Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning to recommend with social relation ensemble

Recommender systems with social networks (RSSN) have been well studied in recent works. However, these methods ignore the relationships among items, which may affect the quality of recommendations. Motivated by the observation that related items often have similar ratings, we propose a framework integrating items' relations, users' social graph and user-item rating matrix for recommendation. Experimental results show that our approach performs better than the state-of-art algorithm and the method with only users' social graph ensemble in terms of MAP and RMSE.
Effect of acute exposure to low environmental calcium on respiration and locomotion in Lymnaea stagnalis (L.)

SUMMARY Environmental calcium is a major factor affecting the distribution of freshwater gastropods. Whilst the effects on growth and morphology are fairly well understood, little is known about how calcium availability affects other aspects of gastropod biology. Lymnaea stagnalis (L.) is considered a calciphile and exhibits reduced growth and survival in environments containing less than 20 mg l−1 Ca2+. Many freshwater systems exhibit fluctuations in calcium concentration over time: where calcium levels are normally high there may be periods of low [Ca2+], for example following periods of flooding. Here we examined the effects of acute periods of low (20 mg l−1) environmental calcium on the physiology and behaviour of L. stagnalis, specifically measuring how locomotion and respiration differ between high calcium (80 mg l−1) and low calcium (20 mg l−1) environments. We found that in a low calcium environment crawling speed is reduced, and that this coincides with an increase in cutaneous respiration, indicating that the increased metabolic demands of calcium acquisition at low [Ca2+] reduce the energy available for locomotion. Conversely we found a decrease in aerial respiration in hypoxic conditions in the low calcium relative to the high calcium environment. In conclusion, we found that acute exposure to low environmental calcium has a highly significant effect on locomotion and respiration, which may have consequences for snail fitness when no morphological effects are apparent.
Resources for Parents

Thriving! is for parents and carers of children aged three to twelve. It provides a wealth of strategies that will help parents and carers to raise resilient children and enable them to flourish. Thriving! advocates resilience in parents and families, as a foundation for developing resilient children. Subsequent chapters focus on building resourcefulness, independence, self-esteem, optimism, resilience, as well as coping and behavioural skills in children. A valuable resource; the strategies and solutions presented in this book are practical, common-sense and easy to follow. Fear-Free Children Author: Dr. Janet Hall
Dielectronic recombination of Fe13+: benchmarking the M-shell

We have carried-out a series of multi-configuration Breit–Pauli AUTOSTRUCTURE calculations for the dielectronic recombination of Fe13+. We present a detailed comparison of the results with the high-energy-resolution measurements reported recently from the Heidelberg heavy-ion Test Storage Ring by Schmidt et al. Many Rydberg series contribute significantly from this initial 3s23p M-shell ion, resulting in a complex recombination ‘spectrum’. While there is much close agreement between theory and experiment, differences of typically 50% in the summed resonance strengths over 0.1–10 eV result in the experimentally based total Maxwellian recombination rate coefficient being a factor of 1.52–1.38 larger than theory over 104–105 K, which is a typical temperature range of peak abundance for Fe13+ in a photoionized plasma. Nevertheless, the present theoretical recombination rate coefficient is an order of magnitude larger than that used by modellers to date. This may help explain the discrepancy between the iron M-shell ionization balance predicted by photoionization modelling codes, such as ION and CLOUDY, and that deduced from the iron M-shell unresolved-transition-array absorption feature observed in the x-ray spectrum of many active galactic nuclei. Similar data are required for Fe8+ through Fe12+ in order to remove the question mark hanging over the atomic data though.
DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT - AN OVERVIEW OF CURRENT CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems aim to create a secure framework to control access and actions that can be performed by users (both human and machine). DRM technologies have become very important in an increasingly networked world because it promises the owner of the ﬁle persistent control over the ﬁle even when the ﬁle leaves the owner’s machine. It is not only useful in combating piracy (which is currently the main use of DRM systems) but also for protecting sensitive documents in enterprises. DRM systems can be seen to ﬁt at various levels on a computer system - at an application layer, which is currently seen in applications like Apple iTunes; at an operating system level like Microsoft’s Rights Management System (RMS) in Windows Server 2003 or at a hardware level like Content Scramble System (CSS) in DVD players. However, current DRM systems are mostly not interoperable and in most cases either do not provide the all requirements expected by the customer or do not provide a totally secure framework. DRM systems that are used for copyright enforcement give rise to many legal questions mostly re-volving on the amount of control the copyright holder has over their creations once they have been distributed. Many of the legal questions do not affect DRM systems for enterprises, but most of the technical requirements are the same. This paper gives a broad overview of the current state of DRM systems and their strengths and weaknesses. It starts by examining the legal requirements of the system to satisfy both the right holders and the end consumers. We then discuss the structure of DRM systems, their characteristics and how well they satisfy the legal requirements. Finally we review three DRM systems and look at how well they satisfy the requirements desired in a DRM system.
A New Method of Using Contextual Information to Infer the Semantic Orientations of Context Dependent Opinions

many researches focus on semantic analysis in opinion mining and get effective results. However, dealing with context dependent opinions is still a challenge. Existing methods have used linguistic rules to cope with this problem, however, when the opinion is irrelevant to its adjacent sentences, the linguistic rules will not work. These special opinions, in this paper, called context indistinct-dependent opinion. We propose a method to predict the orientation of these special opinions. The main idea of our approach is when the review an opinion lies in cannot provide enough contextual information to determine the orientation of opinion, we resort to other reviews discussing the same topic to mine useful contextual information, then use semantic similarity measures to judge the orientation of opinion. Our approach is innovative and experiment shows that the proposed technique is highly effective.
Providing Local ORB-Like Services to Collocated CORBA Components

The CORBA Component Model (CCM) middleware provides a standard way to configure, manage and deploy distributed components. However, some current implementation of CCM is flawed with unreasonable communication overhead when components are in the same address space. Previous attempts to alleviate this drawback have tried to provide mechanisms for direct local communication of such components, but have sacrificed ORB services all together. Since such components do not communicate through ORB. They are deprived from ORB services such as events and naming. In case of need, programmers should implement such services themselves. This paper presents an alternative approach that likewise eliminates the unnecessary communication overhead between local components, but in addition provides them with local ORB-like services. A unit inside each container is made responsible for directing the communications between components within or outside the container. In case of local communications, requests are passed to the local components without ORB involvement. ORB-like services, namely events and naming, are provided by this unit locally for local components. Implementation results of the proposed approach with local event and naming services support show a favorable reduction of local communication overheads
RATIONAL USE OF DIURETICS IN ASCITES

Ascites may be defined as an accumulation of fluid in the abdominal cavity. Ascites, a late manifestation of the liver, causes increased morbidity and mortality. Diuretics are the medications that work in the kidneys to promote the elimination of salt and water in urine. The aim of our study was to estimate the rational use of diuretics in ascitic patients. This was a retrospective study, which was carried out in different hospitals. For this purpose we selected three hospitals and monitored 50 patients of ascites. These patients were presented in clinical wards of Services hospital, Jinnah hospital and Sir Ganga Ram hospital Lahore between the period of 15 June 2009 to 25 June 2009. During treatment, spironolactone and furosemide was given and abdominal girth, urine and serum electrolytes were checked. Our result gave us a quantitative data of utilization of diuretics in cirrhotic ascites and there exist wide variability in prescribing practices in the hospitals. Spironolactone is drug of choice in management of ascites and additional potassium is unnecessary so the drugs should discontinue. Early recognition of complications allows therapeutic interventions that minimize further clinical deterioration in already chronically ill patients.
Translanguaging in the Polish educational context: Lessons learnt from IB schools

Poland’s foreign language teaching and language policy have been affected by tremendous changes in the last decades. Not only bilingual sections in secondary schools have mushroomed, but also international schools with instruction in a foreign language, mainly English, within the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) started their existence in 1993. This paper draws on the translanguaging pedagogy as used in the selected secondary schools with IBDP. The schools provide evidence for the stance that most students, if not all, are multilingual in such teaching environments. Therefore, they apply multiple strategies to benefit from their linguistic repertoires. In addition, the teachers perceive such practices as positively affecting the students’ performance and allowing them to more rapidly acquire the imparted content as well as further develop their linguistic proficiency. The overriding aim of this study is to identify the situations when the students translanguage and analyze their linguistic behaviour as well as explore the functions of students’ translanguaging practices.
A kernel-based l2 norm regularized least square algorithm for vehicle logo recognition

We consider the problem of automatically recognizing the vehicle logos from the frontal views with varying illumination, as well as certain corruption. To better address the problem, a kernel-based l2 norm regularized least square (RLS) algorithm is proposed in the paper. Kernel technique is smoothly combined with the l2 norm RLS algorithm to enhance the performance of vehicle logo recognition (VLR). As an extension, the improvement of dictionary is also considered. A simple mechanism of constructing an adaptive online dictionary has been presented and experimented. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the original l2 norm RLS algorithm and the l1 norm based algorithms.
A Monolithic AlGaN/GaN HEMT VCO Using BST Thin-Film Varactor

A monolithic AlGaN/GaN HEMT voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) using a barium-strontium-titanate (BST) thin-film varactor is presented. The fabrication process of the VCO is fully compatible with the standard process of GaN HEMT monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). An improved equivalent circuit model of the fabricated BST varactor for microwave application was developed for the MMIC VCO circuit design. The experiment MMIC VCO exhibits 1-GHz tunable bandwidth at the central frequency of 7 GHz when the BST varactor bias changed from 0 to 24 V. An output power of 17 dBm and phase noise of -81 dBc/Hz (at offset of 100 kHz) are obtained at drain bias of 8 V and BST varactor of 0 V. The results indicate that the monolithic BST varactor is suitable for microwave application, and the integration of the BST varactor can be successfully applied to develop various tunable GaN MMICs.
Comparing the working patterns of older people to those of younger people : static and dynamic empirical analyses in selected economies

Under the trend of ageing population, older people have a greater potential to be part of the future labour force. Their employment patterns therefore deserve governments' attention. This thesis compares the employment patterns of older people to those of younger people in selected economies. In the first study we decompose the age-employment gaps using non-linear Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions in the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong. Explained factors explain nearly the entire age-employment gaps in the U.S. and Hong Kong but not in the U.K. In the second study, we investigate job preferences in addition to employment outcomes. Our binomiallogit models on working part-time involuntarily show that part-time employment is more likely to be a voluntary choice regardless of gender and age in the U.K. In the third study we estimate competing risks Cox proportional hazards models on unemployment and various types of employment spells in the U.K. We find that the older an individual is when he or she starts an unemployment spell, the longer he or she remains unemployed before getting a full-time or part-time job. However, the trend of decreasing hazards from leaving unemployment spells to part-time employment reverses after the spell starting age of 54.
Disruption Tolerance in Vehicle to Infrastructure Communication: Making a Case for Intelligent Roadside Infrastructure

The realization of novel vehicular services requires a distributed computing and data management architecture in the roadside nodes. The authors show the proposed architecture with a data transport service that can cope with connectivity disruptions, inherent to this kind of mobility. The authors discuss the results obtained by running the disruption tolerant service in a field trial on Austrian motorways.
Le role de l'eleveur dans le bien-etre et la production des veaux de boucherie

Le role de l'eleveur dans le bien-etre et la production de veau de boucherie a ete etudie. Selon hemsworth et coleman (1998), l'attitude de l'eleveur envers ses animaux determine la nature des ses contacts avec eux. Ceux-ci modifient la perception que l'animal a de l'eleveur. Ainsi, des contacts brusques conduisent a un stress responsable d'une moindre croissance. De plus, nous avons emis l'hypothese que des contacts brusques augmentent les reactions lors du transport et peut alterer la qualite des viandes. Le comportement et l'attitude des eleveurs vis-a-vis des veaux, les reactions des veaux a l'egard de l'homme et les performances zootechniques ont ete observes dans 50 fermes commerciales. Un comportement positif envers les veaux (presence de contacts doux et absence de contacts brusques) etait lie a une attitude positive envers eux (croyance dans la sensibilite des veaux) et a de faibles reactions de retrait des veaux a l'approche de l'homme. Les resultats techniques etaient meilleurs chez les eleveurs avec un comportement positif, non pas du fait d'un moindre stress des veaux mais d'une meilleure sante. Les reactions des veaux au cours du transport et la qualite des carcasses ont ete determinees dans 10 elevages ou le soigneur avait un comportement positif et 10 ou il avait un comportement negatif. Les veaux issus des eleveurs au comportement positif etaient plus faciles a charger, avaient une frequence cardiaque plus basse lors du chargement, un ph du muscle plus bas et des carcasses plus pales (ce qui est considere comme un signe de qualite). Des contacts doux reproduits experimentalement (caresses, doigts donnes a teter) ont confirme les effets du comportement positif envers les veaux sur leurs reactions a l'homme et a la manipulation et sur la qualite de la viande. Par son comportement et son attitude aupres des animaux, l'eleveur joue donc un role determinant pour le bien-etre et la production des veaux de boucherie.
Enhancing browsing experience of table and image elements in web pages

As the popularity and diversification of both Internet and its access devices, users' browsing experience of web pages is in great need of improvement. Traditional browsing mode of web elements such as table and image is passive, which limits users' browsing efficiency of web pages. In this paper, we propose to enhance browsing experience of table and image elements in web pages by enabling real-time interactive access to web tables and images. We design new browsing modes that help users improve their browsing efficiency including operation mode, record mode for web tables and normal mode, starred mode, advanced mode for web images. We design and implement a plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer, called iWebWidget, which provides a customized user interface supporting real-time interactive access to web tables and images. Besides, we carry out a user study to testify the usefulness of iWebWidget. Experimental results show that users are satisfied and really enjoy the new browsing modes for both web tables and images.
The effects of action observation gait training on the static balance and walking ability of stroke patients

[Purpose] The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of action observation training on the static balance and walking ability of patients who had suffered a stroke. [Subjects] Forty patients with hemiplegia resulting from a stroke were divided into an action observation gait training group (AOGT group, n=20) and a general gait training group (GGT group, n=20). [Methods] The AOGT group watched a training video on flatland gait, slope gait, and stair gait. The GGT group watched a video on nature. Both groups watched their respective video for 10 minutes and then had gait training for 20 minutes per day, five times per week, for eight weeks. [Results] The static balance and gait ability of both groups significantly improved. Although there were significant differences between the groups, the AOTG group showed greater improvements in sway speed, limit of stability, and gait ability. [Conclusion] We recommend action observation training over general gait training for patients with hemiplegia. Action observational training had a positive effect on static balance and gait ability in stroke patients’ static balance and gait ability. Further research is needed to generalize the results of this study.
K Regulates Contractile Protein Accumulation in Airway Myocyte Differentiation

Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA, 60559, *Department of Physiology, and Section of Respiratory Diseases (Asthma/COPD Research Centre), University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3E 0W3, ‡Biology of Breathing Group, Manitoba Institute of Child Health, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3E 3P5, and †Departments of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0212.
Architecture for Web Services Filtering and Clustering

The need for filtering of services results from the ever growing number of available Web services which offer similar functionalities. The filtering process is based not only on the functional aspects of services, but also on non-functional ones. One of the weaknesses of the filtering process is lack of high efficiency and its complexity as processing ontological descriptions and reasoning on them is extremely time-consuming. In order to speed-up the filtering process, clustering techniques that would narrow the set of potential services which meet user's preferences may be introduced. In this article the architecture for Semantic Web services filtering and clustering system is shortly discussed.
Novel Efficient Certificateless Blind Signature Schemes

Recently, Al-Riyami and Paterson introduced a new and attractive paradigm named certificateless public key cryptography (CL-PKC), which avoids the key-escrow problem in identity-based cryptography (ID-PKC) and eliminates the expensive certificates used in the public key infrastructure (PKI). In this paper, based on Choi et al.'s efficient provably-secure certificateless signature (CLS) schemes, two new efficient certificateless blind signature schemes are proposed in this new setting. Compared with the existed constructions, the proposed schemes require less computational cost and satisfy all the requirements of blind signatures, especially the properties of strong unforgeability and unlinkability (blindness).
The Fed's Fatal Conceit

I strongly believe that the recent financial crisis, ensuing recession, and slow recovery were primarily caused by government policy. The Federal Reserve made some very bad monetary decisions that created a bubble, i.e., a massive malinvestment. The bubble ended up being focused in the housing market largely because of government affordable housing policies — specifically, the actions of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, government-sponsored enterprises that would not exist in a free market. When Freddie and Fannie failed, they owed $5.5 trillion including $2 trillion in affordable housing (subprime) loans. It’s true that a number of banks made serious mistakes, and I would have let them fail, but their mistakes were secondary and within the context of government policy. I’ve known many people in the Federal Reserve, in monetary policy. They are very smart people. They are highly committed people. However, in my experience, they are guilty of what F. A. Hayek (1989) called "the fatal conceit" — that is, the belief that smart people can do the impossible. I don’t care how smart you are or how great your mathematical models are, you cannot coordinate the economic activity of seven billion people on this planet. The real issue is: What does government policy incentivize realworld human beings to do? I’m going to share with you my own experiences in that regard and also my insights into the actions of other financial company CEOs.
Design and experimental evaluation of an innovative SMA-based tendon-driven redundant endoscopic robotic surgical tool

The development and experimental evaluation of a prototype endoscopic robotic surgical tool is presented in this article. Smart memory alloys (SMA) are used as wires in a tendon-driven actuation mechanism. The 2N-DOF redundant manipulator is a cascade configuration of N-universal joint modules. The kinematics of the tool is analyzed and simple yet effective controllers relying on a constrained non-linear optimization problem are offered. The surgical tool's shape can be deformed according to a predefined profile leading to more versatile configurations than the existing designs. The efficiency of the overall system is investigated in experimental studies where its performance is evaluated by a customized 3D-video system.