced democracies, the study of interest groups remains a somewhat niche field within political science. Nevertheless, during the last 15 years, the academic interest in group politics has grown and we reflect on the state of the current literature. The main objective is to take stock, consider the main empirical and theoretical/conceptual achievements, but most importantly, to reflect upon potential fertile future research avenues. In our view interest group studies would be reinvigorated and would benefit from being reintegrated within the broader field of political science, and more particularly, the comparative study of government.
General N-and O-Linked Glycosylation of Lipoproteins in Mycoplasmas and Role of Exogenous Oligosaccharide

The lack of a cell wall, flagella, fimbria, and other extracellular appendages and the possession of only a single membrane render the mycoplasmas structurally simplistic and ideal model organisms for the study of glycoconjugates. Most species have genomes of about 800 kb and code for few proteins predicted to have a role in glycobiology. The murine pathogens Mycoplasma arthritidis and Mycoplasma pulmonis have only a single gene annotated as coding for a glycosyltransferase but synthesize glycolipid, polysaccharide and glycoproteins. Previously, it was shown that M. arthritidis glycosylated surface lipoproteins through O-linkage. In the current study, O-linked glycoproteins were similarly found in M. pulmonis and both species of mycoplasma were found to also possess N-linked glycans at residues of asparagine and glutamine. Protein glycosylation occurred at numerous sites on surface-exposed lipoproteins with no apparent amino acid sequence specificity. The lipoproteins of Mycoplasma pneumoniae also are glycosylated. Glycosylation was dependent on the glycosidic linkages from host oligosaccharides. As far as we are aware, N-linked glycoproteins have not been previously described in Gram-positive bacteria, the organisms to which the mycoplasmas are phylogenetically related. The findings indicate that the mycoplasma cell surface is heavily glycosylated with implications for the modulation of mycoplasma-host interactions.
A Developmental Perspective on Alcohol and Youths 16 to 20 Years of Age

Late adolescence (ie, 16–20 years of age) is a period characterized by escalation of drinking and alcohol use problems for many and by the onset of an alcohol use disorder for some. This heightened period of vulnerability is a joint consequence of the continuity of risk from earlier developmental stages and the unique neurologic, cognitive, and social changes that occur in late adolescence. We review the normative neurologic, cognitive, and social changes that typically occur in late adolescence, and we discuss the evidence for the impact of these transitions on individual drinking trajectories. We also describe evidence linking alcohol abuse in late adolescence with neurologic damage and social impairments, and we discuss whether these are the bases for the association of adolescent drinking with increased risks of mental health, substance abuse, and social problems in adulthood. Finally, we discuss both the challenges and successes in the treatment and prevention of adolescent drinking problems.
Too much of a good thing: Evolutionary perspectives on infant formula fortification in the United States and its effects on infant health

Recently, there has been considerable debate regarding the appropriate amount of iron fortification for commercial infant formula. Globally, there is considerable variation in formula iron content, from 4 to 12 mg iron/L. However, how much fortification is necessary is unclear. Human milk is low in iron (0.2–0.5 mg/L), with the majority of infant iron stores accumulated during gestation. Over the first few months of life, these stores are depleted in breastfeeding infants. This decline has been previously largely perceived as pathological; it may be instead an adaptive mechanism to minimize iron availability to pathogens coinciding with complementary feeding. Many of the pathogens involved in infantile illnesses require iron for growth and replication. By reducing infant iron stores at the onset of complementary feeding, infant physiology may limit its availability to these pathogens, decreasing frequency and severity of infection. This adaptive strategy for iron regulation during development is undermined by the excess dietary iron commonly found in infant formula, both the iron that can be incorporated into the body and the excess iron that will be excreted in feces. Some of this excess iron may promote the growth of pathogenic, iron requiring bacteria disrupting synergistic microflora commonly found in breastfed infants. Evolutionarily, mothers who produced milk with less iron and infants who had decreased iron stores at the time of weaning may have been more likely to survive the transition to solid foods by having limited iron available for pathogens. Contemporary fortification practices may undermine these adaptive mechanisms and increase infant illness risk. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 26:10–17, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Cold-sensitive cell-division-cycle mutants of yeast: isolation, properties, and pseudoreversion studies.

We isolated 18 independent recessive cold-sensitive cell-division-cycle (cdc) mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, in nine complementation groups. Terminal phenotypes exhibited include medial nuclear division, cytokinesis, and a previously undescribed terminal phenotype consisting of cells with a single small bud and an undivided nucleus. Four of the cold-sensitive mutants proved to be alleles of CDC11, while the remaining mutants defined at least six new cell-division-cycle genes: CDC44, CDC45, CDC48, CDC49, CDC50 and CDC51. --Spontaneous revertants from cold-sensitivity of four of the medial nuclear division cs cdc mutants were screened for simultaneous acquisition of a temperature-sensitive phenotype. The temperature-sensitive revertants of four different cs cdc mutants carried single new mutations, called Sup/Ts to denote their dual phenotype: suppression of the cold-sensitivity and concomitant conditional lethality at 37 degrees. Many of the Sup/Ts mutations exhibited a cell-division-cycle terminal phenotype at the high temperature, and they defined two new cdc genes (CDC46 and CDC47). Two cold-sensitive medial nuclear division cdc mutants representing two different cdc genes were suppressed by different Sup/Ts alleles of another gene which also bears a medial nuclear division function (CDC46). In addition, the cold-sensitive medial nuclear division cdc mutant csH80 was suppressed by a Sup/Ts mutation yielding an unbudded terminal phenotype with an undivided nucleus at the high temperature. This mutation was an allele of CDC32. These results suggest a pattern of interaction among cdc gene products and indicate that cdc gene proteins might act in the cell cycle as complex specific functional assemblies.
On the Performance of Full-Duplex Two-Way Relay Channels With Spatial Modulation

In this paper, the spatial modulation (SM) technique is employed at the source and relay nodes in a full-duplex two-way relay channel (FD-TWRC) to support spectral-efficient bi-directional communications while guaranteeing a low cost implementation. Maximum likelihood detectors are employed at each node that is subject to an intrinsic self-loop interference. We first propose a tight upper bound on the average bit error probability (ABEP). Then, based on the ABEP upper bound, an asymptotic ABEP expression is derived in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. Exploiting the asymptotic ABEP, an exact SNR threshold for the selection between FD-TWRC-SM and half-duplex (HD)-TWRC-SM is derived in a closed form, which sheds light on when it is beneficial to select the FD (or HD) mode. In addition, the power allocation (PA) among sources and relay is investigated, through which an optimal PA factor in terms of ABEP is obtained. All analytical results derived in this paper are verified by Monte Carlo simulations, from which some new insights are obtained on the performance of FD-TWRC-SM.
Age- and Stroke-Related Skeletal Muscle Changes: A Review for the Geriatric Clinician

Independently, aging and stroke each have a significant negative impact on skeletal muscle, but the potential cumulative effects of aging and stroke have not been explored. Optimal interventions for individuals post stroke may include those that specifically target skeletal muscle. Addressing changes in muscles may minimize activity limitations and enhance participation post stroke. This article reviews the impact of aging and stroke on muscle morphology and composition, including fiber atrophy, reductions in muscle cross-sectional area, changes in muscle fiber distributions, and increases in intramuscular fat. Relationships between changes in muscle structure, muscle function, and physical mobility are reviewed. Clinical recommendations that preserve and enhance skeletal muscle in the aging adult and individuals post stroke are discussed. Future research directions that include systematic comparison of the differences in skeletal muscle between younger and older adults who have sustained a stroke are suggested.
Technological Evolution and Radical Innovation

Technological change is perhaps the most powerful engine of growth in markets today. To harness this source of growth, firms need answers to key questions about the dynamics of technological change: (1) How do new technologies evolve? (2) How do rival technologies compete? and (3) How do firms deal with technological evolution? Currently, the literature suggests that a new technology seems to evolve along an S-shaped path, which starts below that of an old technology, intersects it once, and ends above the old technology. This belief is based on scattered empirical evidence and some circular definitions. Using new definitions and data on 14 technologies from four markets, the authors examine the shape and competitive dynamics of technological evolution. The results contradict the prediction of a single S-curve. Instead, technological evolution seems to follow a step function, with sharp improvements in performance following long periods of no improvement. Moreover, paths of rival technologies may cross more than once or not at all.
Effect of preslaughter transport duration on meat quality of broilers slaughtered at different body weights and seasons.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of preslaughter transport duration on meat quality of broilers slaughtered at 2 weight groups (1.8 and 2.6 kg) and 2 seasons (summer and winter). Transport duration was 1.5 and 3 h/season/slaughter weight. The study was conducted on Ross broiler flocks slaughtered at one of the commercial processing plants in Turkey. A total of 12 carcasses from each group (total 96) were randomly collected to measure pH 15 min (pH15) and 24 h (pH24), L*, a*, and b* values.
Notes on switching lemmas

We prove three switching lemmas, for random restrictions for which variables are set independently; for random restrictions where variables are set in blocks (both due to H̊astad [3]); and for a distribution appropriate for the bijective pigeonhole principle [2, 4]. The proofs are based on Beame’s version [1] of Razborov’s proof of the switching lemma in [5], except using families of weighted restrictions rather than families of restrictions which are all the same size. This follows a suggestion of Beame in [1]. The result is something between H̊astad’s and Razborov’s methods of proof. We use probabilistic arguments rather than counting ones, in a similar way to H̊astad, but rather than doing induction on the terms in our formula with an inductive hypothesis involving conditional probability, as H̊astad does, we explicitly build one function to bound the probabilities for the whole formula.
Learnability : Basic Definitions , Examples , Results

The notion of learnability plays a central role in learning theory and continues to be an active topic of study. As noted in the last lecture, it is related to the notion of statistical consistency, with origins in theoretical computer science. Over the next few lectures, we will study various models of learnability related to the probably approximately correct (PAC) learning model introduced in the seminal work of Valiant [7]. We will begin in this lecture with some basic definitions and results, and illustrate with more results and examples in the next few lectures.
Multiple Kernel Representation Learning for WiFi-Based Human Activity Recognition

Human activity recognition is becoming the vital underpinning for a myriad of emerging applications in the field of human-computer interaction, mobile computing, and smart grid. Besides the utilization of up-to-date sensing techniques, modern activity recognition systems also require a machine learning (ML) algorithm that leverages the sensory data for identification purposes. In view of the unique characteristics of the measurement data and the ML challenges thereof, we propose a non-intrusive human activity recognition system that only uses existing commodity WiFi routers. The core of our system is a novel multiple kernel representation learning (MKRL) framework that automatically extracts and combines informative patterns from the Channel State Information (CSI) measurements. The MKRL firstly learns a kernel string representation from time, frequency, wavelet, and shape domains with an efficient greedy algorithm. Then it performs information fusion from diverse perspectives based on multi-view kernel learning. Moreover, different stages of MKRL can be seamlessly integrated into a multiple kernel learning framework to build up a robust and comprehensive activity classifier. Extensive experiments are conducted in typical indoor environments and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system outperforms existing methods and achieves a 98\% activity recognition accuracy.
Author's Traits Prediction on Twitter Data using Content Based Approach

This paper describes the methods we have employed to solve the author profiling task at PAN-2015. The proposed system is based on simple content based features to identify an author’s age, gender and other personality traits. The problem of author profiling was treated as a supervised machine learning task. First content based features were extracted from the text and then different machine learning algorithms were applied to train the models. Results showed that content based features approach can be very useful in predicting the author’s traits from his/her text.
Reduction of Ammonia and Odour Emissions from Pig Slurry under Slats Using Oil and Foam Layers

In Europe, new legislation on environmental protection requires reductions in emissions of ammonia and odour from animal production. Animal housing is identified as one of the biggest ammonia emission sources in pig production, but abatement techniques for animal houses often require high initial cost. The aims of this study were to investigate the use of layers of oil and foam on slurry under slats. It was found that relatively low-cost, used frying oil (mainly rapeseed oil) could reduce ammonia and odour emissions by about 50% in weaner accommodation. The cost for this technique was £2.60 per pig place per year. Foam showed poor ammonia abatement potential. The oil was biodegradable, so increasing methane emissions from stored pig slurry by about 60%.
Visible human slice sequence animation Web server

Since June 1998, EPFL's Visible Human Slice Server (http://visiblehuman.epfl.ch) allows to extract arbitrarily oriented and positioned slices. More than 300,000 slices are extracted each year. In order to give a 3D view of anatomic structures, a new service has been added for extracting slice animations along a user-defined trajectory. This service is useful both for research and teaching purposes (http:visiblehuman.epfl.ch/animation/). Extracting slices of animations at any desired position and orientation from the Visible Human volume (Visible Man or Woman) requires both high throughput and much processing power. The I/O disk bandwidth can be increased by accessing more than one disk at the same time, i.e. by stripping data across several disks and by carrying out parallel asynchronous disk accesses. Since processing operations such as slice and animation extraction are compute- intensive, they require the program execution to be carried out in parallel on several computers. In the present contribution, we describe the new slice sequence animation service as well as the approach taken for parallelizing this service on a multi-PC multi-disk Web server.
Political action and social change:moral emotions, automaticity and imagination

This thesis develops three independent lines of investigation on the social psychology of political action and social change. Rather than developing a grand theory, I focus on adapting current perspectives in the social psychology of emotion, automaticity, goals and mental simulation to the study of political action and social change. The approach taken is eclectic both theoretically and methodologically. In Chapter 1, I review the social psychology of political action and social change. In doing so, I conceptualise political action and social change and explore current explanations of these phenomena. I also introduce moral emotions, automaticity and imagination in order to mark the way for the subsequent chapters. In Chapter 2, I examine the role of the moral emotions in political action and social change. Specifically, I explore the antecedents and consequences of anger, sympathy, and admiration. Drawing on theories of intergroup relations and emotion, I show that legitimate status, competence, and warmth all elicit admiration. Notably, admiration towards the authorities and centres of group power inhibits political action aimed at challenging the social order. However, when the target of admiration is a subversive hero or “martyr”, admiration uniquely predict willingness to challenge the status quo. In Chapter 3 I investigate the role of automaticity in political action. More specifically, I develop a dual process account of political action. I demonstrate that controlled (vs. automatic) processes lead to an increase in political action tendencies in members of a disadvantaged group. Notably, automatic protest attitudes influence political action through anger. That is, the more positive one’s automatic protest attitudes are the more anger they feel in relation to group grievances. Notably, automatic attitudes are more likely to predict political action when one is low in the motivation and ability to deliberate on political issues. In Chapter 4 I examine the role of imagination in political action and social change. I demonstrate that being able to imagine a particular social change goal (e.g., revolution or reform) uniquely predict political action tendencies aimed at that goal. Notably, imagination also qualifies the influence of efficacy and anger on politic action tendencies. Put simply, anger only predicts political action for collective mobility when group members can imagine this social change goal. In addition, efficacy only predicts action aimed at revolution when one can imagine an alternative social system (e.g., economy). In Chapter 5 I draw some conclusions, and discuss the limitations and issues that arise from the work presented here. Finally, I propose some avenues for future research. In iii addition, I put forward a typology of social change in the hope that it will engender future work on the social psychology of political action and social change.
SENAMI: Selective Non-Invasive Active Monitoring for ICS Intrusion Detection

Current intrusion detection systems (IDS) for industrial control systems (ICS) mostly involve the retrofitting of conventional network IDSs, such as SNORT. Such an approach is prone to missing highly targeted and specific attacks against ICS. Where ICS-specific approaches exist, they often rely on passive network monitoring techniques, offering a low cost solution, and avoiding any computational overhead arising from actively polling ICS devices. However, the use of passive approaches alone could fail in the detection of attacks that alter the behaviour of ICS devices (as was the case in Stuxnet). Where active solutions exist, they can be resource-intensive, posing the risk of overloading legacy devices which are commonplace in ICSs. In this paper we aim to overcome these challenges through the combination of a passive network monitoring approach, and selective active monitoring based on attack vectors specific to an ICS context. We present the implementation of our IDS, SENAMI, for use with Siemens S7 devices. We evaluate the effectiveness of SENAMI in a comprehensive testbed environment, demonstrating validity of the proposed approach through the detection of purely passive attacks at a rate of 99%, and active value tampering attacks at a rate of 81-93%. Crucially, we reach recall values greater than 0.96, indicating few attack scenarios generating false negatives.