Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Uncertain Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Data Analysis Based on Sparse Bayesian Learning

In recent years, a number of indirect data collection methodologies have led to the proliferation of uncertain data. This paper presents a sparse Bayesian learning mechanism for uncertain fiber bragg grating sensors data. The collected sensor data are uncertain because of bad working environment and modeling methods. Research of sensor data are much more complex because of the additional challenges of representing their probabilistic information. Sparse Bayesian learning is the basis of relevance vector machine, and derives the data in Bayesian frame which is able to describes the probability characteristics of uncertainty. As a case study, the noisy strain sensor timeseries from a highway and railway bridge is used for regression and uncertainty analysis. The simulation results illustrate effectiveness of the presented sparse Bayesian learning mechanism that is superior to support vector machine and least square method. The proposed Bayesian analysis method reduces uncertainty in sensor data.
Bilingual Signs in Carinthia: International Treaties, the , and the Spaces of German

Analyzing the long-running conflict surrounding bilingual (German-Slovene) signs in Southern Austria, this article approaches the Ortstafelstreit as an illustration of the performative character of national languages, the performances to which contested national languages give rise, and the destabilization of national languages in a transnational era.
Nkx2.2-repressor activity is sufficient to specify α-cells and a small number of β-cells in the pancreatic islet

The homeodomain protein Nkx2.2 (Nkx2-2) is a key regulator of pancreatic islet cell specification in mice; Nkx2.2 is essential for the differentiation of all insulin-producing β-cells and of the majority of glucagon-producing α-cells, and, in its absence, these cell types are converted to a ghrelin cell fate. To understand the molecular functions of Nkx2.2 that regulate these early cell-fate decisions during pancreatic islet development, we created Nkx2.2-dominant-derivative transgenic mice. In the absence of endogenous Nkx2.2, the Nkx2.2-Engrailed-repressor derivative is sufficient to fully rescue glucagon-producing α-cells and to partially rescue insulin-producing β-cells. Interestingly, the insulin-positive cells that do form in the rescued mice do not express the mature β-cell markers MafA or Glut2 (Slc2a2), suggesting that additional activator functions of Nkx2.2 are required for β-cell maturation. To explore the mechanism by which Nkx2.2 functions as a repressor in the islet, we assessed the pancreatic expression of the Groucho co-repressors, Grg1, Grg2, Grg3 and Grg4 (Tle1-Tle4), which have been shown to interact with and modulate Nkx2.2 function. We determined that Grg3 is highly expressed in the embryonic pancreas in a pattern similar to Nkx2.2. Furthermore, we show that Grg3 physically interacts with Nkx2.2 through its TN domain. These studies suggest that Nkx2.2 functions predominantly as a transcriptional repressor during specification of endocrine cell types in the pancreas.
Gender, Interest and School Type as Predictors of Academic Achievement in Trigonometry among Secondary School Students in Kano State, Nigeria

The study investigated and analysed students’ gender, interest and school type as predictors of academic achievement in trigonometry among secondary school students in Kano State, Nigeria . To guide the study, three research questions and three hypotheses were formulated. The research design for the study was survey design of ex post facto type. The population of the study consisted of nine thousand eight hundred and seventy (9,870) SS II students from which a sample of three hundred and seventy students were selected in accordance with Krejcie and Morgan (19070). The procedure for the data collection were administration of questionnaire (Students’ Trigonometry Interest Questionnaire STIQ) and an achievement test (Trigonometry students’ achievement test TSPT). Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and t-test were employed to analyse the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that female students’ performed slightly higher than the male students’ in trigonometry. Students’ interest in trigonometry is a predictor of achievement while the school students attended is not a predictor of achievement in trigonometry. The study recommends that teachers should endeavour to make the students courageous enough to be able to face the tasks ahead of them (learning trigonometry). The study concludes that students’ gender and school type are not predictors of students’ academic achievements in trigonometry in Kano State, Nigeria but interest is a predictor.
Four Women’s Experiences in Agriculture Education Across Generations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover the perceptions and barriers for female agriculture educators across three generations in a non-traditional field of agriculture. The United States Department of Labor (2006) defined a non-traditional job as any occupation where one gender comprises 25% or less of the total employment. Camp, Broyles, and Skelton (2002) revealed secondary female agriculture teachers comprise 22% of the agriculture education field. However, there is a 35% female student membership in high school FFA (National FFA, 2000) so why is there a discrepancy in the number of high school females taking agriculture and the low number females in the teaching field? There are several perceptions of why this is occurring. Four female agriculture teachers were interviewed with the open-ended question: “What are your experiences in teaching agriculture education in a predominately male field? ” The teachers selected were from three generations: early Baby Boomer, late Baby Boomer, Generation Xer, and Millennial. Each participant has a Bachelor‟s degree in agricultural education and ethnicity was not taken into account when selecting participants. These four women‟s experience in teaching agriculture education across generations revealed many statements with similar content. The barriers included, but not exclusively, qualification to teach agriculture education, challenges in teaching agriculture education, stress in teaching agriculture education, and stereotyping of agriculture teachers.
Modeling Household Transmission of American Trypanosomiasis

American trypanosomiasis, or Chagas disease, caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and transmitted by blood-feeding triatomine bugs, is a chronic, frequently fatal infection that is common in Latin America. Neither adequate drugs nor a vaccine is available. A mathematical model calibrated to detailed household data from three villages in northwest Argentina shows that householders could greatly reduce the risk of human infection by excluding domestic animals, especially infected dogs, from bedrooms; removing potential refuges for bugs from walls and ceilings; and using domestically applied insecticides. Low-cost, locally practicable environmental management combined with intermittent use of insecticides can sustainably control transmission of T. cruzi to humans in rural Argentina and probably elsewhere.
Early Neutrophil Recruitment and Aggregation in the Murine Lung Inhibit Germination of Aspergillus fumigatus Conidia

ABSTRACT Several types of polymorphonuclear neutrophil (PMN) deficiency are a predisposing condition for fatal Aspergillus fumigatus infection. In order to study the defensive role of PMNs in the lungs, with particular reference to PMN recruitment and antimicrobial oxidant activity, responses to pulmonary instillation of A. fumigatus conidia were examined. Responses in BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice were compared with those in CXCR2−/− and gp91phox−/− mice, which are known to have delayed recruitment of PMN to the lungs in response to inflammatory stimuli and inactive NADPH oxidase, respectively. In BALB/c mice, PMNs were recruited to the lungs and formed oxidase-active aggregates with conidia, which inhibited germination. In C57BL/6, gp91phox−/−, and CXCR2−/− mice, PMN recruitment was slower and there was increased germination compared to that in BALB/c mice at 6 and 12 h. In gp91phox−/− mice, germination was extensive in PMN aggregates but negligible in alveolar macrophages (AM). Lung sections taken at 6 and 48 h from BALB/c mice showed PMN accumulation at peribronchiolar sites but no germinating conidia. Those from C57BL/6 and CXCR2−/− mice showed germinating conidia at 6 h but not at 48 h and few inflammatory cells. In contrast, those from gp91phox−/− mice showed germination at 6 h with more-extensive hyphal proliferation and tissue invasion at 48 h. These results indicate that when the lungs are exposed to large numbers of conidia, in addition to the phagocytic activity of AM, early PMN recruitment and formation of oxidative-active aggregates are essential in preventing germination of A. fumigatus conidia.
Pattern-based system to extract and distinguish drugadverse effect relation from other drug-medical condition relations in the same sentence

Extraction of drug-adverse effect causal relationship supports pharmacovigilance research and reduces the manual efforts for some tasks such as drug safety monitoring and building databases for adverse drugs effects from free text. In this study, we proposed a pattern-based method to extract drug-adverse effects causal relation from medical case reports and to distinguish this relation from other drug-medical condition relations exist in the same sentences. For training and evaluation purposes; we used 481 sentences from ADE corpus. Our method combined a concept recognition system with a module for drug-adverse effect relation extraction and discrimination task based on automatic generated numerous patterns and the position of matched pattern in a sentence. Our method achieved recall of 36.1, precision of 30.6 and an F-Score of 33.1 . The result of this study provides rapid extraction of machine-understandable drug-adverse effects pairs which can help in many computational drug researches.
Adding Time to Linked Data: A Generic Memento proxy through PROV

Linked Data resources change rapidly over time, making a valid consistent state difficult. As a solution, the Memento framework offers content negotiation in the datetime dimension. However, due to a lack of formally described versioning, every server needs a costly custom implementation. In this poster paper, we exploit published provenance of Linked Data resources to implement a generic Memento service. Based on the w3c prov standard, we propose a loosely coupled architecture that offers a Memento interface to any Linked Data service publishing provenance.
Online Library Content Generation Using Focused Crawling Based Upon Meta Tags and Tf-Idf

Electronic library is the collection of digital information related to an individual domain and in turn to all domains. A focused crawler traverses the Web looking for the pages most relevant to a domain and at the same time discarding the irrelevant pages and hence is helpful for generating the-e contents for digital library related to a particular domain. In this paper a focused crawling technique to generate online contents for e-library is proposed. The applicability of the proposed approach is shown by retrieving the documents which are highly related to a single domain. The quality of the pages included into the library is derived from the relevancy measure of the page with the content of domain related pages.
Chess-Playing Programs and the Problem of Complexity

In 1956 a group at Los Alamos programmed maniac-I to play chess (Kister et al, 1957). The Los Alamos program is an almost perfect example of the type of system specified by Shannon. As shown in the Table, all alternatives were considered: all continuations were explored to a depth of two moves (i. e., two moves for Black and two for White): the static evaluation function consisted of a sum of material and mobility measures; the values were integrated by a minimax procedure,* and the best alternative in terms of the effective value was chosen for the move.
Access: The Information-Seeking Behavior of Youth in the Digital Environment

The theory of Radical Change, which is based on the digital age principles of interactivity, connectivity, and access, is suggested as a lens to reexamine existing research on youth information-seeking behavior in the digital environment. After a brief review of research meta-analyses, which often point to deficits in youth information-seeking behavior, questions that emerge from this research are suggested. Meta-analyses of gender and information behavior studies find that some recent research disputes former conclusions. Radical Change is applied to an examination of specific facets of contemporary research in order to demonstrate how new perspectives can be gained. This analysis addresses commonalities between information-seeking behavior related to the handheld book with hypertextual qualities and digital materials, the social nature of information seeking, and emerging issues of access. It is noted that the public library as a setting for research has rarely been used, even though its less structured nature might provide insights that do not surface in schools. A look at directions for youth information-seeking behavior research in the future proposes how brain research might shed further light on behavioral observations. Conclusions note existing research and summarize some new points of view and areas for investigation.
Re-creating self-identity and meaning through occupations during expected and unexpected transitions in life

ABSTRACT The present study explores occupational engagement during expected and unexpected transitions in life, and how self-identity and meaning, situated in the context, is created and re-created through the daily occupations. We use case examples of children with disabilities, adults with acquired brain injury, older adults with stroke, and people with serious somatic illness who are undergoing rehabilitation. The cases are drawn from previous studies by each of the authors. In the present study, a secondary analysis of data was conducted based on an abductive approach and theories of self-identity and transaction, to illustrate how changes in everyday life occupations made sense. Three themes emerged that structure the discussion; Disruption of a former self, Pursuing normality, and Re-constructing daily occupations and routines. Our discussion illustrates how different life transitions can be demanding and how people, situated in the context, revise and create new meaning and self-identity through their occupations.
Comparison of Biometric Authentication Software Techniques: GEFE vs. Angle Based Metrics

In this paper, we explore three alternatives for developing a biometric authentication software system. The first approach we will consider is a computer vision technique optimized by Genetic and Evolutionary Feature Extraction (GEFE); the second is Angle Based Metrics (ABM); and the third is Angle Based Metrics combined with Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ABM + GEC). Each of these techniques are research areas which show promise in regards to being able to authenticate users based on their natural mouse movements. When applied to the same data set, the results of our experimentation indicate that both the ABM and ABM + GEC techniques are more accurate than GEFE in correctly verifying genuine users, as well as correctly rejecting impostors.
The singularity spectrum of the inverse of cookie-cutters

Abstract Gibbs measures μ on cookie-cutter sets are the archetype of multifractal measures on Cantor sets. We compute the singularity spectrum of the inverse measure of μ. Such a measure is discrete (it is constituted only by Dirac masses), it satisfies a multifractal formalism and its Lq-spectrum possesses one point of non-differentiability. The results rely on heterogeneous ubiquity theorems.
Mobility tracking by interactive graph-cut segmentation with Bi-elliptical shape prior

Tracking of partially occluded or unevenly illuminated objects is the most challenging problem of the analysis of moving objects. Both problems can solve the graph cut segmentation with elliptical shape prior. Interactive control is necessary in the training phase of system as well as in a critical situation requiring the human intervention. Bi-elliptical shape prior model corresponds to the anatomy of animals and improves the precision of tracking. The system was tested in the analysis of animal's mobility which corresponds to the level of brain damage by a neurodegenerative disease.
Connection, Service and Community: an Examination of Factors that Contribute to Student and Staff Success

An abstract of the dissertation of Robert Vieira for the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership: Postsecondary Education presented March 6, 1996. Title: connection, Service and Community: An Examination of Factors that Contribute to Student and Staff Success This study examined the general hypothesis that student interactions with front line staff members in higher education settings have a positive impact upon student experiences, and ultimately, their persistence in colleges and universities. This study also examined the reciprocal hypothesis that this same interaction has a positive impact upon staff job satisfaction and service quality. Several bodies of literature were reviewed as a framework for the examination of these questions, including student persistence and related factors, job satisfaction, total quality management and service quality. A quasi-experimental research design was employed to examine an intervention linking new freshmen with individual staff members in a mentor/adviser relationship, and to test the effects of this interaction upon student persistence and satisfaction, staff job satisfaction, and service. The 2 effects of the intervention upon staff and students were measured through the use of pre and post interventi~n surveys. Also, interviews of subjects were conduct~d to provide insight intm the effects of the intervention, and the day-to-day ~xperience of students and staff'. In addition, data were:gathered from student and staff contirol groups for compijrison to the experimental groups. Results su~gest that positive student i~tsract~on with staff does have an effect upon persistence a~d ;sati~faction with the instit4tion. Factors related to this loutcqme include high levels lof interaction with comm~nity m~mbers, especially facu~ty, and a feeling of connect~on and integration wit~ ths institution. Also, dat~ sugge~t that poor relationships with staff can have the o~posite effect, contributing to student dissatisfaction and ~isconn~ction. similarly, data indicate that staff ben~fit frqm this relationship also, as demonstrated by increa~ed job satisfaction, satisfaction with interactions with students, and the feeling that their work has value fo~ the educational process. Other findings reveal that certainl factors contribute to positive interactions with students and the promotio~ ofl quality service (empowe~ment, teamwork, reward, training and association with other ~ervice providers), whil~ other factors detract from th.t relationship (hi~rarphy, lack of empowerment, territpriality of information, ~issociation from other serv~celproviders). Recommendations for improvement of student persistence and staff job satisfaction are made as a result of these findings and conclusions. 3
Health-related Information on the Web: Results From the HealthStyles Survey, 2002–2003

Introduction The World Wide Web is being used increasingly as a resource for accessing health-related information. In our study, we identified types of health-related Web sites visited most often, determined how often patients shared Web-accessed health information with their doctors, and examined factors that encouraged Internet use for locating health-related information. We also compared health-related Internet use among people who did not have any type of chronic disease with people who reported having one or more chronic diseases. Methods We merged data from the 2002 and 2003 HealthStyles surveys to generate frequency and descriptive statistics and used multivariate logistic regression to estimate odds ratios. Results Approximately 35% of survey participants reported using the Internet to search for health-related information. Among them, the Web sites visited most often included health information portals, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. About 53% reported that they "sometimes" shared Internet information with their doctors. The most important features of the Internet that would encourage its use for health information were ease of finding and using the information and clarity of the information provided. Internet use differed by sex and age and was strongly associated with income and education. Respondents who reported having a chronic disease (odds ratio [OR] = 1.30; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.16–1.45) were more likely to use the Internet to access health-related information, especially among those with depression (OR = 1.47; 95% CI, 1.27–1.71) and high cholesterol (OR = 1.18; 95% CI, 1.02–1.37). In addition, respondents who reported having two or more chronic diseases (OR = 1.35; 95% CI, 1.16–1.56) were more likely to search for online health information than respondents who reported having no chronic disease. Conclusion Public health professionals have a unique opportunity to use the Internet as a tool to complement and supplement the health information that the public receives from health care professionals.
Hurricane: an optimizing compiler for Smalltalk

We discuss a recent attempt at providing a more efficient compilation system for the Smalltalk-80#8482; language than currently exists. The approach is unique in that it attempts to work within the existing semantics of the language. A type declaration and inference mechanism is developed in order to make the problem tractable. Details concerning the compiler implemented to date are given, as well as preliminary speed tests of compiled object code.
An overview of operators for aggregating information

In this work, we first make a survey of the existing main aggregation operators and then propose some new aggregation operators such as the induced ordered weighted geometric averaging (IOWGA) operator, generalized induced ordered weighted averaging (GIOWA) operator, hybrid weighted averaging (HWA) operator, etc., and study their desirable properties. Finally, we briefly classify all of these aggregation operators. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Do Professors Better Maintain Cognitive Functioning in Older Age?

Research on cognitive aging demonstrates age-related cognitive decline. Education is a protective factor against cognitive decline, but few studies have examined the cognitive development of highly educated individuals. This study compared the cognitive performance and intellectual engagement of retired professors (N = 47, Mage = 72.9) and individuals with average education (N = 236, Mage = 72.7) over 5 years. Although the highly educated sample showed better performance in perceptual speed and working memory, cognitive performance was rather stable over time in both samples. Interestingly, high intellectual engagement enabled individuals with average education to keep up with the performance of the highly educated sample on perceptual speed. These findings raise the question whether intellectual engagement is more beneficial than years of education in perceptual speed.