Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Analysis of the pragmatic abilities profile in normal preschool children].

BACKGROUND pragmatic abilities in children. AIM to analyze the pragmatic abilities profile in normal preschool children and to verify if significant differences exist regarding the children's different socioeconomic levels. METHOD participants of this study were 30 children, with ages between 36 and 47 months, who attended public and private elementary schools - low and medium/high socioeconomic levels respectively. A thirty minute semi-structured conversation between each child and the evaluator was recorded in VHS. For the analysis of the pragmatic abilities profile 20 minutes of each conversation was transcribed. RESULTS there is a prevalence of verbal over non-verbal and unintelligible utterances; simple over expansive utterances; coherent over incoherent utterances. There was a low occurrence of utterances used to start a conversation. Regarding the use of communicative functions, the informative function prevailed, even though all the others (instrumental, heuristic, naming, narrative, negative, interactive) were used by all of the children. Comparing the performance of children who attended public schools with that of children who attended private schools, statistically significant differences were observed in the number of simple and expansive verbal utterances, and in the use of the narrative function, indicating a better performance of children from private institutions. CONCLUSION the analysis of the children's conversational abilities profile revealed that they respond/maintain the conversation instead of initiating it; their utterances are verbal, mostly coherent and simple. Regarding the communicative functions, the most prevalent was the informative function. Sociolinguistic aspects can interfere in the pragmatic abilities of children of different socioeconomic level.
Helping secondary schools to be more inclusive of Year 7 pupils with SEN

The authors, all District Senior Educational Psychologists (DSEPs), were asked by a Principal Education Officer to design and implement a funded project to support inclusion in the county. This action research project aimed to help secondary schools be more inclusive of their Year 7 pupils with special educational needs. Inclusion issues were identified using pupils’ responses to questionnaires based on the Index for Inclusion materials. Schools then formulated interventions to suit their particular needs. The impact of the interventions was evaluated one year later. Positive results are reported in terms of responses from the pupils with SEN.
Speaker Identification Based on Multi-reduced SVM

SVM is a novel type of statistical learning methods that has been successfully used in speaker recognition. However, training SVM consumes long computing time and large memory with all training data. This paper proposes a speaker identification method based on multi- reduced support vector machine (MRSVM). MRSVM has two reduction steps. Firstly, speech feature dimensions are reduced by using KL transform, the noise is removed from speech simultaneity. Secondly, speech feature data are selected at boundary of each cluster as SVs by using kernel-based fuzzy clustering technique. Experiment results show that not only the training data, training time and storage can be reduced remarkably, but also the identification accuracy can be improved by the proposed MRSVM compared with other reduced algorithms and the system has better robustness.
Current themes in organizational change

The game goes on. The pressure on organizations for continuous change, in order to adapt to shifts in market structure, to deregulation or legal initiatives, and to quickly grasp evolving opportunities has not reduced—on the contrary; it has increased with progressing globalization and competition. Specifically, current challenges range from managing mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, and ‘‘rightsizing’’, to business reengineering, or developing and implementing new technologies. As sales markets are getting tougher, companies keep decreasing the product life cycles, which necessitates faster innovation. ‘‘Change’’ has become a buzzword in the daily press; it seems to be omnipresent in the minds of consultants and other practitioners. Unfortunately, the results from costly change efforts fall too often behind expectations. For social scientists, therefore, it remains a pertinent task to invest in research that helps to gain a better understanding of change processes and of factors that contribute to successful change and innovation. This special issue faces up to this challenge by providing empirical and theoretical contributions that address two subject areas of the multifaceted change arena: first, corporate restructurings such as merger and acquisition, downsizing, or redundancies; and second, changing and innovating the way business is done. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) seem to appear in waves, with the earliest ones being witnessed in the late 1890 in the USA and the most recent one in the 1990 (Gaughan, 2002; Lubatkin & Lane, 1996). By now, M&A are common to nearly all industries, such as finance (e.g., Allianz and Dresdner in 2001), media (AOL and Time Warner in 2000), or production (HP and Compaq in 2001). The optimistic voices that celebrate the
A Software Solution for Hardware Vulnerabilities

Modern processors are becoming increasingly complex with features that improve performance and add new functionality. However, such improvements are a double-edged sword: they improve performance and functionality but also introduce security-critical bugs into the processor that attackers can leverage to bypass a system's security policies. Existing solutions require hardware extensions and often lack the flexibility of software. We present the design of a software-only solution to prevent exploitation of these bugs. Our design builds on the Secure Virtual Architecture and employs both static analysis and run-time checks to prevent applications and operating system kernels from triggering security-critical processor bugs. Our evaluation examines security-critical processor bugs identified in AMD processors and analyzes how they can be mitigated by our design.
Competitiveness and health: The work of sport clubs as seen by sport clubs representatives - a Norwegian case study

This article is study of sport club representatives’ considerations about the work of sport clubs. Sport clubs are first and foremost providers of sport activity. However, when it came to the work of sport clubs, it is discovered that the focus is on competitiveness, but sport clubs were also seen as a vehicle for promotion of ‘social goods’ such as health. Based on documentary analysis, observations and interviews with board members of sport clubs, and with a neo-institutional perspective of translation, this article discusses how local agents combine different institutional elements such as competitiveness and health and assemble them into a wholeness of sport activity. Without claiming to have found the final solution to this complex phenomenon, the article discusses whether health is utilized — or exploited — for legislation purposes only, or whether it can be combined with competitiveness.
I can assess myself: Singaporean primary students' and teachers' perceptions of students' self-assessment ability

Student self-assessment engages the students in purposeful reflection about what they are learning and how they are learning it. This study investigated the perceptions of students and teachers towards the students' self-assessment ability in two Singapore primary schools. A total of 75 students were taught how to use self-assessment. Eighteen students' self-assessments were randomly selected and compared with an independent panel of teachers' assessment. The results revealed both differences as well as similarities between the students' and teachers' perceptions of students' self-assessment ability. The findings and the implications for students are discussed in concluding the article.
Suppression of macrophage nitric oxide production by melanoma: mediation by a melanoma-derived product

The tumour-bearing state is known to induce immune dysfunction that contributes to increased infectious complications and tumour progression. However, the mechanisms underlying this immunosuppression remain unclear. This study investigated in a murine model the effects of melanoma growth on nitric oxide (NO) production by peritoneal macrophages in vivo and in vitro. B16 and K1735 melanoma cells were inoculated subcutaneously into C57BL/6 and C3H/HeN mice, respectively. Stimulated NO production by elicited peritoneal macrophages was examined in control and melanoma- bearing mice. An in vitro system was established to assess the effects of co-culturing melanoma cells (B16 and K1735) or melanoma-conditioned medium with normal peritoneal macrophages on subsequent NO production. NO production was significantly suppressed in macrophages from melanoma-bearing mice. Co-culture of normal macrophages with melanoma cells in a transwell system or with melanoma-conditioned media in vitro reproduced the defects observed in vivo without affecting macrophage viability, pointing to a melanoma-derived product as the basis for the observed suppression of NO production. This inhibition required RNA and protein synthesis and was dose and time dependent. Using inhibition profiles and neutralizing antibodies, it was demonstrated that this melanoma inhibitory activity was distinct from known NO inhibitors. Preliminary characterization attributed this activity to a melanoma-secreted protein moiety.
The role of pseudo-wires for layer 2 services in intelligent transport networks

Pseudo-wire emulation edge-to-edge over multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is a promising technology for layer 2 transparent service support in metro networks. It supports Ethernet private line applications such as virtual private wire services (VPWS), multipoint local area network (LAN) applications such as virtual private LAN services (VPLS), frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), and even the emulation of time division multiplexing (TDM) services. In the case of Ethernet, this technology circumvents the disadvantages of native Ethernet-based services, such as the need for spanning trees. In combination with traffic engineered label-switched paths (LSPs), it promises support for quality of service (QoS) differentiation and traffic engineering for high-value business services. MPLS is currently viewed as the technology that could satisfy this need, but because it serves so many other purposes as well, it entails complex control plane protocols and relatively high cost. This is in opposition to operator demand for low capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) cost when introducing new services. This paper presents an analysis of how TDM-based transport networks can evolve, maximizing the benefit of established transport technologies, while supporting existing layer 2 transport services as well as new services such as Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and video on demand. The paper identifies which of the mechanisms that are underlying MPLS-based pseudo-wire services are truly essential, and which could be implemented by other means and thus offer new possibilities for migration and convergence. Besides conceptual considerations, the network efficiency of alternative implementation options is analyzed and compared. © 2007 Alcatel-Lucent.
Metabolic fate of polyphenols in the human superorganism

Dietary polyphenols are components of many foods such as tea, fruit, and vegetables and are associated with several beneficial health effects although, so far, largely based on epidemiological studies. The intact forms of complex dietary polyphenols have limited bioavailability, with low circulating levels in plasma. A major part of the polyphenols persists in the colon, where the resident microbiota produce metabolites that can undergo further metabolism upon entering systemic circulation. Unraveling the complex metabolic fate of polyphenols in this human superorganism requires joint deployment of in vitro and humanized mouse models and human intervention trials. Within these systems, the variation in diversity and functionality of the colonic microbiota can increasingly be captured by rapidly developing microbiomics and metabolomics technologies. Furthermore, metabolomics is coming to grips with the large biological variation superimposed on relatively subtle effects of dietary interventions. In particular when metabolomics is deployed in conjunction with a longitudinal study design, quantitative nutrikinetic signatures can be obtained. These signatures can be used to define nutritional phenotypes with different kinetic characteristics for the bioconversion capacity for polyphenols. Bottom-up as well as top-down approaches need to be pursued to link gut microbial diversity to functionality in nutritional phenotypes and, ultimately, to bioactivity of polyphenols. This approach will pave the way for personalization of nutrition based on gut microbial functionality of individuals or populations.
An efficient statistical analysis methodology and its application to high-density DRAMs

A new approach for the statistical worst case of fall-chip circuit performance and parametric yield prediction, using both the modified-principal component analysis (MPCA) and the gradient method (GM), is proposed and verified. This method enables designers not only to predict the standard deviations of circuit performances but also track the circuit performances associated with the process shift using wafer test structure measurements. This new method is validated experimentally during the development and production of high density DRAMs.
A Memory Soft Error Measurement on Production Systems

Memory state can be corrupted by the impact of particles causing single-event upsets (SEUs). Understanding and dealing with these soft (or transient) errors is important for system reliability. Several earlier studies have provided field test measurement results on memory soft error rate, but no results were available for recent production computer systems. We believe the measurement results on real production systems are uniquely valuable due to various environmental effects. This paper presents methodologies for memory soft error measurement on production systems where performance impact on existing running applications must be negligible and the system administrative control might or might not be available. We conducted measurements in three distinct system environments: a rack-mounted server farm for a popular Internet service (Ask.com search engine), a set of office desktop computers (Univ. of Rochester), and a geographically distributed network testbed (PlanetLab). Our preliminary measurement on over 300 machines for varying multi-month periods finds 2 suspected soft errors. In particular, our result on the Internet servers indicates that, with high probability, the soft error rate is at least two orders of magnitude lower than those reported previously. We provide discussions that attribute the low error rate to several factors in today's production system environments. As a contrast, our measurement unintentionally discovers permanent (or hard) memory faults on 9 out of 212 Ask.com machines, suggesting the relative commonness of hard memory faults.
Modernization, Rationalization, and Education: Responding to the Other

As societies forfeit increasingly their homogeneous character and cross-cultural encounters are being multiplied, demands for multicultural and Other- oriented education appear legitimate and convincing. However, to endorse such demands does not suffice on its own, if it is not accompanied by appropriate theoretical shifts in sociological core assumptions. In this article, I propose that one such shift should concern the old coupling of modernization with societal rationalization. By discussing Habermas's conception of rationalization, I defend the rejection of the identification of modernization with rational development. I show the benefits of this rejection for multicultural education by highlighting what ethnocentric vices (Martha Nussbaum's term) it staves off. I conclude with some suggestions for a sociology of education that is sensitive to otherness.
Bayesian restoration of interferometric phase through biased anisotropic diffusion

In this paper a new Bayesian algorithm for interferometric phase restoration is presented. Based on a non-linear anisotropic extension of Orientation Diffusions, the inherent directionality of the fringe structure is introduced into its prior model. It also accounts for the periodicity of the phase representation. A fidelity term derived from the anisotropic metrics and the InSAR phase statistics deviates diffusion towards the acquired phase value. It acts as an adapted likelihood of the diffused phase. Hence, phase restoration is a trade-off between directionality and reconstruction fidelity, prior and likelihood. Results are provided on a High Resolution Spotlight scene acquired by TerraSAR-X.
The host galaxies of long-duration gamma-ray bursts in a cosmological hierarchical scenario

We developed a Monte Carlo code to generate long-duration gamma-ray burst (LGRB) events within cosmological hydrodynamical simulations consistent with the concordance Λ cold dark matter model. As structure is assembled, LGRBs are generated in the substructure that formed galaxies today. We adopted the collapsar model so that LGRBs are produced by single, massive stars at the final stage of their evolution. We found that the observed properties of the LGRB host galaxies (HGs) are reproduced if LGRBs are also required to be generated by low-metallicity stars. The low-metallicity condition imposed on the progenitor stars of LGRBs selects a sample of HGs with mean gas abundances of 12 + log O/H ≈ 8.6. For z < 1 the simulated HGs of low-metallicity LGRB progenitors tend to be faint, slow rotators with high star formation efficiency, compared with the general galaxy population, in agreement with observations. At higher redshift, our results suggest that larger systems with high star formation activity could also contribute to the generation of LGRBs from low-metallicity progenitors since the fraction of low-metallicity gas available for star formation increases for all systems with look-back time. Under the hypothesis of our LGRB model, our results support the claim that LGRBs could be unbiased tracers of star formation at high redshifts.
COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTS OF PROPRANOLOL AND ICI 66082 IN BLOCKING THE RENIN RELEASING EFFECT OF RENAL NERVE STIMULATION IN THE CAT

The comparative effectiveness of propranolol and ICI 66082, in inhibiting the release of renin from the kidney resulting from renal nerve stimulation, has been studied in the cat. Over the dose range 0.17–0.68 × 10−5 mol/kg propranolol there was a dose‐response relationship with the increase of plasma renin activity (PRA) achieved after 10 min stimulation. Over the dose range 0.75–1.69 × 10−5 mol/kg ICI 66082 also inhibited the release of renin caused by nerve stimulation, but was about five times less effective than propranolol. It would appear from these data that the β‐adrenoceptors within the kidney mediating renin release are distinctly different from those of the heart.
Ligature Modeling for Recognition of Characters Written in 3D Space

In this work, we propose a 3D space handwriting recognition system by combining 2D space handwriting models and 3D space ligature models based on that the most different parts between 2D space handwriting characters and 3D space handwriting characters are the shapes of ligatures. We design the ligature model not dependent on each character but dependent on the incoming and the outgoing vector. Therefore with a few ligature models, various ligature shapes are modeled. Using 2D space handwriting models, we could use many models for various writing styles without training.
Myth or substance: An examination of altruism as the basis of volunteer tourism

Abstract Altruism is commonly associated with volunteer tourism as a motivational force for participants and a key factor in their on‐site experiences. In this paper we seek a better understanding of the term altruism, and how it applies to the volunteer tourism sector. By applying altruism models that include outcomes of helping defined as both instrumental and ultimate goals, we review the volunteer tourism literature to look for egoistic and altruistic goals. Specifically, we examine volunteer tourists’ motivations as well as experiences and benefits as outlined in 43 academic papers. The results suggest that, while volunteer tourists may behave in an altruistic manner, personal benefits derived from the experience by and large dominate the experience. It would appear that volunteer tourism represents a form of social egoism, which depending on the management of the volunteer tourists, and the goals and implementation of the project's goals, will indeed benefit local environments and communities. To move the debate forward, we suggest that the market forces as applied to the volunteer tourism sector may be examined, and other terms such as Eudaimonia be used to explain the pluralistic motivations, desires, and roles of volunteer tourists.
The JUMP Project: Practical Use of Semantic Web Technologies in EPSS Systems

The JUMP project aims at bringing together the knowledge stored in different information systems in order to satisfy knowledge and training needs in knowledge-intensive organisations. EPSS systems are meant to support a user in taking decisions, leveraging different information sources that are available. The JUMP framework is designed to offer multiple ways for the user to request information from a knowledge and document base itself as the result of the integration of indipendent systems. In order to simplify communication and maximize knowledge sharing and standardization of languages and protocols, Semantic Web languages and technologies are used throughout the framework to represent, exchange and query the knowledge stored in each part of the framework.
Traditional Literacy Skills and Internet Use Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Children

Ninety children in third through sixth grade attending an elementary school in western Canada completed a 15-item rating scale of their Internet use across home, school, and community contexts. Children's literacy skills were assessed with standardized measures of reading fluency and sentence comprehension and teacher ratings of reading and writing ability. Results suggest that Internet use during childhood is a complex behavior that varies across children and across contexts. Instant messaging and community-based Internet use during childhood were associated with decreased literacy skills, while other applications used at home and school were associated with increased literacy skills.
Energy-efficient topology construction for multi-attribute data gathering in WSNs

Environmental monitoring is a crucial application of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This kind of application generally requires a certain geographical granularity of sensing. In addition, some applications simultaneously gathers sensor readings with different attributes. In this paper, we propose a topology construction method that prolongs the lifetime of a WSN which gathers multi-attribute sensor readings. In our proposed method, a minimum number of sensor nodes are selected to acquire sensor readings for each attribute that satisfies the application requirement. For gathering the acquired readings, our method constructs a tree-shaped topology considering the sum of residual energies of nodes and the granularity of sensing for each attribute. By doing so, our method avoids exhausting batteries of nodes which can acquire a specific attribute. We confirmed the effectiveness of our proposed method through simulation experiments.