Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
No Child Left Behind: Misguided Approach to School Accountability for English Language Learners

“It is crucial . to include all students in testing designed to hold teachers and administrators accountable for the education they are providing these students. However, testing students whose language skills are likely to significantly affect their test performance will yield inaccurate results. The aggregate performance of language subgroups that are inappropriately tested can be seriously misunderstood, and decisions influenced by invalid test results can have a significant impact on their lives. ” – National Research Council (2000)
Protocol portability through module encapsulation

Because protocol software is difficult and expensive to implement and test, it is often ported between systems instead of rewritten from scratch. Unfortunately, porting protocol software can be as difficult as from-scratch development, due to inherent differences in subsystem design. Thus, protocol subsystems can have a profound effect on the portability of a protocol implementation. We propose an approach permitting the incorporation of new protocols into a subsystem other than their "native" one without the drawbacks or expense of porting and original development. Our approach is based on protocol module encapsulation, which allows unmodified protocol code developed for one protocol subsystem to be used within another. We relate our experiences designing, implementing, and measuring the performance of our protocol encapsulation modules, using an AppleTalk protocol stack as a baseline.
Synergy-Based Bilateral Port: A Universal Control Module for Tele-Manipulation Frameworks Using Asymmetric Master–Slave Systems

Endowing tele-manipulation frameworks with the capability to accommodate a variety of robotic hands is key to achieving high performances through permitting to flexibly interchange the end-effector according to the task considered. This requires the development of control policies that not only cope with asymmetric master-slave systems but also whose high-level components are designed in a unified space in abstraction from the devices specifics. To address this dual challenge, a novel synergy port is developed that resolves the kinematic, sensing, and actuation asymmetries of the considered system through generating motion and force feedback references in the hardware-independent hand postural synergy space. It builds upon the concept of the Cartesian-based synergy matrix, which is introduced as a tool mapping the fingertips Cartesian space to the directions oriented along the grasp principal components. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach, the synergy port has been integrated into the control system of a highly asymmetric tele-manipulation framework, in which the 3-finger hand exoskeleton HEXOTRAC is used as a master device to control the SoftHand, a robotic hand whose transmission system relies on a single motor to drive all joints along a soft synergistic path. The platform is further enriched with the vision-based motion capture system Optitrack to monitor the 6D trajectory of the user's wrist, which is used to control the robotic arm on which the SoftHand is mounted. Experiments have been conducted with the humanoid robot COMAN and the KUKA LWR robotic manipulator. Results indicate that this bilateral interface is highly intuitive and allows users with no prior experience to reach, grasp, and transport a variety of objects exhibiting very different shapes and impedances. In addition, the hardware and control solutions proved capable of accommodating users with different hand kinematics. Finally, the proposed control framework offers a universal, flexible, and intuitive interface allowing for the performance of effective tele-manipulations.
Approximating Data with the Count-Min Data Structure

Algorithmic problems such as tracking the contents of a set arise frequently in the course of building systems. Given the variety of possible solutions, the choice of appropriate data structures for such tasks is at the heart of building efficient and effective software. Modern languages are now augmented with large libraries of algorithms and data structures to help the programmer without forcing her to reinvent the wheel. These offer familiar data structures and methods that address a host of problems using heaps, hash tables, tree structures, stacks, and so on. For a precise example, consider the following membership problems, which is fundamental in Computer Science. Starting from an empty set S, there is a series of update operations drawn from Insert(S, i) (performs S ← S ∪ {i});), or Delete(S, i) (performs S ← S − {i})), and interleaved therein are queries Check(S, i) (which returns yes if i ∈ S and no otherwise). The membership problem is to maintain the set S under the update operations and respond to queries, using small space and making each operation as fast as possible. There is extensive research on solving the membership problem using data structures from hash tables to balanced trees and B-tree indices, and these form the backbone of systems from OSs, compilers, databases and beyond. Many of these data structures have been in widespread use for forty or more years. Modern applications now face the need to handle massive data. For these applications, many of the existing data structures that are suitable for main memory or disk resident data no longer suffice; they motivate new problems and have required an entirely new set of data structures. It is desirable that these data structures be relatively small, and in many cases we require them to be sub-linear in the size of the input. Also, in many cases, it suffices to provide approximate responses to various queries, and applications work without precise answers. In what follows, we present a fundamental problem at the heart of such applications. The data structures they inspire are called “sketches” and these approximate massive data sets. We present one such data structure called the Count-Min Sketch [6] that has been invented recently and has found wide applications from IP networking to machine learning, distributed computing and even signal processing and beyond. We begin by introducing the problem of Count Tracking, which generalizes membership, and is at the heart of modern data processing scenarios. In this problem, there are a large number of items, and an associated frequency for each item which changes over time. The query specifies an item and the response to the query is the frequency of the item. Here is an example use-case in the context of tracking search queries:
Expression of human epileptic temporal lobe neurotransmitter receptors in Xenopus oocytes: An innovative approach to study epilepsy

Poly(A+) RNA was extracted from the temporal lobe (TL) of medically intractable epileptic patients which underwent surgical TL resection. Injection of this mRNA into Xenopus oocytes led to the expression of ionotropic receptors for γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), kainate (KAI) and α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA). Membrane currents elicited by GABA inverted polarity at −15 mV, close to the oocyte's chloride equilibrium potential, were inhibited by bicuculline, and were potentiated by pentobarbital and flunitrazepam. These basic characteristics were also displayed by GABA currents elicited in oocytes injected with mRNAs isolated from human TL glioma (TLG) or from mouse TL. However, the GABA receptors expressed by the epileptic TL mRNA exhibited some unusual properties, consisting in a rapid current run-down after repetitive GABA applications and a large EC50 (125 μM). AMPA alone evoked very small or nil currents, whereas KAI induced larger currents. Nevertheless, upon cyclothiazide treatment, AMPA elicited substantial currents that, like the KAI currents, were inhibited by 6-cyano-7-nitroquinoxaline-2,3-dione (CNQX). Furthermore, the glutamate receptor 5 (GluR5) agonist, ATPA, failed to evoke an obvious current although both RT-PCR and Western blot analyses showed GluR5 expression in the epileptic TL. Oocytes injected with mouse TL or human TLG mRNAs generated KAI and AMPA currents similar to those evoked in oocytes injected with epileptic TL mRNA but, in contrast to these, the mouse TL and human TLG oocytes were also responsive to ATPA. Our findings are in accord with the concept that both a depression of GABA inhibition and a dysfunction of the KAI-receptor system maintain a high neuronal excitability that results in epileptic seizures.
The Influence of Place Attachment, Ad-Evoked Positive Affect, and Motivation on Intention to Visit: Imagination Proclivity as a Moderator

Integrating the theoretical foundations of symbolic interactionism, parasocial interaction, direct affect transfer, push and pull motivational framework, and narrative transportation, this study investigates the determinants of tourists’ intention to visit a destination using Heidi, a famous literary and television series persona, as a stimulus. Place attachment, ad-evoked positive affect, and motivation were theorized as antecedents of intention to visit and imagination proclivity as a moderator. The model was tested using data collected from 410 prospective Spanish tourists. Results show motivation and place attachment as key determinants of intention to visit among individuals with higher imagination proclivity, while positive affect was most relevant for individuals with low imagination proclivity. Findings expand our understanding of travel intention toward unvisited destinations, providing empirical support that place attachment, positive affect, and motivation are engendered by prior media exposure and moderated by tourists’ imagination proclivity.
Active CMOS Sensor Array for Electrochemical Biomolecular Detection

Electrochemical sensing of biomolecules eliminates the need for the bulky and expensive optical instrumentation required in traditional fluorescence-based sensing assays. Integration of the sensor interface electrodes and active electrochemical detection circuitry on a CMOS substrate miniaturizes the sensing platform, enhancing its portability for use in point-of-care applications, while enabling the high-throughput, highly parallel analysis characteristic of traditional microarrays. This paper describes the design of a four-by-four active sensor array for multiplexed electrochemical biomolecular detection in a standard 0.25-mum CMOS process. Integrated potentiostats, comprised of control amplifiers and dual-slope analog-to-digital converters, stimulate the electrochemical cell and detect the current flowing through the on-chip gold electrodes at each sensor site that results from biomolecular reactions occurring on the chip surface. Post-processing steps needed to fabricate a biologically-compatible surface-electrode array in CMOS that can withstand operation in a harsh electrochemical environment are also described. Experimental results demonstrating the proper operation of the active CMOS array for biomolecular detection include cyclic voltammetry of a reversible redox species, DNA probe density characterization, as well as quantitative and specific DNA hybridization detection.
A study on resource provisioning of multi-tier web applications in cloud computing

Web applications these days are mostly multi-tier for the sake of software reusability and flexibility. However it is very difficult to estimate the behaviour of workloads in these tiers due to the fact that resource demand at each tier is distinct. So it becomes very confronting to allocate resources at each tier. In order to fulfil SLA (Service Level Agreement) requirements it becomes necessary to provision resources at each tier separately. Recently various approaches on control theory and dynamic approaches have been proposed for the provisioning of resources in cloud. In this paper we identify those challenges and conduct a review on those control theory and dynamic approaches for allocation of resources in multi-tier applications. On the basis of advantages and disadvantages we develop a blueprint for research directions to enhance the effectiveness of resource provisioning in multi-tier applications.
Motor imagery classification using feature relevance analysis: An Emotiv-based BCI system

Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) have been emerged as an alternative to support automatic systems able to interpret brain functions, commonly, by analyzing electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. In this work, a time-series discrimination methodology, called Motor Imagery Discrimination by Relevance Analysis (MIDRA), is presented to support the development of BCI from EEG data. Particularly, a Motor Imagery (MI) paradigm is studied, i.e., imagination of left-right hand movements. In this sense, a feature relevance analysis strategy is presented to select representing characteristics using a variability criterion. Besides, short-time parameters are estimated from EEG data by considering both time and time-frequency representations to deal with non-stationary dynamics. MIDRA is assessed on two different BCI databases, a well-known MI data and an Emotiv-based dataset. Attained results showed that MIDRA enhances the BCI system performance in comparison with benchmark methods by suitable ranking the input feature set. Moreover, applying MIDRA in a BCI based on the Emotiv device is a straightforward alternative for dealing with MI paradigms.
Performance of TFRC during vertical handovers events in heterogeneous networks

The TCP-friendly Rate Control (TFRC) is an adaptation scheme that provides TCP-friendly rate adaptation for Internet multimedia applications. While extensions have being proposed for wireless networks, TFRC was initially designed for wired networks. However, the behavior of TFRC in heterogeneous wireless networks, such the ones envisaged for the Beyond 3G and 4G systems, has not yet being extensively studied. The purpose of this paper is to study TFRC performance in heterogeneous systems, especially during vertical handovers. The most significant mechanisms that TFRC provides for adapting to abrupt network characteristics changes are highlighted, these have not yet being thoroughly described and studied. In order to depict TFRC’s performance in various vertical handover cases relevant simulations results are presented. TFRC performance is mixed, since for some cases it incorporates mechanisms that can provide more acceptable than initially expected performance. However, in the general case, the original TFRC is appropriate for heterogeneous networks. This paper gives attention to the areas where TFRC extensions are required in order to perform gracefully during vertical handovers.
A soft information calculating method for SC-FDE output symbol

The hard decision symbol of conventional SC-FDE output is not perfect to the posterior SISO decoder of Shannon limit codes such as Turbo code and LDPC codes, which can achieve the Shannon limit performance on condition that the in-out information is soft. In this paper, a soft information calculation method for SC-FDE output symbol is proposed which increases the accuracy of information into the SISO decoder of Shannon limit codes and improves the transmission system. The numerical simulation results also show that the soft output SC-FDE gains an advantage over the hard one and the additional SNR gain can be obtained in frequency selective channel.
The Rational for Developing Larger-scale 1000+ Machine Emulation-Based Research Test Beds

This position paper outlines the need and rational for developing large-scale emulation facilities structured to allow the scientific method tenets to be met on a per experiment basis. The work specifically focuses on the need to develop emulation-based test beds on the 1000+ machine scale, as expressed within the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Program Agency's (DARPA) BAA-08-43 Broad Agency Announcement of May 2008 for a National Cyber Range, the University of Victoria's Fall 2008 application to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for a Canadian at-scale Emulation Laboratory (CASElab), and the recent HP-Intel-Yahoo global cloud computing test bed initiative. The work places these proposed large-scale facilities both within the general context of the standard research tools (i.e., analytical analysis, simulation studies, ad hoc testing, and smaller-scale emulation), as their placement against other available test beds, most notably Emulab, DETERlab, and PlanetLab.
The Restricted Arc-Width of a Graph

An arc-representation of a graph is a function mapping each vertex in the graph to an arc on the unit circle in such a way that adjacent vertices are mapped to intersecting arcs. The width of such a representation is the maximum number of arcs passing through a single point. The arc-width of a graph is defined to be the
Mycobacterium bovis Bacille Calmette-Guérin as a Vaccine Vector for Global Infectious Disease Control

Mycobacterium bovis bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is the only available vaccine for tuberculosis (TB). Although this vaccine is effective in controlling infantile TB, BCG-induced protective effects against pulmonary diseases in adults have not been clearly demonstrated. Recombinant BCG (rBCG) technology has been extensively applied to obtain more potent immunogenicity of this vaccine, and several candidate TB vaccines have currently reached human clinical trials. On the other hand, recent progress in the improvement of the BCG vector, such as the codon optimization strategy and combination with viral vector boost, allows us to utilize this bacterium in HIV vaccine development. In this paper, we review recent progress in rBCG-based vaccine studies that may have implications in the development of novel vaccines for controlling global infectious diseases in the near future.
Analysis of energy model and Performance of IEEE 802.15.4 WSNs under Different Duty Cycle

IEEE 802.15. 4 is an emerging communication protocol for low rate-wireless personal network (LR- WPAN) which has gained importance in last few years, in practical and research field. Nowadays Zigbee used in many applications such as home automation, industrial, and medical system etc. The low rate WPANs provide low power consumption, low cost and small range wireless networking. Zigbee uses IEEE 802.15. 4 as its communication protocol for medium access control (MAC) layer and physical (PHY) layer. Since in WSNs, nodes are powered by limited capacity of batteries and densely deployed in any geographic region to perform sensing. So that energy efficient operation and better QoS are always desired in WSNs. In this paper, we have focused on two energy model i.e. Mica mote and mica z and beacon enable mode operation of IEEE802.15. 4 with different duty cycle under different traffic load. The duty cycle operation achieve by setting two system parameters, macBeaconOrder (BO) and macSuperframeorder (SO). This paper, comparatively analyzed the energy model and performance of IEEE 802.15. 4 with different percentage of duty cycle on the basis of energy consumption and QoS parameter. The matrices used in performance evaluation are packet loss rate (PLR), average end to end delay, throughput, residual battery capacity and energy consumption using Qualnet 6.1 simulator. Keywords -WSN, IEEE 802.15. 4, Bacon order (BO), Super frame order (SO), Duty Cycle, CBR traffic, and Qualnet 6.1.
PRIVATISED TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE AND INCENTIVES TO INVEST

It has often been asserted that public ownership in the UK resulted in over investment in capacity. Rees (1989) considers that this is "perhaps the greatest single failure of the system of government control of public enterprise, at least up to the early 1980s". Conversely it has also been asserted that privatised utilities face few incentives to invest efficiently. This would hardly be a surprising result if the firms were allowed to follow profit maximising policies after privatisation. Monopolies (and especially natural monopolies) maximise profits by tightening capacity margins. In practice, however, the consequences of changes of ownership have been more complex. Privatisation has, in the main, replaced regulation through state ownership by regulation through licences. Each newly privatised utility has been granted a licence which entitles it to supply monopoly services in return for undertakings related explicitly to pricing, and, in some cases, service quality. These are in effect contracts between the firm and the community, monitored and arbitrated upon by a regulator. Whether privatisation results in efficient levels of investment thus depends upon the interaction between the firm's strategies and these regulatory constraints.
Acute kidney injury in Latin America: a view on renal replacement therapy resources.

BACKGROUND Acute kidney injury (AKI) has increasingly been recognized as an important public health issue due to its rising frequency, its associations with early and late adverse outcomes and its economic burden. METHODS Given the importance of determining the available resources to address this serious issue, the AKI Committee of SLANH conducted a survey to obtain information about infrastructure, human resources and equipment devoted to the treatment of AKI in Latin America RESULTS A total of 246 units from 14 countries participated in the survey, the majority of them pertaining to nephrology divisions in teaching hospitals. Intermittent hemodialysis was universally performed by all of the units, and less frequently, slow extended dialysis (40%) and continuous renal replacement therapy (23%) were performed. Seventy-nine units (30%) perform peritoneal dialysis, but only 51 (19%) of them reported having treated at least 1 patient with this technique in the last 3 months pre-survey. The vast majority of the units reported adequate water treatment and use of modern filter membranes. Most of the patients received renal replacement therapy (RRT) in the intensive care unit. Specific causes of AKI were reported in different frequencies, with a heterogeneous pattern among the countries. Septic abortion, hemolytic-uremic syndrome, community-acquired diarrhea and leptospirosis were the etiologies most frequently associated with AKI. CONCLUSIONS To our knowledge, this report was the first available study of the equipment and human resources utilized for RRT in AKI patients in Latin America.