Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An estimation of educational production function: the case of Tasmanian public schools

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of school resources on students’ academic achievement. The underlying theoretical framework of the study posits education as a production process, where an educational production function based on individual-level panel data of students in Tasmania is estimated. Evidence has been found on the positive effects of educational expenditure per student and rural expenditure to school on students’ academic achievement. Evidence also has been found to support a policy to reduce student-teacher ratio. The findings of the study stand as a crucial source of insight to a more informed debate over education policy in Tasmania.
Incremental Feature Construction for Deep Learning Using Sparse Auto-Encoder

A sparse auto-encoder is one of effective algorithms for learning features from unlabeled data in deep neural-network learning. In conventional sparse auto-encoder training, for each layer of a deep neural- network, all feature units are simultaneously constructed at the beginning and after being trained, several similar/ redundant features are obtained at the end of the learning process. In this paper, we propose a novel alternative method for learning features of each layer of the network; our method incrementally constructs features by adding primitive/simple features first and then gradually learns finer/more complicated features. We believe that using our proposed method, more variety of features can be obtained that will lead to the performance of the network. We run experiments on the MNIST data set. The experimental results show that sparse auto-encoders using our in- cremental feature construction provides better accuracy than a sparse auto-encoder using the conventional feature construction. Moreover, the shapes of our obtained features contain both primitive strokes/lines as well as finer curves/more complicated shapes which comprise the digits, as expected. 
How to distinguish posed from spontaneous smiles using geometric features

Automatic distinction between posed and spontaneous expressions is an unsolved problem. Previously cognitive sciences' studies indicated that the automatic separation of posed from spontaneous expressions is possible using the face modality alone. However, little is known about the information contained in head and shoulder motion. In this work, we propose to (i) distinguish between posed and spontaneous smiles by fusing the head, face, and shoulder modalities, (ii) investigate which modalities carry important information and how the information of the modalities relate to each other, and (iii) to which extent the temporal dynamics of these signals attribute to solving the problem. We use a cylindrical head tracker to track the head movements and two particle filtering techniques to track the facial and shoulder movements. Classification is performed by kernel methods combined with ensemble learning techniques. We investigated two aspects of multimodal fusion: the level of abstraction (i.e., early, mid-level, and late fusion) and the fusion rule used (i.e., sum, product and weight criteria). Experimental results from 100 videos displaying posed smiles and 102 videos displaying spontaneous smiles are presented. Best results were obtained with late fusion of all modalities when 94.0% of the videos were classified correctly.
Energy Conservation through Social Competitions in Blocks of Flats

Buildings are responsible for a large fraction of the world’s total electrical consumption. Energy awareness of residents, by means of timely electrical consumption feedback through smart metering, aims to reduce the waste of energy. Further savings can be achieved by leveraging social norms and entertainment to drive sustainable behavior. In this paper, we investigate two important pillars in the energy saving initiatives, which are the recreational aspect and the social influence of the neighborhood. We performed a small case study in two blocks of flats, creating a social competition among the flats, to award those with the best energy management. Our evaluation results indicate that energy-related social games have the potential to contribute significantly in reducing the electricity footprint of home residents, engaging them in more sustainable lifestyles.
Subsonic Wind-Tunnel Tests of Various Forms of Air Intake Installed in a Fighter-Type Aircraft

Tests have been made at Mach numbers up to 0·93 in the Royal Aircraft Establishment 10 ft X 7 ft High Speed Wind Tunnel to examine how the longitudinal characteristics of a fighter-type aircraft are affected by the installation of air intakes in the nose, fuselage sides, or wing roots. None of these intakes alters the lift or pitching-moment characteristics significantly, but their effects on external drag vary, and only the nose intake avoids an increase. This superiority derives principally from its low area ratio, the value of which largely determines not only the critical Mach number and hence the behaviour at transonic speeds of the intake fairing but also its sensitivity to spillage and aircraft attitude. Both forms of divided intake cause an increase in profile drag of roughly 20 per cent; on the side intake this is due to the siting of the boundary-layer bypasses and on the wing-root intake to the increased wing thickness. Their high area ratios make them sensitive to changes in flow direction and lead to high suction levels over the intake fairings which are expected to cause drag increases early in the transonic range. Separation in the canopy-intake junctions of the side intake reduces the drag divergence Mach number to 0,87, compared with 0·89 for the other models. The shaping of the wing-body junction which was combined with the nose and side intake installations leads to a marked reduction in drag at transonic speed, an advantage not shared by the wing-root layout. 1. Introduction. -The installation of a turbojet engine in an airframe affects the performance of the aircraft in two ways. Internally, the thrust developed by the engine is reduced from the test-bed value by the approach and duct losses; externally, the drag of the aircraft is generally increased by the alteration in shape necessary to house the engine and intake. Any attempt to assess the relative merits of different forms of air intake must therefore take into account both the internal and external losses caused by the installation. 'Whilst the former have been extensively studied and can now be estimated with fair accuracy at least at subsonic speedt, relatively little is known concerning the magnitude of the external interference set up by the different classes of intake.
Non-Uniform LDPC for Multi-Bitplane in Distributed Video Coding

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, with advantages in bit error rate performance and low complexity, is nowadays one of the most important codes in Distributed video coding (DVC). In this paper, a novel non-uniform LDPC-based approach for multi-bitplane is proposed in DVC. Apart from the existing LDPC encoding in DVC, this paper is dedicated to exploiting preferable code rate between correlated sources with finite code length. Moreover, we also investigate comprehensive solution of different parameters in different bitplanes to realize unequal error protection. The simulation results show that the proposed non-uniform scheme improves the coding efficiency and decoding performance of DVC.
Approximating an Interlingua in a Principled Way

We address the problem of constructing in a principled way an ontology of terms to be used in an interlingua for machine translation. Given our belief that the a true language-neutral ontology of terms can only be approached asymptotically, the construction method outlined involves a stepwise folding in of one language at a time. This is effected in three steps: first building for each language a taxonomy of the linguistic generalizations required to analyze and generate that language, then organizing the domain entities in terms of that taxonomy, and finally merging the result with the existing interlingua ontology in a well-defined way. This methodology is based not on intuitive grounds about what is and is not 'true' about the world, which is a question of language-independence, but instead on practical concerns, namely what information the analysis and generation programs require in order to perform their tasks, a question of language-neutrality. After each merging is complete, the resulting taxonomy contains, declaratively and explicitly represented, those distinctions required to control the analysis and generation of the linguistic phenomena. The paper is based on current work of the PANGLOSS MT project.
Entanglement and communication-reducing properties of noisy N-qubit states

We consider properties of states of many qubits, which arise after sending certain entangled states via various noisy channels (white noise, colored noise, local depolarization, dephasing, and amplitude damping). Entanglement of these states and their ability to violate certain classes of Bell inequalities are studied. States which violate them allow a higher than classical efficiency in solving related distributed computational tasks with constrained communication. This is a direct property of such states---not requiring their further modification via stochastic local operations and classical communication such as entanglement purification or distillation procedures. We identify families of multiparticle states which are entangled but nevertheless allow the local realistic description of specific Bell experiments. For some of them, the ``gap'' between the critical values for entanglement and violation of Bell inequality remains finite even in the limit of infinitely many qubits.
Agent-based knowledge management in intelligent tutoring systems

A formal model of agent-based knowledge management in intelligent tutoring systems is presented in this paper. It consists of three agents, a knowledge acquisition agent, a knowledge distribution agent and a knowledge maintaining agent. The knowledge acquisition agent is responsible for the construction of user model and domain knowledge base. The knowledge distribution agent is responsible for producing personalized teaching web pages (learning units) to students dynamically. The knowledge maintaining agent is responsible for the refinements of student models and domain knowledge. These agents work together to construct, distribute and maintain knowledge. After given the formalisms of the above three kinds of agents, the formal model of agent-based knowledge management is presented and discussed in detail to show that it is practicable.
Self-healing group key distribution with extended revocation capability

Self-healing group key distribution schemes (SH-GKDS) allow large and dynamic groups of users to establish group keys over an unreliable broadcast channel for secure multicast communications. In most existing schemes, total number of users that can be revoked during system lifetime is bounded by the degree of applied polynomials. In this paper we present a new revocation mechanism which overcomes this limitation. It allows to revoke a predefined number of users in each session, regardless of the number of users already revoked in the past sessions. To illustrate our approach, we propose SH-GKDS scheme with extended revocation capability which applies our revocation mechanism. Then, we conduct security and performance analyses of the scheme to show, that the proposed construction is efficient, achieves forward and backward secrecy, and resists collusion between the newly joined users and the revoked users.
Using Sibling Samples To Assess the Effect of Childhood Family Income on Completed Schooling. JCPR Working Paper.

We assess the impact of stage-specific family childhood income on completed years of schooling using fixed effects techniques to eliminate biases associated with the omission of unmeasured family characteristics. Sibling data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) indicate that family income during early childhood has a positive effect on children's educational attainment. The magnitude of the effect suggests that a 2.7-fold increase in parental income when the child is 0-4 years old leads to an increase of about half a year of schooling. We find that income during adolescence has a positive but less robust effect.
Experimental manipulation reveals differential effects of colour pattern on survival in male and female pygmy grasshoppers

Populations of pygmy grasshoppers, Tetrix subulata, exhibit genetically coded discontinuous variation in colour pattern. To determine whether the dynamics of this polymorphism is likely to be affected by selective processes, rather than by stochastic events, we experimentally manipulated colour patterns of free‐ranging grasshoppers and then calculated and controlled for differences in capture probabilities between categories of individuals before estimating and testing for differences in survival using mark–recapture data and program SURGE. We found that paint treatment had a significant effect on survival, and that the relationship between colour pattern and survival was different in males and females. Our analyses also revealed significant differences between sexes in relative frequencies of natural colour morphs, body size, activity pattern, dispersal distance and microhabitat use. These findings accord with the hypothesis that colour pattern and behaviour jointly determine susceptibility to visual predators. Our data enable us to reject the null‐hypothesis that colour pattern is a selectively neutral character and that the polymorphism is maintained solely by stochastic processes, such as random genetic drift and founder events. Indeed, the effect of dorsal coloration on survival, together with associations between colour pattern and many biologically important traits (body size, behaviour, thermal capacity, physiology and reproductive performance), suggests that colour pattern is likely to significantly influence individual fitness, and that the polymorphism must be maintained by some active process, such as spatially variable selection in combination with gene flow. The possible role of colour polymorphism as an intermediate stage in the evolution of sexual dichromatism in animals is discussed.
Affordances: Clarifying and Evolving a Concep

The concept of affordance is popular in the HCI community but not well understood. Donald Norman appropriated the concept of affordances from James J. Gibson for the design of common objects and both implicitly and explicitly adjusted the meaning given by Gibson. There was, however, ambiguity in Norman’s original definition and use of affordances which he has subsequently made efforts to clarify. His definition germinated quickly and through a review of the HCI literature we show that this ambiguity has lead to widely varying uses of the concept. Norman has recently acknowledged the ambiguity, however, important clarifications remain. Using affordances as a basis, we elucidate the role of the designer and the distinction between usefulness and usability. We expand Gibson’s definition into a framework for design.
Symptom variability in patients with severe COPD: a pan-European cross-sectional study

In between exacerbations, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is usually regarded as a stable condition, but there is increasing recognition of variability in this state. This cross-sectional study assessed patients' perception of symptom variability. Participants were outpatients >45 yrs old with COPD, current or ex-smokers, forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) <50% predicted, FEV1/forced vital capacity <0.7 and no exacerbation leading to therapeutic intervention in the previous 3 months. Patients' perceptions of COPD symptoms and their impact on daily life activities were recorded. Alterations in therapy use in response to COPD worsening were also recorded. COPD symptoms were experienced by 2,258 (92.5%) out of 2,441 patients during the 7 days before interview. Breathlessness was the most common symptom (72.5%). Daily and/or weekly symptom variability was reported by 62.7% of symptomatic patients; the morning was the worst time of day. Factors associated with perception of variability of breathlessness included younger age, symptom severity and recruitment to the study by general practitioners. The perception of variability was significantly different between European countries or regions. Patient-perceived COPD symptoms vary over the day and the week, and impact on daily activities; morning being the worst time of day. The majority of patients appear not to adjust treatment when symptoms worsen.
Becoming an Adult in Europe: A Macro(/Micro)-Demographic Perspective

Extreme cases in demography are important challenges for researchers, and the still important heterogeneity of European societies is a blessing for scholars interested in studying the importance of cultural and institutional factors. In the transition to adulthood the "latest-late" pattern of Southern Europe cohabits with its opposite "earliest-early" pattern of the Nordic countries. In this paper, I discuss multifaceted approaches to the explanation of why becoming an "adult" in Europe appears so diverse. I use secondary data analyses and present cross-country correlations: welfare state and institutional arrangements, historical and deeply rooted cultural differences, as well as economic and policy factors, and ideational change. Moreover, micro-level determinants play different roles in different societies. Future research on the transition to adulthood in Europe needs to be multilevel, comparative and interdisciplinary, and to consider the potential implication of persistent differences in patterns.
Costs of Memory: Ideas and Predictions

Studies on the ecology of animal memory have focused on the benefits of memory while implicitly assuming that there are costs as well. Here I discuss probable costs of memory by relying on knowledge from molecular biology and physiology, which indicates that the maintenance of accurate information in animals is an active and costly process of maintenance and repair. Redundancy probably plays a key role in ensuring a high level of accuracy; its cost is in terms of additional tissue, which increases body mass and energetic expenditure. Examining the magnitude and cost of redundancy at the neurobiological and behavioral levels can help us understand the cost of memory in particular and cognitive abilities in general. 7 1999 Academic Press
Persuasive Effects of Fictional Narratives Increase Over Time

Fact-related information contained in fictional narratives may induce substantial changes in readers' real-world beliefs. Current models of persuasion through fiction assume that these effects occur because readers are psychologically transported into the fictional world of the narrative. Contrary to general dual-process models of persuasion, models of persuasion through fiction also imply that persuasive effects of fictional narratives are persistent and even increase over time (absolute sleeper effect). In an experiment designed to test this prediction, 81 participants read either a fictional story that contained true as well as false assertions about real-world topics or a control story. There were large short-term persuasive effects of false information, and these effects were even larger for a group with a 2-week assessment delay. Belief certainty was weakened immediately after reading but returned to baseline level after 2 weeks, indicating that beliefs acquired by reading fictional narratives are integrated into real-world knowledge.
Electron-ion recombination data for plasma applications

This thesis contains results of electron-ion recombination processes in atomic ions relevant for plasma applications. The measurements were performed at the Stockholm Refrigerated Electron Beam Ion Trap (R-EBIT) and at the CRYRING heavy-ion storage ring. Dielectronic recombination (DR) cross sections, resonant strengths, rate coefficients and energy peak positions in H-like and He-like S are obtained for the first time from the EBIT measurements. Furthermore, the experimentally obtained DR resonant strengths are used to check the behaviour of a scaling formula for low Z, H-and He-like iso-electronic sequences and to update the fitting parameters. KLL DR peak positions for initially He-to B-like Ar ions are obtained experimentally from the EBIT measurements. Both the results from highly charged sulfur and argon are compared with the calculations performed with a distorted wave approximation. Absolute recombination rate coefficients of B-like C, B-like Ne and Belike F ions are obtained for the first time with high energy resolution from storage ring measurements. The experimental results are compared with the intermediate coupling AUTOSTRUCTURE calculations. Plasma rate coefficients of each of these ions are obtained by convoluting the energy dependent recombination spectra’s with a Maxwell-Boltzmann energy distribution in the temperature range of 103-106 K. The resulting plasma rate coefficients are presented and compared with the calculated data available in literature.
Adaptable exploit detection through scalable NetFlow analysis

Full packet analysis on firewalls and intrusion detection, although effective, has been found in recent times to be detrimental to the overall performance of networks that receive large volumes of throughput. For this reason partial packet analysis technologies such as the NetFlow protocol have emerged to better mitigate these bottlenecks through log generation. This paper researches the use of log files generated by NetFlow version 9 and IPFIX to identify successful and unsuccessful exploit attacks commonly used by automated systems. These malicious communications include but are not limited to exploits that attack Microsoft RPC, Samba, NTP (Network Time Protocol) and IRC (Internet Relay Chat). These attacks are recreated through existing exploit implementations on Metasploit and through hand-crafted reconstructions of exploits via known documentation of vulnerabilities. These attacks are then monitored through a preconfigured virtual testbed containing gateways and network connections commonly found on the Internet. This common attack identification system is intended for insertion as a parallel module for Bolvedere in order to further the increase the Bolvedere system's attack detection capability.
Occasional Paper Series

I visited the head office of the Nagasaki Bus Company in Nagasaki City in May 2014. The company’s main business is providing regular bus services both within Nagasaki City and from the city throughout Nagasaki Prefecture. It also provides a variety of special bus services, such as to hospitals and for major Nagasaki companies. Furthermore, it holds extensive – and quite profitable – real estate holdings which are being developed into urban shopping centers, office buildings, condos, and hotels. The company’s challenge is that its bus service loses money, despite providing an essential public service making 4,000 trips a day, along with regular service to Osaka and to Nagoya, amounting to sales of $95.8 million in 2013. Moreover, the number of passengers has been declining ever since the 1980s when young people began buying cars, and will continue to decline as the Nagasaki City population, now 440,000, may decline to about 300,000 in the next 20 years. The company is attempting to address this challenge by developing special bus services for the elderly to hospitals, shopping, and tourist trips. For now, the company is profitable on the strength of its real estate holdings, but given these budgetary and demographic realities, the future is unclear.