Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accepting or Rejecting Students_ Self-grading in their Final Marks by using Data Mining

In this paper we propose a methodology based on data mining and self-evaluation in order to predict whether an instructor will or will not accept the students’ proposed marks in a course. This is an on-going work in which we have evaluated the usage of classification techniques and cost-sensitive corrections. We have carried out several experiments using data gathered from 53 computer science university students.
Impact of High Risk Drug Use on Hospitalization and Mortality in Older People with and without Alzheimer’s Disease: A National Population Cohort Study

Background Evidence is lacking about outcomes associated with the cumulative use of anticholinergic and sedative drugs in people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This retrospective cohort study investigated the relationship between cumulative exposure to anticholinergic and sedative drugs and hospitalization and mortality in people with and without AD in Finland. Methods Community-dwelling people aged 65 years and over, with AD on December 31st 2005 (n = 16,603) and individually matched (n = 16,603) comparison persons (age, sex, region of residence) were identified by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. Drug utilization data were extracted from the Finnish National Prescription Register. Exposure to anticholinergic and sedative drugs was defined using the Drug Burden Index (DBI). Hospitalization and mortality data were extracted from national registers. Cox and zero-inflated negative binomial analyses were used to investigate the relationship between DBI and hospitalization and mortality over a one-year follow-up. Results In total, 5.8% of people with AD and 3.7% without AD died during 2006. For every unit increase in DBI, the adjusted hazard ratio for mortality was 1.21 (95% confidence intervals [CI]: 1.09–1.33) among people with AD, and 1.37 (95%CI: 1.20–1.56) among people without AD. Overall, 44.3% of people with AD and 33.4% without AD were hospitalized. When using no DBI exposure as the reference group, the adjusted incidence rate ratio for length of hospital stay among high DBI group (≥1) in people with AD was 1.15 (95%CI: 1.05–1.26) and 1.63 (95%CI: 1.41–1.88) in people without AD. Conclusion There is a dose-response relationship between cumulative anticholinergic and sedative drug use and hospitalization and mortality in people with and without AD.
Effective summarization of large-scale web images

In this paper, we present a novel framework to achieve effective summarization of large-scale web images by treating the problem of automatic image summarization as the problem of dictionary learning for sparse coding, e.g., the summary of a given image set can be treated as a sparse representation of the given image set (i.e., sparse dictionary for the given image set). For a given semantic category (i.e., certain object class or image concept), we build a sparsity model to reconstruct all its relevant images by using a subset of most representative images (i.e., image summary); and a stepwise basis selection algorithm is developed to learn such sparse dictionary (i.e., image summary) by minimizing an explicit optimization function. By investigating their reconstruction ability, the reconstruction Mean Square Error (MSE) is adapted to objectively measure the performance of various algorithms for automatic image summarization. Our experimental results demonstrate that our dictionary learning for sparse representation algorithm can obtain more accurate summary as compared with other baseline algorithms for automatic image summarization.
A New Intra Coding Method for Spatial Scalability in Scalable Video Coding

In scalable video coding, spatial scalability is a layered video representation with several layers corresponding to different spatial resolutions for the same video sequence. Therefore, spatial correlation between successive two layers exists naturally, and should be further exploited. In this paper, a new scalable intra coding method for spatial scalability is proposed. It consists of two spatial layers: one base layer and one enhancement layer. The proposed intra coding method is fully compatible with H.264/AVC standard in base layer, while in enhancement layer the upsampled reconstructed base layer blocks are used for intra prediction under condition of that the adjacent prediction pixels are not available. The effectiveness of the new technique is demonstrated by experimental results. With almost no changes on both computation complexity and encoded bit-rate, the average increase of Y-PSNR is about 0.13 dB for sequence Football and 0.11 dB for Foreman
Desperately Seeking the Infrastructure in IS Research: Conceptualization of "Digital Convergence" As Co-Evolution of Social and Technical Infrastructures

Large scale penetration of digital technologies led them to join roads, electricity, and water distribution, as essential infrastructures of modernity. "Digital convergence" refers to these technologies' wide ranging effects on people's lives, work, and interactions. Yet conceptions from diverse fields reveal no universally accepted understanding of this term. An examination of historical developments leading up to the Internet era reveals mutual dependence between technical infrastructures and diverse social arrangements including industry, regulatory, and market structures. A set of criteria for the definition of digital convergence (and divergence) is formulated. These provide a working definition that reveals the essential, pervasive and interactive reconfiguration of modern society's technical and social infrastructures due to digitization. A layer-based model is presented as one possible way of breaking up an increasingly interconnected socio-technical world into separate domains that allow meaningful study. We call for action to address the paucity of recent Information Systems (IS) research into the infrastructures that provide the foundations upon which all modern information systems build.
The emergence of communication in evolutionary robots

Evolutionary robotics is a biologically inspired approach to robotics that is advantageous to studying the evolution of communication. A new model for the emergence of communication is developed and tested through various simulation experiments. In the first simulation, the emergence of simple signalling behaviour is studied. This is used to investigate the inter-relationships between communication abilities, namely linguistic production and comprehension, and other behavioural skills. The model supports the hypothesis that the ability to form categories from direct interaction with an environment constitutes the grounds for subsequent evolution of communication and language. In the second simulation, evolutionary robots are used to study the emergence of simple syntactic categories, e.g. action names (verbs). Comparisons between the two simulations indicate that the signalling lexicon emerged in the first simulation follows the evolutionary pattern of nouns, as observed in related models on the evolution of syntactic categories. Results also support the language-origin hypothesis on the fact that nouns precede verbs in both phylogenesis and ontogenesis. Further extensions of this new evolutionary robotic model for testing hypotheses on language origins are also discussed.
CSCW : Colocated-synchronous applications

As the use of personal computers took off in office space, so did a call for collaborative tools to easily facilitate group activities around these devices. An initial proposition arose to mimic the personal computer and optimize it for multiple controllers. Single display groupware (SDG) are systems which allow multiple users to manipulate information on a shared display. At the advent of this technology, it became apparent to some researchers that there are consequences for structuring group work into one large display. There may be times when personal and private spaces are better suited for tasks. One such situation is when sensitive information must be presented on a screen, such as entering a pin or referring to notes in a confidential document. In other situations the information may not be sensitive, but the mass amount of information itself may be detrimental to the productivity of the group. Such a circumstance arises when many users are completing independent tasks. These tasks may require some collaboration, but the user may focus largely on their own work. In this case, there may be excess clutter on the screen which is distracting to other users of the screen. Private areas can help to modularize tasks which do not require much collaboration, but need to be done to facilitate collaborative activities. An example would be a user searching the web to find good documentation on a tool they are reminded of in the meeting. They look for documentation to see if this tool fits the problem discussed. The task can be modularized, as the other members do not need to see the search process, only the results matter. Separating this work allows the other members to continue related discussions and interactions with the display without being distracted by the search. In additional, a private display will prevent a user’s actions from obstructing the view of other collaborators. For instance, if a menu is selected in a public
Trade-Off Aversion as an Explanation for the Attraction Effect: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

This research reports on a cognitive neuroscientific examination of whether trade-off aversion explains the attraction effect. The principal study involves the neuroimaging of participants engaging in choice tasks while their cerebral activity is recorded. The authors examine whether the presence of a third (normatively irrelevant) alternative yields relatively less activation in areas of the brain associated with negative emotion than the activation during choice tasks involving two equally (un)attractive options. The results support the claim that trade-off choice sets are associated with relatively greater negative emotion. The authors discuss the implications of the research for marketing theory and methodology, as well as for managerial practice in the corporate and public policy arenas.
Elementary Developmental Process of Intentional Agency: Artificial Construction of Gaze Alternation in Communicative Eye Gaze by Infants

It has been pointed out that gaze alternation by infants, which is a basis for social communication, is related to the process of the development of intentional agency. Intentional agency is defined as an act with a desired goal and a means. It has been pointed out that infants understand others’ intentions based on intentional agency. In our recent work, we constructed a computational model which acquired gaze alternation behavior with elementary intentional agency. In this paper, through the analysis of the behavior and the internal states of the constructed model, we confirm that two mechanisms, discrimination and accumulation, play an important role in developing elementary intentional agency. The former discriminates between a caregiver and objects that are producing stimuli. The latter associates the caregiver with the objects by accumulating relationships between sensory states. We also argue that a nested structure, in which gaze alternation composed of a goal and a means is utilized as a means to achieve another goal, is an important feature in the development of intentional agency. Index Terms — Gaze Alternation, Communicative Eye Gaze, Understanding Others’ Intention, Intentional Agency, Constructive Approach.
Figures of Merit for Biometric Verification and a Means for Dimension Reduction

Optimum reduction of the number of dimensions of the feature vector in biometric verification requires a figure of merit for the verification performance. We show that, under certain conditions, various figures of merit can be approximated by the same expression. We select one, the discrimination distance, as an objective function for dimension reduction. This new method for dimension reduction is called maximum discrimination analysis (MDA). It is shown to have a better verification performance than linear discriminant analysis.
Breath alcohol elimination rate and Widmark factor derived from breath alcohol concentration in Chinese and Indians in Singapore.

AIMS To determine the breath alcohol elimination rate (AER) and Widmark factor derived from the maximum breath alcohol concentration (r(peak BrAC)) in Chinese and Indians in Singapore, and to evaluate the contribution of genetic and non-genetic factors to variability of AER and r(peak BrAC). METHODS A total of 180 subjects ingested a vodka-orange juice mixture, together with a standardized meal and underwent a series of BrAC measurements. RESULTS Significant inter-ethnic differences in AER and r(peak BrAC) were observed in females and males, respectively. Alcohol dehydrogenase 1B (ADH1B) and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) genotypes were identified as significant predictors for AER among males, accounting for 8.5% (P = 0.048) and 23.4% (P < 0.001) of the variance, respectively. ADH1B genotype was identified as a significant predictor for r(peak BrAC) among males, accounting for 17.1% of the variance (P = 0.001). In females, however, none of the genotypes were found to be significant predictors for breath AER, and r(peak BrAC). CONCLUSION ALDH2 and/or ADH1B genotypes in males, but not in females, appear to contribute, albeit modestly, to variability in AER and r(peak BrAC). The median AER in Chinese males, Indian males, Chinese females and Indian females is 6.6 μg dl(-1) h(-1) [99% confidence interval (CI), 5.6-7.5 μg dl(-1) h(-1)], 6.2 μg dl(-1) h(-1) (99% CI, 5.5-7.0 μg dl(-1) h(-1)), 8.6 μg dl(-1) h(-1) (99% CI, 7.4-9.7 μg dl(-1) h(-1)) and 7.4 μg dl(-1 )h(-1) (99% CI, 6.2-8.4 μg dl(-1) h(-1)), respectively. The median r(peak BrAC) in Chinese males, Indian males, Chinese females and Indian females is 0.0229 (99% CI, 0.0216-0.0268), 0.0209 (99% CI, 0.0190-0.0237), 0.0214 (99% CI, 0.0185-0.0254) and 0.0199 (99% CI, 0.0187-0.0227), respectively.
Some Economics of Wireless Communications

Imagine that once upon a time the policymakers of the emerging British Empire believed that a nations wealth came from the magnitude of its trade with distant nations. In pursuit of this belief, they set up the Imperial Trade Commission, which in turn decided that the way to optimize trade with India was to create the East India Company and give it a monopoly over trade with India. Along came Adam Smith, and classical economists began to understand that planned
Estimating the Effect of Salience in Wholesale and Retail Car Markets

We investigate whether the first digit of an odometer reading is more salient to consumers than subsequent digits. We find that retail transaction prices and volumes of used vehicles drop discontinuously at 10,000-mile odometer thresholds, echoing effects found in the wholesale market by Lacetera, Pope and Sydnor (2012). Our results reveal that retail consumers devote limited attention to evaluating vehicle mileage, and that this drives effects in the wholesale market. We estimate the inattention parameter implied by the price discontinuities. In addition, our results suggest that estimating consumer-level structural parameters using data from an intermediate market can give misleading results.
The Effect of Calcium Carbonate Particle Size and Solubility on the Utilization of Phosphorus from Phytase for Broilers

A twenty-eight day floor pen experiment was carried out using 1680 Cobb-500 male day old chicks to evaluate the impact of feeding different particle sizes of calcium carbonate (CaCO ) on broiler performance 3 and tibia ash. The experiment consisted of 8 treatments with 6 replications per treatment to test 8 different CaCO particle sizes. The corn-soybean meal based diets contained 21.5% CP, 3025 kcal ME kg , 0.78% 3 1 Ca, 0.20% Non-phytate P (NPP) with 500 FTU kg of Danisco Phyzyme XP added. The average particle sizes 1 of CaCO (along with % solubility) tested were 28 (74.4), 137 (56.4), 299 (47.0), 388 (53.0), 519 (46.7), 760 3 (45.3), 796 (42.2) and 1306 (43.4) µm. Significantly (p 70.0%) limits PP hydrolysis to provide available P for growth and bone 3
Stochastic and scaling climate sensitivities: Solar, volcanic and orbital forcings

Climate sensitivity (λ) is usually defined as a deterministic quantity relating climate forcings and responses. While this may be appropriate for evaluating the outputs of (deterministic) GCM's it is problematic for estimating sensitivities from empirical data. We introduce a stochastic definition where it is only a statistical link between the forcing and response, an upper bound on the deterministic sensitivities. Over the range ≈30 yrs to 100 kyrs we estimate this λusing temperature data from instruments, reanalyses, multiproxies and paleo spources; the forcings include several solar, volcanic and orbital series. With the exception of the latter ‐ we find thatλ is roughly a scaling function of resolution Δt: λ ≈ with exponent 0 ≈ < Hλ ≈ < 0.7. Since most have Hλ > 0, the implied feedbacks must generally increase with scale and this may be difficult to achieve with existing GCM's.
Efficacy of tumor-targeting Salmonella typhimurium A1-R in combination with anti-angiogenesis therapy on a pancreatic cancer patient-derived orthotopic xenograft (PDOX) and cell line mouse models

The aim of the present study was to examine the efficacy of tumor-targeting Salmonella typhimurium A1-R treatment following anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy on VEGF-positive human pancreatic cancer. A pancreatic cancer patient-derived orthotopic xenograft (PDOX) that was VEGF-positive and an orthotopic VEGF-positive human pancreatic cancer cell line (MiaPaCa-2-GFP) as well as a VEGF-negative cell line (Panc-1) were tested. Nude mice with these tumors were treated with gemcitabine (GEM), bevacizumab (BEV), and S. typhimurium A1-R. BEV/GEM followed by S. typhimurium A1-R significantly reduced tumor weight compared to BEV/GEM treatment alone in the PDOX and MiaPaCa-2 models. Neither treatment was as effective in the VEGF-negative model as in the VEGF-positive models. These results demonstrate that S. typhimurium A1-R following anti-angiogenic therapy is effective on pancreatic cancer including the PDOX model, suggesting its clinical potential.
Adaptive Output Feedback Control for Stochastic Nonlinear Systems

A class of stochastic nonlinear systems with unknown parameters and zero dynamics are considered in this paper. By a series of coordinate changes, the original system is re-parameterized, which is suit for using the reduced-order observer and 1D adaptive law to reduce the dynamic order of closed-loop system. In adaptive backstepping design, the quadratic and the quartic Lyapunov functions are presented simultaneously to reduce the static order of nonlinearities. It is shown that all the solutions of the closed-loop system are regulated to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of the origin in probability. Due to the order reduction of the controller, the design scheme in this paper has more practical values
The Mouse Genome Database genotypes::phenotypes

The Mouse Genome Database (MGD, http://www.informatics.jax.org/), integrates genetic, genomic and phenotypic information about the laboratory mouse, a primary animal model for studying human biology and disease. Information in MGD is obtained from diverse sources, including the scientific literature and external databases, such as EntrezGene, UniProt and GenBank. In addition to its extensive collection of phenotypic allele information for mouse genes that is curated from the published biomedical literature and researcher submission, MGI includes a comprehensive representation of mouse genes including sequence, functional (GO) and comparative information. MGD provides a data mining platform that enables the development of translational research hypotheses based on comparative genotype, phenotype and functional analyses. MGI can be accessed by a variety of methods including web-based search forms, a genome sequence browser and downloadable database reports. Programmatic access is available using web services. Recent improvements in MGD described here include the unified mouse gene catalog for NCBI Build 37 of the reference genome assembly, and improved representation of mouse mutants and phenotypes.
Cyclic changes in keratocyte speed and traction stress arise from Ca2+-dependent regulation of cell adhesiveness

The activation of stretch-activated calcium channels (SACs) in keratocytes can induce spatially coordinated increases in traction stress that promote protrusion at the cell front, while simultaneously inducing retraction at the rear. To investigate how this occurs, we correlated calcium-induced changes in traction stress with alterations in cell speed and shape. Cyclic changes in these parameters were associated with each calcium transient. In addition, an inverse relationship was found between traction stress and cell speed, suggesting that alternating changes in adhesiveness were occurring at the rear. We investigated this further by inhibiting or inducing calcium transients and observing the effects on traction stress, cell speed and shape. Inhibition of calcium transients prevented retraction and led to a slow increase in traction stress. In addition, large aggregates of vinculin developed at the lateral rear edges of treated keratocytes, consistent with an increase in adhesiveness. Induction of a calcium transient resulted in a rapid retraction, involving both increased traction stress and adhesion disassembly at the rear. We also found that keratocytes exhibiting frequent transients generated larger traction stress and moved significantly faster than other cells. Together, these data suggest that calcium transients coordinate changes in adhesiveness with SAC-mediated cycles of mechano-chemical feedback.
The Utilization of Formalin Fixed-Paraffin-Embedded Specimens in High Throughput Genomic Studies

High throughput genomic assays empower us to study the entire human genome in short time with reasonable cost. Formalin fixed-paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue processing remains the most economical approach for longitudinal tissue specimen storage. Therefore, the ability to apply high throughput genomic applications to FFPE specimens can expand clinical assays and discovery. Many studies have measured the accuracy and repeatability of data generated from FFPE specimens using high throughput genomic assays. Together, these studies demonstrate feasibility and provide crucial guidance for future studies using FFPE specimens. Here, we summarize the findings of these studies and discuss the limitations of high throughput data generated from FFPE specimens across several platforms that include microarray, high throughput sequencing, and NanoString.
A flow-based network monitoring system used for CSCW in design

Technology trends in today's cooperative design environments are making it more and more important to monitor the network performance and ensure the network security. This paper describes the design and implementation of a distributed network traffic monitoring system based on embedded NetFlow hardware and software engines. The system architecture and design principles were introduced in the paper, some discussions were also presented about the NetFlow-based network monitoring technologies. The system had been successfully used to monitor highspeed campus networks at full wire speed without packet sampling in scenarios where commercial NetFlow collectors could not be used due to their limitations. Results show that this is an effective mechanism to identify, diagnose, and determine controls for network activities in CSCW environments and other network-based applications.