Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Continuous assessment in Oshikwanyama : a case study

This study is about Continuous Assessment (CA) in teaching and learning, a new concept and approach in independent Namibia. The country's education system was reformed shortly after independence in 1990 to fulfill the intention for Education for All. The Namibian education system then moved from a behaviorist to constructivist philosophy of education. The move made from one philosophy to another resulted in many changes in teaching and learning including changes in assessment in education. CA is born out of a constructivist philosophy. It is believed to facilitate learning with understanding. In this study I explored the understanding of Oshikwanyama teachers and their practice of CA in teaching and learning. Interviews, classroom observations and document analysis were used. The research focused on 10 participants in the Ohangwena and Oshana regions. The participants ranged from a Head of Department to members of the curriculum panel, subject advisors and Oshikwanyama subject facilitators as well as teachers at the classroom level. It was revealed that generally speaking, CA as a term is understood, but the practice is not well implemented. In the practice of CA, instead of learners being assessed for further learning, the emphasis is on scored marks without further assistance in learning. Further, the collection of marks during CA is often seen as largely for the purpose of contributing to the marks for summative final marks. Informal assessment which is part of CA was not given attention, which is a key factor preventing the effective use of CA in teaching and learning. Methods such as marking grids that are provided in the syllabus, as well as portfolios and learners' profiles, were not mentioned in the interviews nor observed as being in use. Participants in the study did acknowledge that they did not fully understand how best to implement CA. Overall, the evidence pointed to a conclusion that the identified shortcomings in the implementation of formative assessment is limiting the realization of the rich potential for CA as a day-to-day tool to facilitate learning for understanding in the observed classes.
The coach–athlete relationship: a motivational model

The aim of this paper is to present a motivational model of the coach–athlete relationship that describes how coaches may influence athletes' motivation. In line with cognitive evaluation theory (Deci and Ryan, 1980, 1985) and the hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Vallerand, 1997, 2000), a motivational sequence is proposed where coaches' personal orientation towards coaching, the context within which they operate, and their perceptions of their athletes' behaviour and motivation influence coaches' behaviours. Also, coaches' behaviours in the form of autonomy-supportive behaviours, provision of structure and involvement have a beneficial impact on athletes' needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, which, in turn, nurture athletes' intrinsic motivation and self-determined types of extrinsic motivation. Here, we first review coaches' autonomy-supportive behaviours. We then describe the psychological processes through which coaching behaviours have a positive influence on athletes' intrinsic and self-determined extrinsic motivation. Finally, we identify social and personality processes that determine coaching behaviours.
Pharmacological Chaperones Restore Function to MC4R Mutants Responsible for Severe Early-Onset Obesity

Heterozygous null mutations in the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) cause early-onset obesity in humans, indicating that metabolic homeostasis is sensitive to quantitative variation in MC4R function. Most of the obesity-causing MC4R mutations functionally characterized so far lead to intracellular retention of receptors by the cell's quality control system. Thus, recovering cell surface expression of mutant MC4Rs could have a beneficial therapeutic value. We tested a pharmacological chaperone approach to restore cell surface expression and function of 10 different mutant forms of human melanocortin-4 receptor found in obese patients. Five cell-permeant MC4R-selective ligands were tested and displayed pharmacological chaperone activities, restoring cell surface targeting and function of the receptors with distinct efficacy profiles for the different mutations. Such mutation-specific efficacies suggested a structure-activity relationship between compounds and mutant receptor conformations that may open a path toward personalized therapy. In addition, one of the five pharmacological chaperones restored function to most of the mutant receptors tested. Combined with its ability to reach the central nervous system and its selectivity for the MC4R, this pharmacological chaperone may represent a candidate for the development of a targeted therapy suitable for a large subset of patients with MC4R-deficient obesity.
Pregnancy-associated breast cancer

Traditionally pregnancy-associated breast cancer (PABC) is defined as any breast carcinoma diagnosed during pregnancy or within the first year after delivery. PABC is a rare event, representing overall between 0.2-3.8% of all breast cancers. The incidence of PABC is about 1 in 3000 pregnancies. The physiological changes occurring in the breast during pregnancy may obscure the presence of a palpable mass in a pregnant woman. Core needle biopsy (CNB) or excisional biopsy are the preferred method to provide definitive diagnosis. The histologic spectrum of PABC does not differ from breast carcinomas diagnosed in non-pregnant women of similar age. Metastatic spread to the placenta is an exceedingly rare event that can occur to PABC patients, mostly in women who have disseminated metastatic tumors. Therapeutic strategies are determined by tumor biology, tumor stage, gestational age and the patient’s and her family’s wishes. The choice for breast cancer surgery and systemic therapy for PABC should follow the same guide-lines as for non-pregnant women. Preterm birth is associated more often with complications regardless of chemotherapy exposure, therefore iatrogenic preterm delivery should be avoided when possible. Overall prognosis of patients diagnosed with PABC is similar to that observed in non-pregnant women of the same age. The institution of international collaborative registries will further help in assessing more accurately the outcomes of the mothers and their children. Proceedings of the International Course on Perinatal Pathology (part of the 10 th International Workshop on Neonatology · October 22 nd -25 th , 2014) · Cagliari (Italy) · October 25 th , 2014 · The role of the clinical pathological dialogue in problem solving Guest Editors: Gavino Faa, Vassilios Fanos, Peter Van Eyken
ATL Satisfiability is Indeed EXPTIME-complete

The Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) of Alur, Henzinger, and Kupferman is being increasingly widely applied in the specification and verification of open distributed systems and game-like multi-agent systems. In this paper, we investigate the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem for ATL. For the case where the set of agents is fixed in advance, this problem was settled at ExpTime-complete in a result of van Drimmelen. If the set of agents is not fixed in advance, then van Drimmelen’s construction yields a 2ExpTime upper bound. In this paper, we focus on the latter case and define three natural variations of the satisfiability problem. Although none of these variations fixes the set of agents in advance, we are able to prove containment in ExpTime for all of them by means of a type elimination construction—thus improving the existing 2ExpTime upper bound to a tight ExpTime one.
AUTOMATED EXTRACTION OF ToBI ANNOTATION DATA FROM THE READING / LEEDS EMOTIONAL SPEECH CORPUS

In the interest of achieving experimental control, most studies of the effects of emotional arousal on the voice have avoided field data, preferring instead to work with data simulated by actors, or, more rarely due to the ethical and practical difficulties involved, induced in the laboratory. These methods allow for control over unwanted variables such as recording conditions, verbal content, accent, age, etc., but entail a corresponding loss of emotional realism (Murray & Arnott, 1993: 1100). Interest is now growing in improving psychological validity by using more natural speech samples in emotion research, despite the corresponding loss in experimental control. Previous studies have also tended to limit their phonetic variables to parameters which are amenable to acoustic analysis, such as variations in fundamental frequency and amplitude, and speech rate (see the review of data and methods in Scherer, 1981). Many features of speech which are striking to the listener but which defy conventional acoustic analysis have been ignored but may singly or in combination be relevant to our perception of emotion in speech. The Reading/Leeds Emotion in Speech Project is by contrast a collection of field data annotated for perceived emotional force, paralinguistic features, and prosody. This paper reports on computational tools developed for the automatic extraction of numerical and audio data from these annotations.
Schizophrenia and migration: a meta-analysis and review.

OBJECTIVE The authors synthesize findings of previous studies implicating migration as a risk factor for the development of schizophrenia and provide a quantitative index of the associated effect size. METHOD MEDLINE was searched for population-based incidence studies concerning migrants in English-language publications appearing between the years 1977 and 2003. Article bibliographies and an Australian database were cross-referenced. Studies were included if incidence reports provided numerators and denominators and if age correction was performed or could be performed by the authors. Relative risks for migrant groups were extracted or calculated for each study. Significant heterogeneity across studies indicated the need for a mixed-effects meta-analytic model. RESULTS The mean weighted relative risk for developing schizophrenia among first-generation migrants (40 effect sizes) was 2.7 (95% confidence interval [CI]=2.3-3.2). A separate analysis performed for second-generation migrants (seven effect sizes) yielded a relative risk of 4.5 (95% CI=1.5-13.1). An analysis performed for studies concerning both first- and second-generation migrants and studies that did not distinguish between generations (50 effect sizes) yielded a relative risk of 2.9 (95% CI=2.5-3.4). Subgroup comparisons yielded significantly greater effect sizes for migrants from developing versus developed countries (relative risk=3.3, 95% CI=2.8-3.9) and for migrants from areas where the majority of the population is black (relative risk=4.8, 95% CI=3.7-6.2) versus white and neither black nor white. CONCLUSIONS A personal or family history of migration is an important risk factor for schizophrenia. The differential risk pattern across subgroups suggests a role for psychosocial adversity in the etiology of schizophrenia.
Understanding Atlantic multi‐decadal variability prediction skill

Initialized and uninitialized decadal retrospective forecasts (re‐forecasts) are used to assess the key regions providing multi‐year prediction skill of the Atlantic multi‐decadal sea surface temperature variability (AMV) and to address the relative roles of the initial conditions and external forcing on this skill. The results show that there is a decay in the AMV skill with forecast time, which is likely to be driven by skill degradation in predicting the AMV subpolar branch due to the lack of skill in predicting the subtropical branch. An important role of the varying radiative forcing in the AMV‐related prediction skill is found over the Labrador and Irminger deep convection regions. Initialized predictions show the largest impact on the improvement in the AMV‐related skill over the area where the Atlantic subpolar gyre operates. Initialization appears also to correct an unrealistic anticorrelation between the AMV phase and the Gulf Stream found in the uninitialized re‐forecasts.
Maping the Soil Fertility of Bisankhel Catchment of Chitlang Vdc and Comparison of Different Geo-Spatial Interpolation Techniques

The aim of this research work was to map the status of soil nutrients in the Bisankhel catchment of Chitlang VDC, Makawanpur, Nepal. The study area covered 1023.25 hectares of land, extending from 85°8'8.433"E to 85°10'10.198"E longitude and 27°37'24.251"N to 27°40'21.560"N latitude. Total Nitrogen (N), available Phosphorus(P), extractable Potassium (K), soil organic matter (SOM) and soil pH were measured for 50 soil samples collected using random sampling representing different land uses in the study area. Most of the samples were found very acidic where uplands (4.879±0.119) were more acidic than lowlands (5.036±0.0973). Most samples upon analysis were found to be medium in SOM and total N. SOM was slightly higher in lowlands (3.385±0.256%) than in uplands (3.05±0.206%). Total N was also slightly higher in lowlands (0.145±0.00634%) than in uplands (0.127±0.00639%). Similarly, Available P and K were found very high in majority of the soil samples. Available P was slightly higher in lowlands (92.34±16.96ppm) than in uplands (71.58±15.47ppm). However, extractable K was slightly more in uplands (269±31.32ppm) than in lowlands (240.4±23ppm). Spatial prediction using various interpolation methods was performed in ArcGIS 10.5 software platform using ‘Geostatistical Analyst’ extension. The predicted values in raster data structure were used for mapping the soil fertility status of the catchment. Different interpolation methods were evaluated following cross-validation approach. Comparison of prediction errors was carried out to select the optimum prediction methods for the interpolation of soil nutrient values. Completely Regularized Spline and Ordinary Kriging methods were found to yield better prediction of soil nutrient status among the Deterministic and Kriging methods respectively. Soil pH being the limiting factor, pH control was necessary.
Signal stability-based adaptive routing (SSA) for ad hoc mobile networks

Ad hoc networks have no spatial hierarchy and suffer from frequent link failures which prevent mobile hosts from using traditional routing schemes. Under these conditions, mobile hosts must find routes to destinations without the use of designated routers and also must dynamically adapt the routes to the current link conditions. This article proposes a distributed adaptive routing protocol for finding and maintaining stable routes based on signal strength and location stability in an ad hoc network and presents an architecture for its implementation. Interoperability with mobile IP (Internet protocol) is discussed.
Multi-resolution learning vector quantisation based automatic colour clustering

Image segmentation is a challenging problem in computer vision. Feature clustering based image segmentation schemes are extensively researched topics in recent years. Particularly, colour clustering schemes are being widely applied for motion detection and tracking applications. In this paper we present a novel colour clustering methodology based on vector quantisation. The proposed method applies a learning vector quantisation approach with multi-scale image hierarchy to colour clustering using the hue, saturation, value (HSV) colour space model in order to obtain robust colour image segmentation. Results from experiments are presented, including a comparative analysis with the c-means algorithm.
Analyzing Transformation-based Simulation Metamodels 1 a Case Study in Manufacturing Cell Design

We present a technique for analyzing a simulation metamodel that has been constructed using a variancestabilizing transformation. To compute a valid confidence interval for the expected value of the original simulation response at a selected factor-level combination (design point), we first compute the corresponding confidence interval for the transformed response at that factor-level combination and then untransform the endpoints of the resulting confidence interval. Taking the midpoint of the untransformed confidence interval as our point estimator of the expected simulation response at the selected factorlevel combination and approximating the variance of this point estimator via the delta method, we formulate an approximate two-sample Student t-test for validating our metamodel-based estimator versus the results of making independent runs of the simulation at the selected factorlevel combination. We illustrate this technique in a case study involving the design of a manufacturing cell, and we compare our results with those of a more conventional approach to analyzing transformed-based simulation metamodels. A Monte Carlo performance evaluation shows that significantly better confidence-interval coverage is maintained with the proposed procedure over a wide range of values for the residual variance of the transformed metamodel. 77 1 A CASE STUDY IN MANUFACTURING CELL DESIGN In Irizarry et al. (2000a, b) we present an approach to manufacturing-cell design and analysis based on the use of a generic manufacturing-cell simulation model together with effective techniques for response surface estimation and optimization. This methodology consists of four major steps: (i) selection of cell design and operation issues; (ii) development of a comprehensive cell performance measure; (iii) identification of critical design and operation factors for the cell; and (iv) optimization of cell performance as a function of the cells critical design and operation factors. The methodology was applied to a cell for the assembly of printed circuit boards. A detailed description of the cell is presented in Irizarry et al. (2000a). In this study we concentrated attention on following the cell operational issues: setup policy (SU), unit load size (UL), lot size (LT), machine minor stoppages (ST), quality policy (QL), and maintenance policy (MA). These became the input factors for the factor-screening experimentation. The performance measure chosen for the evaluation of alternative cell designs was a comprehensive annualized cost function that incorporates ten major cost components as detailed in Irizarry (1996).
Neural Network for Numeral Recognition

present paper proposes a new approach of preprocessing for handwritten, printed and isolated numeral characters. The new approach reduces the size of the input image of each numeral by discarding the redundant information. This method reduces also the number of features of the attribute vector provided by the extraction features method. Numeral recognition is carried out in this work through k nearest neighbors and multilayer perceptron techniques. The simulations have obtained a good rate of recognition in fewer running time.
Overview of Animal Rabies in Kinshasa Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Introduction Rabies is one of the major public health problems mostly affecting developing countries in Africa and Asia where 99.9% of all rabies related human deaths are recorded each year. In Democratic Republic of Congo, repeated outbreaks have been reported. Despite this, there is little reliable epidemiological data about rabies in the country for the development of effective control strategies. Materials and Methods A retrospective study was carried out in Kinshasa Province during a period of five years (2009–2013) to describe the proportion of rabid animals and the species involved in rabies transmission and maintenance. The survey also aimed at describing the spatial-temporal distribution of rabies. To gather information, the daily registers of institutions involved in rabies diagnosis were reviewed and each rabies case was traced back to area of occurrence for collection of geographic coordinates. Results and Discussion A total of 5,053 attacks were registered involving six animal species including dog, cat, monkey, rabbit, rat, and pig. Based on clinical observations, rabies was reported in dogs and cats while data obtained from the laboratory confirmed rabies cases included dogs, cats and a goat. The annual distribution showed a significant decrease of rabies cases from 2009 up to 2011 and a later increase up to 2013. There was no difference in rabies occurrence between seasons (p = 0.721). Rabies cases were three times higher in peri-urban zone than in urban zone OR = 3.4 (95% CI: 2.3–5.1). The positive proportion of rabies was 2.6% (95% CI: 2.1–3) based on clinical evidence and 65.9% (95% CI: 50–79.5) for laboratory confirmed cases. Conclusion and Suggestion This study confirms the endemicity of rabies in Kinshasa where occurrence of rabies cases was related to human population density and lifestyle. In order to control rabies, there is need to set up a surveillance program and implement efficient mass vaccination campaigns of susceptible animals.
The Aplysia Mytilus Inhibitory Peptide-Related Peptides: Identification, Cloning, Processing, Distribution, and Action

Neuropeptides are a ubiquitous class of signaling molecules. In our attempt to understand the generation of feeding behavior inAplysia, we have sought to identify and fully characterize the neuropeptides operating in this system. Preliminary evidence indicated that Mytilus inhibitory peptide (MIP)-like peptides are present and operating in the circuitry that generates feeding in Aplysia. MIPs were originally isolated from the bivalve mollusc Mytilus edulis, and related peptides have been identified in other invertebrate species, but no precursor has been identified. In this study, we describe the isolation and characterization of novel AplysiaMIP-related peptides (AMRPs) and their precursor. Several AMRPs appear to have some structural and functional features similar to vertebrate opioid peptides. We use matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry to confirm that all 14 AMRPs predicted by the precursor are processed in isolated neurons. Northern analysis, whole-mount in situ hybridization, and immunohistochemistry are used to map the abundant expression of these peptides in the CNS and peripheral tissues such as the digestive tract, vasculature, and the reproductive organs. Physiological studies demonstrate that the rank order of the inhibitory actions of these peptides is different for three target muscles. These results underscore the importance of using a multidisciplinary approach to identifying and characterizing the actions of neuropeptides in an effort to gain understanding of their role in systems of interest. The widespread distribution of the AMRPs indicates that they may be operating in many different systems of Aplysia.
A multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition and probability model

Many real world applications require optimizing multiple objectives simultaneously. Multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) is a new framework for dealing with such kind of multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs). MOEA/D focuses on how to maintain a set of scalarized sub-problems to approximate the optimum of a MOP. This paper addresses the offspring reproduction operator in MOEA/D. It is arguable that, to design efficient offspring generators, the properties of both the algorithm to use and the problem to tackle should be considered. To illustrate this idea, a generator based on multivariate Gaussian models is proposed under the MOEA/D framework in this paper. In the new generator, both the local and global population distribution information is extracted by a set of Gaussian distribution models; new trial solutions are sampled from the probability models. The proposed approach is applied to a set of benchmark problems with complicated Pareto sets. The comparison study shows that the offspring generator is promising for dealing with continuous MOPs.