Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chesapeake Bay nitrogen fluxes derived from a land‐estuarine ocean biogeochemical modeling system: Model description, evaluation, and nitrogen budgets

The Chesapeake Bay plays an important role in transforming riverine nutrients before they are exported to the adjacent continental shelf. Although the mean nitrogen budget of the Chesapeake Bay has been previously estimated from observations, uncertainties associated with interannually varying hydrological conditions remain. In this study, a land‐estuarine‐ocean biogeochemical modeling system is developed to quantify Chesapeake riverine nitrogen inputs, within‐estuary nitrogen transformation processes and the ultimate export of nitrogen to the coastal ocean. Model skill was evaluated using extensive in situ and satellite‐derived data, and a simulation using environmental conditions for 2001–2005 was conducted to quantify the Chesapeake Bay nitrogen budget. The 5 year simulation was characterized by large riverine inputs of nitrogen (154 × 109 g N yr−1) split roughly 60:40 between inorganic:organic components. Much of this was denitrified (34 × 109 g N yr−1) and buried (46 × 109 g N yr−1) within the estuarine system. A positive net annual ecosystem production for the bay further contributed to a large advective export of organic nitrogen to the shelf (91 × 109 g N yr−1) and negligible inorganic nitrogen export. Interannual variability was strong, particularly for the riverine nitrogen fluxes. In years with higher than average riverine nitrogen inputs, most of this excess nitrogen (50–60%) was exported from the bay as organic nitrogen, with the remaining split between burial, denitrification, and inorganic export to the coastal ocean. In comparison to previous simulations using generic shelf biogeochemical model formulations inside the estuary, the estuarine biogeochemical model described here produced more realistic and significantly greater exports of organic nitrogen and lower exports of inorganic nitrogen to the shelf.
LEADING CHARACTER: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CHARACTERISTICS AND EFFECTIVE PRACTICES OF CHARACTER EDUCATION LEADERS

In this collaborative Dissertation of Practice we examined the leadership frameworks, leader characteristics, and effective character education practices that can help foster students’ intellectual, moral, performance, and civic character development (Shields, 2011). The project used a mixed-methods approach to study the relationships among: (a) three frameworks of character education leadership, (b) effective character education practices, and (c) school and student outcomes. Three members of the team focused on a specific set of leadership characteristics: (a) a newly created framework called Vulnerable Leadership, (b) the existing model of Transformational Leadership, and (c) a newly created framework called Professional Growth Leadership. The fourth member examined effective character education practices using a new measure called the Effective Character Education Score (ECES). The team measured outcomes to include performance data (academic, behavior, attendance), climate data (parent, student, staff), and character education recognitions or awards. Significant correlations were found between each of the leadership frameworks and the ECES, among the three leadership frameworks, and between ECES and the outcomes. Ultimately, this work proposes a taxonomy of effective character education practices and a paradigm shift for effective school leadership; the suggested new model is called The Connected Leader. The Connected Leader includes three components: personal growth, positive school culture, and caring relationships. This new model stresses that an effective character education leader should connect with self, staff, students, and stakeholders of a school community.
The Frequency of Texting on Middle School Students' Writing Achievement

The purpose of this correlational study was to discover the impact of texting on writing achievement for middle school students at Highland Middle School in Anderson, Indiana. The theory guiding this study is Vygotsky’s Social Cognitive Theory (Newman & Holzman, 2013) as it explains that learning is influenced by one’s social environment. The data that will be collected consists of the scores of the writing portion of the 2014-2015 state standardized test (ISTEP), a student survey answering questions about texting practices, and student status information on Free and Reduced Meals. The multiple regression analysis will be used to analyze this data because as inferential statistics it can be used to predict whether this information can apply to other future populations. Texting is a common practice and so is utilizing textspeak, (the digital language developed in order to make written communication on cellular devices more efficient). Middle school students represent the largest demographic of frequent texters, therefore one may assume this practice has the potential to influence daily writing habits throughout one’s lifetime. This study must be conducted in order to determine how textspeak is impacting the evolution of language and document the changes in language on education and the world as a whole. This quantitative, correlational study analyzes Indiana Statewide Educational Progress, or ISTEP, writing scores and the effects of frequent texting of middle school students. The middle school has a population of approximately 1500 students and the sample will be selected by meeting the following requirements: any sixth through eighth grader who has a personal cellular device and who has returned a parent consent form.
Internal shocks and the blazar sequence

We consider the internal shock model as the dissipation mechanism responsible for the emission in blazars. It has been shown that this model is successful in reproducing the observed spectral energy distribution and the variability properties of a powerful blazar like 3C 279. However, the blazar family covers a wide range of spectral characteristics which appear to be correlated and the whole class can be seen as a sequence: the frequency and the intensity of the low energy versus high energy peak intensity increase with decreasing luminosity. We show that the internal shock model can satisfactorily account also for the properties of the low power blazars like BL Lac and Mkn 421 and it is successful in reproducing the blazar sequence.
Starting Pitcher Rotation in the Chinese Professional Baseball League based on AHP and TOPSIS

— The rotation of starting pitchers is a strategic issue which has a significant impact on the performance of a professional team. Choosing an optimal starting pitcher from among many alternatives is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this study, a model using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is proposed with which to arrange the starting pitcher rotation for teams of the Chinese Professional Baseball League. The AHP is used to analyze the structure of the starting pitcher selection problem and to determine the weights of the criteria, while the TOPSIS method is used to make the final ranking. An empirical analysis is conducted to illustrate the utilization of the model for the starting pitcher rotation problem. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model.
Collaboration versus competition: Design and evaluation of mechanics for games with a purpose

Games with a purpose (GWAPs) have proven to be effective solutions to solving difficult problems, labeling data, and collecting commonsense knowledge. Unlike traditional games, GWAPs must balance between acquiring accurate solutions or data and maintaining player engagement. However, when it comes to designing GWAPs, the effects of different game mechanics on accuracy and engagement are not well understood. We report on a study designed to investigate how scoring mechanisms based on principles of collaboration and competition impact the accuracy and engagement of players in commonsense knowledge collection tasks. Overall, we found that competition-based scoring mechanics generated data that was as accurate as more conventional collaborative scoring mechanics, but increased player engagement. Furthermore, when players were presented with both collaborative and competitive scoring options they performed worse due to the need to consider strategy. Our results suggest that different mechanics may be used with different players without loss of accuracy.
Dopamine D2 Receptor-Mediated Heterologous Sensitization of AC5 Requires Signalosome Assembly

Chronic dopamine receptor activation is implicated in several central nervous system disorders. Although acute activation of Gα i-coupled D2 dopamine receptors inhibits adenylyl cyclase, persistent activation enhances adenylyl cyclase activity, a phenomenon called heterologous sensitization. Previous work revealed a requirement for Gα s in D2-induced heterologous sensitization of AC5. To elucidate the mechanism of Gα s dependency, we expressed Gα s mutants in Gα s-deficient Gnas E2−/E2− cells. Neither Gα s-palmitoylation nor Gα s-Gβγ interactions were required for sensitization of AC5. Moreover, we found that coexpressing βARKct-CD8 or Sar1(H79G) blocked heterologous sensitization. These studies are consistent with a role for Gα s-AC5 interactions in sensitization however, Gβγ appears to have an indirect role in heterologous sensitization of AC5, possibly by promoting proper signalosome assembly.
Cultivating vocal activity detection for music audio signals in a circulation-type crowdsourcing ecosystem

This paper presents a crowdsourcing-based self-improvement framework of vocal activity detection (VAD) for music audio signals. A standard approach to VAD is to train a vocal-and-non-vocal classifier by using labeled audio signals (training set) and then use that classifier to label unseen signals. Using this technique, we have developed an online music-listening service called Songle that can help users better understand music by visualizing automatically estimated vocal regions and pitches of arbitrary songs existing on the Web. The accuracy of VAD is limited, however, because in general the acoustic characteristics of the training set are different from those of real songs on the Web. To overcome this limitation, we adapt a classifier by leveraging vocal regions and pitches corrected by volunteer users. UnlikeWikipedia-type crowdsourcing, our Songle-based framework can amplify user contributions: error corrections made for a limited number of songs improve VAD for all songs. This gives better music listening experiences to all users as non-monetary rewards.
Gene expression profiling of the 8q22-24 position in human breast cancer: TSPYL5, MTDH, ATAD2 and CCNE2 genes are implicated in oncogenesis, while WISP1 and EXT1 genes may predict a risk of metastasis

Gene expression profiling has been suggested to predict breast cancer outcome. The prognostic value of the 8q22-24 position in breast cancer remains to be elucidated. The present study evaluated expression patterns of the genes located at this position in metastatic and non-metastatic breast cancer. A total of 85 patients with recurrent/metastatic (n=15) and non-metastatic (n=70) early-stage, estrogen receptor-positive and lymph node-negative breast tumors were included. In addition, 15 normal breast tissue samples were used as controls. Demographic and clinical features were recorded. Subsequently, mRNA copy numbers of exostosin glycosyltransferase 1 (EXT1), WNT1 inducible signaling pathway protein 1 (WISP1), ATPase family, AAA domain containing 2 (ATAD2), TSP-like 5 (TSPYL5), metadherin (MTDH) and cyclin E2 (CCNE2) genes were measured by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay. The expression of EXT1 and WISP1 exhibited a significant decline in the metastatic breast cancer group compared to the control (P=0.015 and P=0.012, respectively). The expression of TSPYL5, MTDH and ATAD2 was significantly decreased in the metastatic (P=0.002, P=0.018 and P=0.016, respectively) and non-metastatic (P=0.038, P=0.045 and P=0.000, respectively) breast cancer groups compared with the control. The expression of CCNE2 in the metastatic and non-metastatic breast cancer groups was significantly increased compared with the control (P=0.002 and P=0.001, respectively). WISP1 expression demonstrated a correlation with patient age and tumor size, and TSPYL5 expression was correlated with lymphovascular invasion. None of the genes investigated exhibited any correlation with stage and grade of disease. The TSPYL5, MTDH, ATAD2 and CCNE2 genes may be implicated in the pathogenesis of human breast cancer, while the WISP1 and EXT1 genes may have the potential to serve as promising indicators of the risk of metastasis. However, further studies are required to validate these results.
On the Concept of Method in Information Systems Development

System development methods are often used as aids during the development of information systems. This paper examines the concept of method and other related notions in order to achieve a better understanding of their meaning and structure. The motivation for this paper is the emerging flora of different and related concepts and thus a need to sort things out. The main contribution of the paper is a conceptual model describing how the method concept and other related notions relate.
Constrained geodesic trajectory generation on learnt skill manifolds

This paper addresses the problem of compactly encoding a continuous family of trajectories corresponding to a robotic skill, and using this representation for the purpose of constrained trajectory generation in an environment with many (possibly dynamic) obstacles. With a skill manifold that is learnt from data, we show that constraints can be naturally handled within an iterative process of minimizing the total geodesic path length and curvature over the manifold. We demonstrate the utility of this process with two examples. Firstly, a three-link arm whose joint space and corresponding skill manifold can be explicitly visualized. Then, we demonstrate how this procedure can be used to generate constrained walking motions in a humanoid robot.
The Single Vehicle Routing Problem with Deliveries and Selective Pickups in a CPU-GPU Heterogeneous Environment

In this work, we propose a new algorithm to solve a variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem that is the Single Vehicle Routing Problem with Deliveries and Selective Pickups (SVRPDSP). Our algorithm produces good quality solutions that are better than the best known solutions in the literature. In order to reduce the time spent to solve large-sized instances, we also propose here a parallel implementation of our algorithm that explores a heterogeneous environment composed of a CPU and a GPU. Therefore, our algorithm harnesses the tremendous computing power of the GPU to improve the performance of the local searches computation. We obtained average speedups from 2.73 to 16.23 times with our parallel approach.
Design and optimization of multi-modal controller for double inverted pendulums

This paper presents a novel hybrid approach for the design and optimization of multi-modal controller for cart-type double inverted pendulums. The presented approach divides the motion of a cart-type double inverted pendulum into four phases, including the initial oscillation phase, swing-up phase, adjustment phase, and balance phase. In addition, the presented approach integrates PID controllers, LQRs, the Taguchi method, and a genetic algorithm to design a multimodal controller and optimize the parameters of the controller.
POST CORRELATION VERSUS REAL-TIME ADAPTIVE RFI CANCELLATION

In radio astronomy real-time adaptive filters (and their post-correlation equivalents) can be used to model the RFI environment so that it can be cancelled from the astronomy signal path. In this paper we describe a modified filter which utilises an additional reference signal to improve the RFI excision. The trade-off is that the injected noise of the new filter is stronger than the total residual of the standard filter. We compare residual RFI and injected noise levels with that of the standard filter and the post-correlation approach. An example from the Australia Telescope Compact Array is also given.
Mechanism for video streaming control related to tracked speaker position

This paper presents new concept for object tracking system with multiple cameras. Concept contains analysis, comparison and design of interconnection between various systems, including streaming, detection and tracking technologies in the multi-camera environment. The main goal is to develop object tracking system and do stream selection with best object presentation. Multiple cameras are used as streaming source, received videos analyzed and delivered to user based on pre-defined criteria. There was outlined a metric for rating of each source of system, which is based on current position, size or detection reliability of tracked object in the scene. The designed solution is capable to dynamic control of video stream transmitted from multiple cameras, where it is also simultaneously calculated the proposed metrics by output from object tracking algorithm in real time. Paper also presents possible implementation on TelePresence system.
Parents’ Use of the V-Chip and Perceptions of Television Ratings: The Role of Family Characteristics and the Home Media Environment

Nearly 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it is unclear how its mandates influence current parents’ mediation behavior. Parents of 2- to 17-year-old children (N = 1,431) were surveyed about their awareness and perceptions of the TV ratings system and use of the V-chip. Most (81%) parents knew about the ratings system and found it to be only “somewhat useful. ” Only 16% of those parents had ever used the V-chip. Ratings awareness and perceptions and V-chip use varied with family characteristics. Policymakers should revisit how to provide better tools for mediating children’s viewing in this new information age.
Pairings Based Designated Verifier Signature Scheme for Three-Party Communication Environment

A designated verifier signature (DVS) scheme has the property that only the designated verifier specified by the signer can check the validity of the signature instead of anyone else. Meanwhile, the designated verifier can not use this proof to convince any third party that a signature is generated by the claimed signer. Consider the application of three-party communication environment. One party may has to generate a signature such that only the other two is capable of verifying it solely. In this paper, we propose a novel DVS scheme for three-party communication environment from pairings. The proposed scheme has the following advantages: (i) Each of the two designated verifiers can independently check the validity of the signature without cooperating with the other; (ii) The proposed scheme is efficient in terms of the executed pairings, since it only needs one pairing computation to generate a DVS for two designated verifiers; (iii) The proposed scheme satisfies the security requirements of unforgeability, non-transferability and source hiding.
Updating Graph Indices with a One-Pass Algorithm

Indices are commonly built into graph databases in order to support fast searches. Any given graph database and the distribution of queries will change over time. Therefore, the cost of processing queries using a static graph index increases because the index is built to optimize old snapshots of the database. There is growing research interest in determining how to update a graph index with the purpose of adapting to database and query changes. Updating features in a graph index is typically an NP-hard problem. In addition, because the features are chosen from a large number of frequent subgraphs, a multi-pass algorithm is not scalable to big datasets. In order to address this issue, we propose a time-efficient one-pass algorithm that is designed to update a graph index by scanning each frequent subgraph at most once. The algorithm replaces a feature with a new subgraph if the latter is ``better" than the former one. We use the branch and bound technique to skip subgraphs that cannot outperform any of the features in the graph index. We further use a decomposed index and reduce the space complexity from O(|G||Q|) to O(|G| + |Q|), where G is database graphs and Q is a query workload. Through the empirical study, we show that the one-pass algorithm is 5--100 times faster than all previous algorithms for updating graph indices. In addition, the one-pass algorithm guarantees the return of a close to optimum solution. Our experiments show that when the one-pass algorithm is used to update an index, the query-processing speed is $1$--$2$ times faster than that of other cutting-edge indices, i.e., the FGindex and the gIndex.
The Concentration and Stability of the 1 Community Detecting Functions on Random 2 Networks

6 We propose a general form of community detecting functions for find7 ing the communities or the optimal partition of a random network, and 8 examine the concentration and stability of the function values using the 9 bounded difference martingale method. We derive LDP inequalities for 10 both the general case and several specific community detecting functions: 11 modularity, graph bipartitioning and q-Potts community structure. We 12 also discuss the concentration and stability of community detecting func13 tions on different types of random networks: the sparse and non-sparse 14 networks and some examples such as ER and CL networks. 15
Embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge

Abstract This paper develops and introduces the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge into the current sports knowledge philosophical debate. This idea is based on my interpretation of Mark Rowlands’ Rilkean memory theory. Broadly speaking, Rowlands proposed that an embodied Rilkean memory is memory content that is then ‘woven into the body and its neural infrastructure’ resulting in new bodily or behavioral dispositions. I propose that elite-level sports knowledge may become contentless bodily and/or behavioral dispositions and take the form of embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge. This version of sports knowledge enriches the current philosophy of sports debate that has centered on the analytical distinction between procedural knowledge (knowing how) and declarative knowledge (knowing that). After presenting the embodied Rilkean sport-specific knowledge concept and providing empirical evidence that supports its existence, I argue that the current distinction between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’ may not be exhaustive.
Galton 2012: the bibliometric journey continues

Francis Galton was not only a universal genius; he can also be regarded as a scientometric pioneer. On the occasion of his 100 death anniversary in 2011, he was used as a role model for a bibliometric impact analysis of his works. This is the follow-up study of a previous citation analysis, which was now expanded by introducing ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) as a complementary data source. Additionally all retrieved documents in WoS either citing or mentioning Galton were visualized using Bibexcel, Pajek and VOS Viewer. Furthermore Galton‟s h-index and g-index were calculated and found to be very high compared to other historic scientific personalities. The citation-to-obliteration ratio was different for PQDT in comparison to WoS or Scopus. Visualization allows better interpretation and understanding of the obtained results and is useful for the identification of eponyms. Overall citation analysis and occurrence counting are complementary useful methods for the impact analysis of the works of “giants”. This type of retrospective bibliometric studies presents an interesting and promising field of activity for librarians and information specialists.