Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Divergent Rules for Pollen and Nectar Foraging Bumblebees – A Laboratory Study with Artificial Flowers Offering Diluted Nectar Substitute and Pollen Surrogate

Almost all bees collect nectar and pollen from flowers. Female bees collect pollen to provision their nest cells, whereas they use nectar for individual energy supply and nest cell provisioning. Bees fine-tune nectar foraging to the amount and to the concentration of nectar, but the individual bees' response to variability of amount and concentration of pollen reward has not yet been studied thoroughly in laboratory settings. We developed an experimental set-up in which bumblebees simultaneously collected sugar solution and pollen from artificial flowers; natural pollen was mixed with cellulose powder or glass powder as a pollen surrogate. Here we show that bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) workers do not specialise in nectar or pollen collection, but regularly collect both rewards on the same day. When offered a fixed pollen reward and varied amounts and concentrations of sugar solution, the bumblebees fine-tuned sugar solution foraging dependent on both the volume and concentration, with strong preferences for the highest concentration and the greatest volume. In the reciprocal tests, when offered a fixed sugar reward and varied amounts and concentrations of pollen mixed with a nutrient-free pollen surrogate, the bumblebees follow more an all-or-none rule for pollen, accepting all amounts and concentrations except pure surrogate. It is discussed how the bumblebees' ability to sense sugar, and their apparent inability to sense the pollen protein content, shaped their foraging behaviour. It is argued that the rarity of nectar mimicry and the frequency of pollen mimicry in natural flowers might be interpreted in the context of divergent abilities of nectar and pollen recognition in bees.
Culturing the child, 1690-1914 : essays in memory of Mitzi Myers

Part 1 Acknowledgments Part 2 Introduction Part 3 Part 1: Creating the Contexts of Children's Literature Chapter 4 1 The Book on the Bookseller's Shelf and the Book in the English Child's Hand Chapter 5 2 Virtue in the Guise of Vice: The Making and Unmaking of Morality from Fairy Tale Fantasy Chapter 6 3 "Delightful Task! ": Women, Children, and Reading in the Mid-Eighteenth Century Part 7 Part 2: Reading the Rational Dames Chapter 8 4 Mother of All Discourses: Anna Barbauld's Lessons for Children Chapter 9 5 Gender, Nationalism, and Science in Hannah More's Pedagogical Plays for Children Chapter 10 6 "A Conservative Woman Doing Radical Things": Sarah Trimmer and The Guardian of Education Part 11 Part 3: The Politics of Pedagogy and the Child Chapter 12 7 The Making and Unmaking of a Children's Classic: The Case of Scott's Ivanhoe Chapter 13 8 Heroism Reconsidered: Negotiating Autonomy in St. Nicholas Magazine (1873-1914) Chapter 14 9 Worlds of Girls: Educational Reform and Fictional Form in L.T. Mead's School Stories Part 15 Part 4: Remembering Mitzi Myers Chapter 16 10 Mitzi Myers: A Memoir (9 October 1939 to 5 November 2001) Chapter 17 11 The Scholarly Legacy of Mitzi Myers Chapter 18 12 A Bibliography of Mitzi Myers's Scholarly Works Part 19 Index Part 20 About the Contributors
Design and modeling of integrated Hall-effect sensor based on-line thickness measurement device for incremental sheet forming processes

The use of Numerical Control and computers in manufacturing has enabled the development of new sheet forming processes. One of these flexible processes is called Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) in which deformation is localized by the movement of a spherical or flat forming tool. ISF is carried out regularly by a CNC machine tool or by a Robot, which follows a tool-path generated by CAM programs, without the need for costly dies. Despite research progresses in understanding the deformation mechanism in ISF the process still needs a further optimization to guarantee the reliability required for industrial applications.
Learning in dynamic decision making: The usability process

Usability of websites is an important issue for any entity operating in the virtual environment. Dynamic decision refers to the ability to choose (evaluate) between different actions at different points in time, in order to control and optimize performance. Currently, increasing attention is paid to the role of informal learning in the adaptation of learning to individual needs and circumstances in order to maximize knowledge. This paper approaches usability in the context of the theory of dynamic decisions. In the authors' view, the usability evaluation of a website becomes efficient on condition that it is repeated over time with the same group of individuals, resulting in a learning situation. The experiment consisted of measuring usability on a sample of individuals (experts) at consecutive time points to determine the degree of similarity of their behavior during the evaluation process. Starting from these assumptions, we demonstrated that usability may be considered a dynamic process, which could be very useful in reorganizing websites by identifying areas of intervention for the purpose of allowing users to learn and thus getting maximum effect from dynamic decisions.
Foreign Market Entry

Abstract This research used a case-study method, through personal interviews with owners, CEOs, or other senior officers of eight SMEs in the Czech Republic in order to determine factors affecting their foreign market entry. It examined six research questions on factors which have been identified by previous research to influence SMEs' foreign market entry. It was found that exporting SMEs in the Czech Republic tend to be larger, and more motivated in systematically exploring export opportunities than their non-exporting counterpart. Exporting SMEs also utilize a larger percentage of their production capacity, and have fewer problems in obtaining financial services than non-exporting SMEs. Finally, the three major challenges to the international business efforts of exporting firms in the study were financial, foreign marketing practices, and locating prospective clients/customers.
NORDISKE STUDIER I LEKSIKOGRAFI Titel: "Movement towards Structure" - Basic Verbs in Learners' Lexicons

I denna artikel beskrivs en syntaktiskt grundlagd semantisk skiftning hos den svenska verbala pseudosamordningen halla pa och som anvands som progressivitetsmarkor. I vissa kontexter far den en narmast motsatt betydelse, namligen ‘hela tiden’. Sokningar i den svenska PAROLE-korpusen samt i en liten svensk-tjeckisk parallellkorpus visar att den nya betydelsen framfor allt ar kopplad till negativa imperativyttranden men att det samtidigt finns en spridningstendens till andra syntaktiska strukturer. Undersokningsresultatet jamfors med innehallet i nagra svenska referensverk och relateras till Paul Hoppers (1987) ide om ”emergent grammar”. Den observerade semantiska skiftningen forklaras med en allman mekanism som Heine, Claudi och Hunnemeyer (1991) har definierat och kallat ”context-induced reinterpretation“.
Analyzing Inefficiency Using a Frontier Search Approach

Efficiency measurement naturally requires the definition of a frontier as a benchmark indicating efficiency. Usually a measure reflecting the distance of a data point to the frontier indicates the level of efficiency. One of the crucial characteristics to distinguish efficiency measurement tools is the way in which they construct the frontier. The class of deterministic and non parametric tools of constructing the frontier mainly comprises of tools associated with Data Envelopment Analysis. Coming in various flavors all DEA frontiers suffer of their piecewise construction giving rise to numerous vertices. Those vertices do not allow convenient analysis of the frontier properties such as computing elasticities and the like. In this paper we want to contribute to the class of deterministic and non parametric tools of constructing the frontier in an one output and n input setting. We suggest a new empirical approach drawing on functional search in the fashion of Koza's (1992) genetic programming. The frontier search algorithm employed evolves the functional form of the frontier and the parameters simultaneously. The frontier exhibits the neat property that it is smooth and differentiable enabling the computation of elasticities,for example. In particular we introduce both the idea and the algorithm of the frontier search procedure. We discuss the advantages and shortcomings with respect to empirical problems. The arguments brought forth in the preceding sections are illustrated by the investigation of an artificial example.
Improving nutrition in Afghanistan through a community-based growth monitoring and promotion programme: A pre-post evaluation in five districts

In Afghanistan, malnutrition in children less than 60 months of age remains high despite nutritional services being offered in health facilities since 2003. Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health solicited extensive community consultation to develop pictorial community-based growth monitoring and promotion (cGMP) tools to help illiterate community health workers (CHWs) provide nutritional assessment and counselling. The planned evaluation in the five districts where cGMP was implemented demonstrated that a mean weight-for-age (WFA) Z-score of 414 participant children was 0.3 Z-scores higher than that of matched non-participants who lived outside of cGMP programme catchment areas. The mean change in WFA Z-scores at evaluation was 0.3 (95% CI 0.3, 0.4) Z-scores higher than at entry into the programme. The most influential factor on WFA Z-score changes in participants was initial WFA Z-score. Those with an initial WFA Z-score of less than −2 experienced a mean increase of 0.33 (95% CI 0.29, 0.38) WFA Z-scores per session attended, while those with a baseline WFA Z-score of greater than zero showed a decrease of 0.19 (95% CI 0.22, 0.15) WFA Z-scores per session attended. These results are encouraging since they demonstrate that the cGMP programme in Afghanistan for illiterate women has some potential to contribute to improving nutrition, specifically in underweight children of either sex who enter the programme at less than nine months of age and attend 50% or more sessions.
Fusion of local degradation features for No-Reference Video Quality Assessment

We propose a blind/No-Reference Video Quality Assessment (NR-VQA) algorithm using models for visibility of local spatio-temporal degradations. The paper focuses on the specific degradations present in H.264 coded videos and their impact on perceived visual quality. Joint and marginal distributions of local wavelet coefficients are used to train Epsilon Support Vector Regression (ε-SVR) models for specific degradation levels in order to predict the overall subjective scores. Separate models for low/medium/high activity regions within the video frames are considered, inspired from the nature of H.264 coder behavior. Experimental results show that blind assessment of video quality is possible as the proposed algorithm output correlates highly with human perception of quality.
Analog Computation with Dynamical

Physical systems exhibit various levels of complexity: their long term dynamics may converge to xed points or exhibit complex chaotic behavior. This paper presents a theory that enables to interpret natural processes as special purpose analog computers. Since physical systems are naturally described in continuous time, a deenition of computational complexity for continuous time systems is required. In analogy with the classical discrete theory we develop fundamentals of computational complexity for dynamical systems, discrete or continuous in time, on the basis of an intrinsic time scale of the system. Dissipative dynamical systems are clas-siied into the computational complexity classes P d , Co-RP d , NP d and EXP d , corresponding to their standard counterparts, according to the complexity of their long term behavior. The complexity of chaotic attractors relative to regular ones leads to the conjecture P d 6 = NP d. Continuous time ows have been proven useful to solve various practical problems. Our theory provides the tools for an algorithmic analysis of such ows. As an example we analyze the continuous Hoppeld network.
Learning-to-rank with Prior Knowledge as Global Constraints

A good ranking function is the core of any Information Retrieval system. The ranking function can be a simple cosine similarity or, more likely for any advanced IR system like a Web search engine, a function processing a high number of signals which typically requires a lot of hand-tuning to deal with the large variability of queries. The result is a sub-optimal and highly complex ranking function which, in spite of having been crafted by human experts, is hard to control and debug. In the last few years, learning-to-rank from examples has emerged as a more flexible approach to design ranking functions. While learning-to-rank approaches have been proved to significantly outperform hand-tuned solutions, they still feature many disadvantages. First, they rely on a large number of training examples to model the high variability of the input query stream. Unfortunately, constructing a training set is more complicated than labeling examples in classical supervised classification tasks. Indeed, the labeling process for learning-to-rank tasks is inherently error-prone and incomplete. Secondly, learning-to-rank schemas usually do not account for the explicit knowledge that human experts have built over the years. It would be nice to integrate this knowledge without having to rely on a large set of examples to infer it. Finally, the proposed approach opens new ways to integrate unlabeled data into the learning process, as the rules must be respected also by the unlabeled data. This paper presents a general framework to convert prior knowledge in form of First Order Logic (FOL) clauses into a set of continuous constrains and shows how these constraints can be integrated into any learning-to-rank approach which is optimized via gradient descent.
Simplified PWM With Switching Constraint Method to Prevent Circulating Currents for Paralleled Bidirectional AC/DC Converters in Grid-Tied System Using Graphic Analysis

In this paper, a simplified pulsewidth modulation with switching constraint control scheme is proposed to eliminate the circulating currents for bidirectional paralleled ac/dc converters in grid-tied system. The proposed control scheme can reduce the circulating currents and does not need additional current sensors and communication device among paralleled converters compared with conventional methods. Therefore, the paralleled system cost can be reduced. In addition, the current shaping and sharing between the paralleled converters can be well accomplished so that the overall performance of the paralleled converter system can be raised. Furthermore, the dc, ac, and self-generated circulating currents are clearly analyzed by graphics, and the synchronous circulating currents are first explored. Finally, a prototype system is constructed, and the proposed control scheme is implemented using a Spartan-3E XC3S250E FPGA. Both simulation and experimental results verify the validity of the proposed theory and control scheme.
Imitation-based evolution of artificial players in modern computer games

Because of the rapid progress of commercial computer games in recent years the development of artificial characters that inhabit the presented game worlds has become a challenging task with very specific requirements. A very important feature of artificial intelligence for games is that, as the objective of computer games is the entertainment of the player, the artificial game agents should not only be competitive but also show intelligent and human-like behaviours. Therefore, this paper proposes the usage of imitation techniques to generate more human-like behaviours in an action game, whereas the imitation is achieved by recording players and by using these recordings as the basis of an evolutionary learning approach.
Multiplex primer prediction software for divergent targets

We describe a Multiplex Primer Prediction (MPP) algorithm to build multiplex compatible primer sets to amplify all members of large, diverse and unalignable sets of target sequences. The MPP algorithm is scalable to larger target sets than other available software, and it does not require a multiple sequence alignment. We applied it to questions in viral detection, and demonstrated that there are no universally conserved priming sequences among viruses and that it could require an unfeasibly large number of primers (∼3700 18-mers or ∼2000 10-mers) to generate amplicons from all sequenced viruses. We then designed primer sets separately for each viral family, and for several diverse species such as foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV), hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) segments of influenza A virus, Norwalk virus, and HIV-1. We empirically demonstrated the application of the software with a multiplex set of 16 short (10 nt) primers designed to amplify the Poxviridae family to produce a specific amplicon from vaccinia virus.
The Stability of a Ketamine-Morphine Solution

Recent advances in acute pain mechanisms and management have implicated the N-methyl d-aspartate receptor-ion channel complex in the development of postoperative hyperalgesia and acute opioid tolerance. N-methyl d-aspartate receptor antagonists such as ketamine have been used increasingly in clinical studies in an effort to minimize acute postoperative pain and reduce opioid requirements. A mixture of ketamine and an opioid administered in the same solution and syringe would be a practical and useful technique for postoperative epidural analgesia, continuous IV infusion, or patient-controlled IV analgesia. We investigated the stability of a morphine sulfate and racemic ketamine solution in saline at pH 5.5–7.5 over a period of 4 days. Our study demonstrates that the ketamine-morphine mixture at a clinically relevant concentration seems to be stable at room temperature, at a wide range of pH values, for at least 4 days.
Incentive based demand response program: An effective way to tackle peaking electricity crisis

This paper presents an investigation on incentive based demand response program (DRP) in deregulated power system environment. The major issues which are addressed in this paper, under demand response scenario are (i) demand curve flattening (ii) locational marginal pricing (LMP), and (iii) nodal voltage profile. The various issues mentioned above are compared under the power system modeling without and with incentive based DRP. The simulation work is carried out on IEEE 9-bus system by selecting practical load curve of Punjab State Transmission Corporation Limited from India. The results reveal that incentive based DRP is an effective way of tackling peaking electricity crisis under restructured power sector scenario.
Alternative high schools: what types of programs lead to the greatest level of effectiveness?

Based on the writings and research of Mary Anne Raywid (1994) and Gary Wehlage (1989), this study sought to identify characteristics of effective alternative high schools in Iowa. This effectiveness was identified as both student retention and graduate completion. The following characteristics were not positively related to graduate completion and student retention: teacher choice, student choice, autonomous schools, and learning community characteristics of discovery learning and simulation. Teacher and administrator lengths of service were also not positively related to graduate completion. As hypothesized, smaller schools did have a negative relationship when compared to student retention. Overall the findings in this study of Iowa’s rural alternative high schools did not support the research hypotheses. All schools, however, regardless of specific characteristics, can be effective when given the right combination of learning attributes. This research does help to lay the groundwork for those traits, as well as for future studies. Review of Literature One in eight students does not complete high school (McMillen, 1997). Minorities, the poor, and the disabled often fare even worse. Over 50 percent of students in a quarter of the nation’s poor, urban high schools fail to graduate (Braddock & McPartland, 1993). Suspension, expulsion, retention, chronic failure, and alienation all contribute to unacceptable dropout and incompletion rates. In response to these issues, many states have created alternative schools to address the needs of students at risk for school failure. Despite the accelerated growth of alternative schools, research and evaluation of these schools and the effect they have on student retention
Successful European regions in a global economy: a synthesis and outlook

This short paper concludes the special issue by bringing together a number of common patterns emerging from the five regions investigated. It appears that these five regions have been successful in globalization thanks to a pro-active approach which upgraded their functional specialization, making the most from their assets and being open to global flows. These results are expected to be valid for most global player European regions, but not necessarily for other types of regions. Moreover, it would be interesting to reproduce the same analysis after the end of the crisis to disentangle if and to what extent the same assets which allow regions to prosper in a period of growth and globalization are also helpful to deal with periods of crisis. Resumen. Este breve articulo concluye esta edicion especial con la reunion de un numero de patrones comunes emergentes de las cinco regiones investigadas. Parece ser que estas cinco regiones han tenido exito en cuanto a globalizacion gracias a un enfoque proactivo que ha mejorado su especializacion funcional, extrayendo el maximo de sus recursos y abriendose a flujos globales. Se espera que estos resultados sean validos para la mayoria de regiones europeas que son actores globales, pero no necesariamente para otros tipos de regiones. Ademas, seria interesante reproducir el mismo analisis al termino de la crisis para descifrar si los mismos recursos que permiten prosperar a las regiones en un periodo de crecimiento y globalizacion tambien las ayudan a aguantar durante periodos de crisis, y en que medida.
Active 220- and 325-GHz Frequency Multiplier Chains in an SiGe HBT Technology

A 325-GHz ×18 frequency multiplier chain implemented in a fτ/fmax = 250 GHz/380 GHz evaluation SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor technology is presented. The chain achieves a peak output power of -3 dBm and consists of a balanced doubler driven by two cascaded tripler stages. It operates from 317 to 328 GHz with a 0-dBm 18-GHz input signal and a 1.5-W power consumption. Additionally, 220- and 325-GHz doubler breakout circuits with integrated driver amplifiers are presented. The doublers reach an output power of -1 dBm at 220 GHz and -3 dBm at 325 GHz with a power dissipation of 630 and 420 mW, respectively.
Natural Language Parsing of Program Element Names for Concept Extraction

To support programmers during program maintenance we present an approach which extracts concepts and relations from the source code. Our approach applies natural language parsing to sentences constructed from the terms that appear in program element identifiers. The result of parsing can be represented as a dependency tree. Then, we automatically extract an ontology by mapping linguistic entities (nodes and relations between nodes in the dependency tree) to concepts and relations among concepts. We applied our approach to a case study and assessed the result in terms of the support it can give to concept location, executed in the context of bug fixing.