Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
COMMON KNOWLEDGE, SALIENCE AND CONVENTION: A RECONSTRUCTION OF DAVID LEWIS' GAME THEORY

David Lewis is widely credited with the first formulation of common knowledge and the first rigorous analysis of convention. However, common knowledge and convention entered mainstream game theory only when they were formulated, later and independently, by other theorists. As a result, some of the most distinctive and valuable features of Lewis' game theory have been overlooked. We re-examine this theory by reconstructing key parts in a more formal way, extending it, and showing how it differs from more recent game theory. In contrast to current theories of common knowledge, Lewis' theory is based on an explicit analysis of the modes of reasoning that are accessible to rational individuals and so can be used to analyse the genesis of common knowledge. Lewis' analysis of convention emphasises the role of inductive reasoning and of salience in the maintenance of conventions over time.
Exploring “Underachievement” Among Highly Educated Young British-Bangladeshi Women

Abstract Current mainstream wisdom portrays the young British-Bangladeshi community as underachieving in education. However, this study suggests that young British-Bangladeshi women tend to be high achievers in education. This research interrogates the multifaceted experiences of British-Bangladeshi women students to better understand the contested nature of their transition from educational achievement to labor market participation. The analysis draws on a combination of fieldwork done in two colleges in East London and Leeds in 2007 and secondary data collected by the Higher Education Statistical Agency on students who graduated from British higher education institutions in 2006. Although it focuses on the reality of young British-Bangladeshi women, the study shows that – especially for certain ethnic minorities – the absence of social resources, social networks, and egalitarian class relations can hamper the process of making good on educational achievements.
Unimodular completion of polynomial matrices

Given a rectangular matrix <b>F</b> ∈ K[<i>x</i>]<sup><i>m</i>x<i>n</i></sup> with <i>m</i> < <i>n</i> of univariate polynomials over a field K. we give an efficient algorithm for computing a unimodular completion of <b>F</b>. Our algorithm is deterministic and computes such a completion, when it exists, with cost <i>O</i>~ (<i>n</i><sup>ω</sup><i>s</i>) field operations from K. Here <i>s</i> is the average of the <i>m</i> largest column degrees of <b>F</b> and ω is the exponent on the cost of matrix multiplication. Here <i>O</i>~ is big-O but with log factors removed. If a unimodular completion does not exist for <b>F</b>, our algorithm computes a unimodular completion for a right cofactor of a column basis of <b>F</b>, or equivalently, computes a completion that preserves the generalized determinant.
The Charter School Catch-22

When charter schools first emerged nearly two decades ago, critics claimed they would promote segregation by serving privileged white students whose families take advantage of choice. But state laws, philanthropists, and charter school founders targeted these new schools to serve disadvantaged students in urban districts. Critics then tried to show that charter schools serve fewer poor and minority students than neighboring public schools. In fact, enrollment variations by neighborhood appear to be no differently distributed in charter schools than in district-run schools. Now, critics claim charter schools worsen segregation by serving too high a proportion of minority students, essentially making the charter movement a civil rights failure for failing to achieve racially mixed schools. Authors Hill and Lake argue that there is a more important civil rights issue: ensuring good schools and opportunities for high school, college, and beyond for poor and minority students. As charter schools further develop and succeed, they will likely attract a more diverse population of students. In the meantime, their success in serving the most disadvantaged students should be cause for praise, not criticism.
Supplemental Educational Services as a Consequence of the NCLB Legislation: Evaluating its Impact on Student Achievement in a Large Urban District

Supplemental Educational Services (SES), a federally mandated program, is designed to raise student achievement via the implementation of tutoring programs. Unfortunately, although the SES federal legislation has been adopted by school districts nationally, relatively limited empirical evidence from rigorous research studies exists regarding the effectiveness of SES in general, or of specific service providers in particular. Given the environment of high-stakes accountability associated with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, the extent to which SES programs can demonstrate positive effects on reading and mathematics on the state assessment must be determined. This study evaluated the effects of SES programs on student achievement and participant satisfaction in an urban school district in Kentucky. Overall, findings showed nonsignificant effects in outcomes, as well as quality concerns in processes that are claimed as a core provision within the NCLB legislation. Results indicated that achievement results on the Kentucky Core Content Test in reading and mathematics were not significantly superior for the SES participants relative to matched control students. Questionnaire responses from parents, teacher, principals, and district coordinators indicated both areas for growth and areas of satisfaction with provider services. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.
BAGC: Buffer-Aware Garbage Collection for Flash-Based Storage Systems

NAND flash-based storage device is becoming a viable storage solution for mobile and desktop systems. Because of the erase-before-write nature, flash-based storage devices require garbage collection that causes significant performance degradation, incurring a large number of page migrations and block erasures. To improve I/O performance, therefore, it is important to develop an efficient garbage collection algorithm. In this paper, we propose a novel garbage collection technique, called buffer-aware garbage collection (BAGC), for flash-based storage devices. The BAGC improves the efficiency of two main steps of garbage collection, a block merge step and a victim block selection step, by taking account of the contents of a buffer cache, which is typically used to enhance I/O performance. The buffer-aware block merge (BABM) scheme eliminates unnecessary page migrations by evicting dirty data from a buffer cache during a block merge step. The buffer-aware victim block selection (BAVBS) scheme, on the other hand, selects a victim block so that the benefit of the buffer-aware block merge is maximized. Our experimental results show that BAGC improves I/O performance by up to 43 percent over existing buffer-unaware schemes for various benchmarks.
Understanding three-dimensional spatial relationship between the mouse second polar body and first cleavage plane with full-field optical coherence tomography

Abstract. The morphogenetic relationship between early patterning and polarity formation is of fundamental interest and remains a controversial issue in preimplantation embryonic development. We use a label-free three-dimensional (3-D) imaging technique of full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) successfully for the first time to study the dynamics of developmental processes in mouse preimplantation lives. Label-free 3-D subcellular time-lapse images are demonstrated to investigate 3-D spatial relationship between the second polar body (2PB) and the first cleavage plane. By using FF-OCT together with quantitative study, we show that only 25% of the predicted first cleavage planes, defined by the apposing plane of two pronuclei, pass through the 2PB. Also only 27% of the real cleavage planes pass through the 2PB. These results suggest that the 2PB is not a convincing spatial cue for the event of the first cleavage. Our studies demonstrate the feasibility of FF-OCT in providing new insights and potential breakthroughs to the controversial issues of early patterning and polarity in mammalian developmental biology.
Social Problem-Solving Skills Training for Adults With Mild Intellectual Disability: A Multiple Case Study

Social problem-solving training has been successful in improving maladaptive behaviour and problem-solving skills for individuals with intellectual disability. However, in contrast to individuals without intellectual disability there has been only one study that has examined whether social problem-solving training can improve psychological distress in individuals with intellectual disability and a psychiatric diagnosis. Three participants from a vocational community centre with mild intellectual disability, comorbid mental illness, and challenging behaviour, participated in 15 individually delivered sessions of social problem-solving training. Social problem-solving skill, behaviour, and psychological distress measures were used to assess outcome. All three participants showed improvement in social problem-solving skills, and two participants showed improvement in depression. Improvement was maintained at 4-week follow-up. The results provide preliminary evidence that social problem-solving training could be an effective intervention tool for the treatment of psychological distress in individuals with mild intellectual disability.
Murine Myak, a member of a family of yeast YAK1‐related genes, is highly expressed in hormonally modulated epithelia in the reproductive system and in the embryonic central nervous system

We have cloned a mouse homologue (designated Myak) of the yeast protein kinase YAK1. The 1210 aa open reading frame contains a putative protein kinase domain, nuclear localization sequences and PEST sequences. Myak appears to be a member of a growing family of YAK1‐related genes that include Drosophila and human Minibrain as well as a recently identified rat gene ANPK that encode a steroid hormone receptor interacting protein. RNA blot analysis revealed that Myak is expressed at low levels ubiquitously but at high levels in reproductive tissues, including testis, epididymis, ovary, uterus, and mammary gland, as well as in brain and kidney. In situ hybridization analysis on selected tissues revealed that Myak is particularly abundant in the hormonally modulated epithelia of the epididymis, mammary gland, and uterus, in round spermatids in the testis, and in the corpora lutea in the ovary. Myak is also highly expressed in the aqueduct of the adult brain and in the brain and spinal cord of day 12.5 embryos. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 55:372–378, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Taking Up the Gaokao Challenge: An Information Retrieval Approach

Answering questions in a university's entrance examination like Gaokao in China challenges AI technology. As a preliminary attempt to take up this challenge, we focus on multiple-choice questions in Gaokao, and propose a three-stage approach that exploits and extends information retrieval techniques. Taking Wikipedia as the source of knowledge, our approach obtains knowledge relevant to a question by retrieving pages from Wikipedia via string matching and context-based disambiguation, and then ranks and filters pages using multiple strategies to draw critical evidence, based on which the truth of each option is assessed via relevance-based entailment. It achieves encouraging results on real-life questions in recent history tests, significantly outperforming baseline approaches.
An Unsupervised Alignment Model for Sequence Labeling: Application to Name Transliteration

In this paper a new sequence alignment model is proposed for name transliteration systems. In addition, several new features are introduced to enhance the overall accuracy in a name transliteration system. Discriminative methods are used to train the model. Using this model, we achieve improvements on the transliteration accuracy in comparison with the state-of-the-art alignment models. The 1best name accuracy is also improved using a name selection method from the 10-best list based on the contents of the web. This method leads to a relative improvement of 54% over 1-best transliteration. The experiments are conducted on an EnglishPersian name transliteration task. Furthermore, we reproduce the past studies results under the same conditions. Experiments conducting on English to Persian transliteration show that new features provide a relative improvement of 5% over previous published results.
Hockey success and birth date: The relative age effect revisited

In a replication of studies by Barnsley et al. (1985), and Grondin et al. (1984) the authors gathered birthdates of players in the National Hockey League (NHL), Western Hockey League (WHL), Ontario Hockey League (OHL), and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). The players were categorized according to month of birth. Additionally, the players were categorized by country of birth, reflecting the changes in professional hockey over the period since the original studies. The results indicate that despite the globalization of hockey and changes in minor hockey, relative age effect, that is, a strong linear relationship between the month of birth (from January to December) and the proportion of players in the leagues studied, still exists.
Approximate Dynamic Programming for Large-Scale Resource Allocation Problems

We present modeling and solution strategies for large-scale resource allocation prob- lems that take place over multiple time periods under uncertainty. In general, the strategies we present formulate the problem as a dynamic program and replace the value functions with tractable approximations. The approximations of the value func- tions are obtained by using simulated trajectories of the system and iteratively improving on (possibly naive) initial approximations; we propose several improvement algorithms for this purpose. As a result, the resource allocation problem decomposes into time-staged subproblems, where the impact of the current decisions on the future evolution of the system is assessed through value function approximations. Computa- tional experiments indicate that the strategies we present yield high-quality solutions. We also present comparisons with conventional stochastic programming methods.
Stable Carbon CycleClimate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene

A record of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations measured on the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) Dome Concordia ice core extends the Vostok CO2 record back to 650,000 years before the present (yr B.P.). Before 430,000 yr B.P., partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 lies within the range of 260 and 180 parts per million by volume. This range is almost 30% smaller than that of the last four glacial cycles; however, the apparent sensitivity between deuterium and CO2 remains stable throughout the six glacial cycles, suggesting that the relationship between CO2 and Antarctic climate remained rather constant over this interval.
Novel polyvalent live vaccine against varicella–zoster and mumps virus infections

The varicella–zoster virus (VZV) Oka vaccine strain (vOka) is a highly immunogenic and safe live vaccine that has long been used worldwide. Because its genome is large, making it suitable for inserting foreign genes, vOka is considered a candidate vector for novel polyvalent vaccines. Previously, a recombinant vOka, rvOka‐HN, that expresses mumps virus (MuV) hemagglutinin‐neuraminidase (HN) was generated by the present team. rvOka‐HN induces production of neutralizing antibodies against MuV in guinea pigs. MuV also expresses fusion (F) protein, which is important for inducing neutralizing antibodies, in its viral envelope. To induce a more robust immune response against MuV than that obtained with rvOka‐HN, here an rvOka expressing both HN and F (rvOka‐HN‐F) was generated. However, co‐expression of HN and F caused the infected cells to form syncytia, which reduced virus titers. To reduce the amount of cell fusion, an rvOka expressing HN and a mutant F, F(S195Y) were generated. Almost no syncytia formed among the rvOka‐HN‐F(S195Y)‐infected cells and the growth of rvOka‐HN‐F(S195Y) was similar to that of the original vOka clone. Moreover, replacement of serine 195 with tyrosine had no effect on the immunogenicity of F in mice and guinea pigs. Although obvious augmentation of neutralizing antibody production was not observed after adding F protein to vOka‐HN, the anti‐F antibodies did have neutralizing activity. These data suggest that F protein contributes to induction of immune protection against MuV. Therefore this recombinant virus is a promising candidate vaccine for polyvalent protection against both VZV and MuV.
Deeper Integration and Voting on the Common European External Tariff

Since the 1987 Single European Act, the European Union has deepened its integration process. In the case of the determination of the common external tariff, deeper integration implies that the tariff reflected union-wide preferences. If integration is still shallow, though, the observed tariff will reflect the preferences of a pivotal national government. How governments voted, however, was not public information. This paper uses a unique dataset to test the deep vs. shallow integration hypothesis in an effort to shed light on how decisions are made in the EU. Results support the deep integration hypothesis.
Organizational learning and employee retention: A focused study examining the role of relationships between supervisors and subordinates

Focusing on the relationship between supervisors and subordinates, the purpose of this research was to study the causal relationship among seven exogenous variables (Supervisor empathy with subordinates, Supervisor trust of subordinates, Planning and delivery of instruction, Accommodating subordinate uniqueness, Supervisor insensitivity toward subordinates, Subordinate-centered learning process, and Supervisor-centered learning process) and two endogenous variables (Employee’s job satisfaction and Employee’s intention to remain in the company). The study was based on the belief that the seven factors, which were beliefs, feelings, and behaviors of supervisors in helping adults learn, based on andragogical principles of learning, are not only methods to help subordinates learn, but techniques to increase employee’s job satisfaction and intention to remain in the company as well. Five hundred and thirteen survey responses of Thai employees were used in the study to describe demographic characteristics and statistical test. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, Cronbach alpha’s coefficient, and path analysis. The findings from the statistical analysis revealed that three out of seven characteristics of supervisors (Supervisor empathy with subordinates, Supervisor trust of subordinates, and Supervisor insensitivity toward subordinates) have either direct or indirect effect on an employee’s intention to remain in the company.
Real-Time System for Driver Fatigue Detection by RGB-D Camera

Drowsy driving is one of the major causes of fatal traffic accidents. In this article, we propose a real-time system that utilizes RGB-D cameras to automatically detect driver fatigue and generate alerts to drivers. By introducing RGB-D cameras, the depth data can be obtained, which provides extra evidence to benefit the task of head detection and head pose estimation. In this system, two important visual cues (head pose and eye state) for driver fatigue detection are extracted and leveraged simultaneously. We first present a real-time 3D head pose estimation method by leveraging RGB and depth data. Then we introduce a novel method to predict eye states employing the WLBP feature, which is a powerful local image descriptor that is robust to noise and illumination variations. Finally, we integrate the results from both head pose and eye states to generate the overall conclusion. The combination and collaboration of the two types of visual cues can reduce the uncertainties and resolve the ambiguity that a single cue may induce. The experiments were performed using an inside-car environment during the day and night, and theyfully demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our system as well as the proposed methods of predicting head pose and eye states.
An evaluation of cross-language adaptation for rapid HMM development in a new language

The feasibility of cross-language transfer of speech technology is of increasing concern as the demand for recognition systems in multiple languages grows. The paper presents a systematic study of the relative effectiveness of different methods for seeding and training HMMs in a new language, using transfer from English to Japanese for small vocabulary speaker independent continuous speech recognition as a test case. Effects of limited training data are also explored. The study found that cross-language adaptation produced better models than alternative approaches with relatively little effort, and that the number of speakers is more critical than the number of utterances for small training data sets. <<ETX>>
High-temperature single-crystal 3C-SiC capacitive pressure sensor

Single-crystal 3C-silicon carbide (SiC) capacitive pressure sensors are proposed for high-temperature sensing applications. The prototype device consists of an edge-clamped circular 3C-SiC diaphragm with a radius of 400 /spl mu/m and a thickness of 0.5 /spl mu/m suspended over a 2-/spl mu/m sealed cavity on a silicon substrate. The 3C-SiC film is grown epitaxially on a 100-mm diameter <100> silicon substrate by atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition. The fabricated sensor demonstrates a high-temperature sensing capability up to 400/spl deg/C, limited by the test setup. At 400/spl deg/C, the device achieves a linear characteristic response between 1100 and 1760 torr with a sensitivity of 7.7 fF/torr, a linearity of 2.1%, and a hysterisis of 3.7% with a sensing repeatability of 39 torr (52 mbar). A wide range of sensor specifications, such as linear ranges, sensitivities, and capacitance values, can be achieved by choosing the proper device geometrical parameters.
Continuum Emission Associated with 6.7-GHz Methanol Masers

We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to search for continuum emission toward three strong 6.7-GHz methanol maser sources. For two of the sources, G 339.88 - 1.26 and NGC 6334F (G 351.42 + 0.64), we detect continuum emission closely associated with the methanol masers. A further three clusters of masers show no radio continuum emission above our sensitivity limit of 1-5 mJy. We find the position of the 6.7-GHz methanol masers in G 339.88 - 1.26 to be consistent with the hypothesis that the masers lie in the circumstellar disc surrounding a massive star. We also argue that one of the clusters of methanol masers in NGC 6334F provides indirect observational support for the circumstellar disc hypothesis.
Survey of solutions for Peer-to-Peer MMOGs

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are becoming increasingly popular in recent years. Traditional Client/Server architectures of MMOGs exhibit different issues in scalability, reliability, and responsiveness, as well as involve high cost for adding new servers when demand increases. The fast response time, support of large and growing number of players, and low cost are extremely important considerations when designing and developing a successful MMOG The underlying infrastructure of the game plays a substantial part in meeting these conditions. P2P architecture provides considerable support for scalability of MMOGs. It also achieves good response times by direct connections between players and reducing the interaction with a server. This paper reviews recent solutions for Peer-to-Peer MMOGs, to advocate this architecture as an answer to MMOG design and deployment problems facilitating scalability, communication with a focus on load balancing.