Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Policy Choices for Contemporary Canada : The emerging role of fathers as primary caregivers

The nation-state of Canada developed pragmatically, in a long series of events. Not so long ago the notion of mutual respect 1 between bureaucratic administrators and the “public” was more of a utopian dream than any reality in practice. The “mob” was a group objectified, and often, guided by paternalistic authority and discipline. Contemporary Canada reveals a different environment; mutual respect is a goal that, on occasion, can be witnessed in the interactions between citizens and government officials. Most importantly though, it is no longer a dream. Mutual respect is now a realistic and anticipated goal that many are striving toward. Ultimately, however, it is a democratized administration that citizens seek, one that is capable of adjusting to the dynamic social environment and that welcomes and invites citizen participation in the development of policy.
Simulating 2D tearing phenomena for interactive medical surgery simulators

This paper introduces a methodology to simulate a particular kind of the fracture phenomenon : the tearing one. The objective of the method is to provide realistic tearing simulations, occuring on 2D deformable objects, and working in real-time. This method can find applications in surgery simulators, where tearing human tissue is an important feature to provide. It can also be applied, in a more general scope, in virtual environment applications. The central idea in this scheme is to "separate" the physical simulation elements, instead of destroying or dividing them. This avoids the increase of physical elements that need to be simulated (which occurs when they are divided) and gives a more accurate simulation than when they are destroyed.
Dynamics and Characterization of Refractory Dissolved Organic Matter Produced by a Pure Bacterial Culture in an Experimental Predator-Prey System

ABSTRACT We studied the effects of a bacterium (Pseudomonas chlororaphis) and a bactivorous protozoan (Uronema sp.) on transformations of labile dissolved organic carbon (DOC). In 36-day time series experiments, bacteria were grown on glucose both with and without protozoa. We measured bulk organic carbon pools and used electrospray ionization mass spectrometry to characterize dissolved organic matter on a molecular level. Bacteria rapidly utilized glucose, depleting it to nondetectable levels and producing new DOC compounds of higher molecular weight within 2 days. Some of these new compounds, representing 3 to 5% of the initial glucose-C, were refractory and persisted for over a month. Other new compounds were produced and subsequently used by bacteria during the lag and exponential growth phases, pointing to a dynamic cycling of organic compounds. Grazers caused a temporary spike in the DOC concentration consisting of labile compounds subsequently utilized by the bacteria. Grazing did not increase the complexity of the DOC pool already established by the bacteria but did continually decrease the particulate organic carbon pool and expedited the conversion of glucose-C to CO2. After 36 days, 29% of initial glucose-C remained in pure bacteria cultures, while only 6% remained in cultures where a grazer was present. In this study the bacteria were the primary shapers of the complex DOC continuum, suggesting higher trophic levels possibly have less of an impact on the qualitative composition of DOC than previously assumed.
Performance of MIMO Relay DCSK-CD Systems Over Nakagami Fading Channels

A multi-access multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay differential chaos shift keying cooperative diversity (DCSK-CD) system is proposed in this paper as a comprehensive cooperation scheme, in which the relay and destination both employ multiple antennas to strengthen the robustness against signal fading in a wireless network. It is shown that, with spatial diversity gains, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed system is remarkably better than the conventional DCSK non-cooperation (DCSK-NC) and DCSK cooperative communication (DCSK-CC) systems. Moreover, the exact BER and close-form expressions of the proposed system are derived over Nakagami fading channels through the moment generating function (MGF), which is shown to be highly consistent with the simulation results. Meanwhile, this paper illustrates a trade-off between the performance and the complexity, and provides a threshold for the number of relay antennas keeping the user consumed energy constant. Due to the above-mentioned advantages, the proposed system stands out as a good candidate or alternative for energy-constrained wireless communications based on chaotic modulation, especially for low-power and low-cost wireless personal area networks (WPANs).
Interagir, jouer et expliquer : dyades mère-enfant francophones et italophones dans deux situations logopédiques

Plusieurs auteurs se sont interesses au developpement des conduites explicatives et justificatives (CEJ) chez des enfants typiques. La litterature reporte aussi de plus en plus d’etudes qui s’interessent aux competences pragmatiques et interactionnelles des enfants qui presentent un trouble du developpement du langage (TDL) en montrant que ces enfants presentent des specificites par rapport aux enfants typiques. Dans ce travail, nous avons combine ces deux pistes de reflexion en investiguant les CEJ produites par des enfants avec TDL (5-7 ans) et des enfants typiques (4-7 ans), ainsi que par leurs meres, dans des interactions meres-enfants italophones et francophones dans deux activites differentes : unjeu symbolique et une lecture conjointe d’un livre en images. Nos resultats montrent que les deux langues presentent des patrons similaires. Cependant, des differences ponctuelles liees a la langue ont pu etre mises en evidence. Les meres prennent en charge les activites proposees et l’activite parait influencer le fonctionnement des interactions et la production des CEJ. Les enfants avec TDL presentent de CEJ moins eleves que leurs pairs typiques dans l’activite de jeu symbolique et ils semblent avoir davantage besoin que ces derniers du support de leur mere pour en produire dans l’activite de lecture conjointe (notamment dans le corpus francophone). Les meres des enfants typiques et des enfants avec TDL presentent des comportements globalement similaires en amont mais elles semblent s’adapter aux besoins de leurs enfants en aval. Compte tenu de l’importance sociale et educative de ces conduites, nos resultats pourraient avoir des implications cliniques
Radial Categories Applied to Object-Orient ed Modeling — A Case Study for a Property Registration System

Design of GIS applications must model current systems, including their administrative and legal aspects. The standard concentration on the static data structure in GIS — as captured with database design tools — is insufficient and an object-oriented approach is necessary to include the operations carried out. The combination of operations and data structure in a modeling tool is crucial to properly capture complex administrative or legal processing of documents, including the temporal aspects. This is clearly visible in the application selected here, namely real estate property registration, where one cannot succeed without modeling space and time. Object-Oriented Modeling is the widely acclaimed method in software engineering. It is used for design and programming, but did not reduce the software crisis. The theory of object-orientation is simple, but the application to practical cases points to more difficulties than expected. The primary concept of object-orientation corresponds well with cognitive principles, but the details of practical object-oriented languages add confusion. The non-trivial case study is used here to point out the issues and to propose an approach which is in line with human cognition. First the object-oriented concepts are revisited in the context of a class based functional programming language. It stresses the separation of behavior from implementation inheritance and allows design and rapid prototyping in the same language. Human cognition uses radial categories with a central prototype. This is used to start the design of the property registry. Several refinement steps are then applied. This approach and the set of tools used allows to separate the code of refinement steps and result in very compact, formally checked code.
Modelling transformer core joints using gaussian models for the magnetic flux density and permeability

Simple equivalent permeability and reluctance models are obtained for the transformer core joints from the analysis of the magnetic flux. It is shown that the flux variations in the joint zone can be fitted with simple Gaussian expressions suitable for transformer design purposes. These models are derived from 2D and 3D finite element simulations. The magnetic flux distribution in the transformer core joints is studied for wound cores and stacked-lamination cores with step-lap configurations. The models of the study properly account for the effects of core design parameters such as length of air gaps, number of laminations per step and overlap length. The proposed models, which include saturation and anisotropy, are applied to grain-oriented silicon steel (GOSS) and super GOSS. The new models are intended to estimate, right from the design phase, the magnetic flux density, permeability and the reluctance in the joints. The maximum differences between the Gaussian models of this study and finite element simulations are under 6%. The models of this study can be used to improve core designs with the aim of reducing core losses and magnetising current. A comparison of the total losses computed with the model of the study and measurements on a wound core distribution transformer showed differences of about 2.5%.
Survey of Dynamic Instrumentation of Operating Systems

Operating systems and modern software systems get more complex and more difficult to understand every day. Instrumentation of a software system is a technique for inserting extra code into an application to observer its behavior[6]. It provides insights to a running system, and helps to understand even complex systems. The information provided by an instrumentation tool can be used do debug a running system, to improve the performance of a system by identifying bottlenecks, or simply help to understand the control flow of an application or system. In [6], the authors explain how they used their instrumentation tool to identify a stock ticker applet that was responsible for poor performance on a multi user system with more the 170 users. Just by killing the applet the system idle was increased by 15 percent. Instrumentation can be divided in two major categories: static instrumentation and dynamic instrumentation. Static instrumentation refers to instrumentation techniques that provide information by inserting instrumentation code before the program runs. The additional code could be inserted by the developer in the source code of the program, by the compiler, or by linker. The instrumentation code is always present in the running program, and cannot be changed without stopping or even recompiling the program. The instrumentation statements, however, are usually guarded by a flag to dynamically enable or disable the instrumentation.
Laminar-Turbulent Patterning in Transitional Flows

Wall-bounded flows experience a transition to turbulence characterized by the coexistence of laminar and turbulent domains in some range of Reynolds number R, the natural control parameter. This transitional regime takes place between an upper threshold Rt above which turbulence is uniform (featureless) and a lower threshold Rg below which any form of turbulence decays, possibly at the end of overlong chaotic transients. The most emblematic cases of flow along flat plates transiting to/from turbulence according to this scenario are reviewed. The coexistence is generally in the form of bands, alternatively laminar and turbulent, and oriented obliquely with respect to the general flow direction. The final decay of the bands at Rg points to the relevance of directed percolation and criticality in the sense of statistical-physics phase transitions. The nature of the transition at Rt where bands form is still somewhat mysterious and does not easily fit the scheme holding for pattern-forming instabilities at increasing control parameter on a laminar background. In contrast, the bands arise at Rt out of a uniform turbulent background at a decreasing control parameter. Ingredients of a possible theory of laminar-turbulent patterning are discussed.
Fusion of cross stream information in speaker verification

This paper addresses the performance of various statistical data fusion techniques for combining the complementary score information in speaker verification. The complementary verification scores are based on the static and delta cepstral features. Both LPCC (Linear prediction-based cepstral coefficients) and MFCC (mel-frequency cepstral coefficients) are considered in the study. The experiments conducted using a GMM-based speaker verification system, provides valuable information on the relative effectiveness of different fusion methods applied at the score level. It is also demonstrated that a higher speaker discrimination capability can be achieved by applying the fusion at the score level rather than at the feature level.
Prednisone withdrawal 14 days after liver transplantation with mycophenolate: a prospective trial of cyclosporine and tacrolimus.

BACKGROUND The long-term complications of immunosuppressive therapy such as diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertension are a major source of morbidity in liver transplant recipients. In this prospective, randomized, open-label study we completely withdrew prednisone (PRED) 14 days after liver transplantation in an effort to decrease these metabolic complications. Patients were maintained on mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) in combination with either cyclosporine (CsA; Neoral formulation) or tacrolimus (TAC). Thus, we also were able to compare CsA to TAC in patients not receiving PRED with respect to efficacy, toxicity, and effect on posttransplant metabolic complications. METHODS A total of 71 patients were randomized to receive either TAC-MMF (n=35) or CsA-MMF (n=36) after liver transplantation and were analyzed for patient and graft survival. Fifty-eight patients continued the immunosuppressive protocol for at least 6 months after transplantation and were analyzed for the incidence of acute rejection and the prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia. RESULTS The 6-month patient survival rates were 94.4% for CsA-MMF and 88.6% for TAC-MMF. Corresponding 6-month graft survival rates were 88.7% and 85.71% with no immunologic graft losses in either group. The incidence of biopsy-proven acute rejection was 46% for CsA-MMF and 42.3% for TAC-MMF. Six patients were converted from CsA to TAC (four for recurrent rejection) and seven patients were converted from TAC to CsA (four for neurotoxicity). Only one patient (in the TAC-MMF group) developed new-onset posttransplant diabetes. In contrast, four of eight patients in the CsA-MMF group who were diabetic before transplant became nondiabetic in the first 3 months after transplant. The mean serum cholesterol level was significantly lower in the TAC-MMF group than in the CsA-MMF group (145.2+/-41.8 mg/dl and 190.3+/-62.2, respectively; P<0.001) and the incidence of hypertension was lower in the TAC-MMF group (12% vs. 30.3% in the CsA-MMF group, P<0.01). Both groups had a lower incidence of metabolic complications compared with a historical group (n=100) maintained on CsA and PRED (10 mg/day at 6 months). CONCLUSIONS MMF in combination with either TAC or CsA allows withdrawal of PRED 14 days after liver transplantation with a moderate rejection rate and no immunologic graft losses. Early PRED withdrawal decreases posttransplant diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertension, but patients maintained on TAC have lower serum cholesterol levels and a lower incidence of hypertension than CsA-treated patients.
Borderline Personality Disorder: Bipolarity, Mood Stabilizers and Atypical Antipsychotics in Treatment

In this article, it is aimed to review the efficacies of mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics, which are used commonly in psychopharmacological treatments of bipolar and borderline personality disorders. In this context, common phenomenology between borderline personality and bipolar disorders and differential features of clinical diagnosis will be reviewed in line with the literature. Both disorders can demonstrate common features in the diagnostic aspect, and can overlap phenomenologically. Concomitance rate of both disorders is quite high. In order to differentiate these two disorders from each other, quality of mood fluctuations, impulsivity types and linear progression of disorders should be carefully considered. There are various studies in mood stabilizer use, like lithium, carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, sodium valproate and lamotrigine, in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. Moreover, there are also studies, which have revealed efficacies of risperidone, olanzapine and quetiapine as atypical antipsychotics. It is not easy to differentiate borderline personality disorder from the bipolar disorders. An intensively careful evaluation should be performed. This differentiation may be helpful also for the treatment. There are many studies about efficacy of valproate and lamotrigine in treatment of borderline personality disorder. However, findings related to other mood stabilizers are inadequate. Olanzapine and quetiapine are reported to be more effective among atypical antipsychotics. No drug is approved for the treatment of borderline personality disorder by the entitled authorities, yet. Psychotherapeutic approaches have preserved their significant places in treatment of borderline personality disorder. Moreover, symptom based approach is recommended in use of mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics.
Impact of Gender, Age at Onset, and Lifetime Tic Disorders on the Clinical Presentation and Comorbidity Pattern of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Children and Adolescents.

BACKGROUND Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a heterogeneous disorder; therefore, there is a need for identifying more homogeneous subtypes. This study aimed to examine the clinical characteristics and comorbidity pattern of a large sample of pediatric OCD subjects, and to examine the impact of gender, age at onset, and lifetime tic disorders on the clinical presentation and comorbidity pattern. METHODS A total of 110 children and adolescents diagnosed with OCD were assessed using the Kiddle Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL) for psychiatric comorbidity, and a clinical data form was filled out. The cutoff for differentiating prepubertal from adolescent onset was 11 years of age. RESULTS A total of 83.6% of the subjects had at least one comorbid psychiatric disorder. Oppositional defiant disorder and contamination/somatic obsessions were significantly higher in males (p=0.036 and p=0.03, respectively) than in females. Depressive disorders and religious obsessions were significantly higher in the adolescent-onset group (p=0.02, p=0.05, respectively) whereas disruptive behavior disorders were higher in the prepubertal-onset group (p=0.037). Disruptive behavior disorders were significantly more frequent in the tic (+) group than in tic (-) group (p=0.021). CONCLUSIONS There were differences in the comorbidity pattern and clinical expression between genders and between prepubertal and adolescent-onset cases. Findings of this study supported the introduction of tic-related OCD as a specifier in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (DSM-5), and the necessity of a detailed assessment of other psychiatric disorders in youth with OCD.
Hubble Space Telescope Morphologies of Local Lyman Break Galaxy Analogs. I. Evidence for Starbursts Triggered by Merging

Heckman and coworkers used the GALEX UV imaging survey to show that there exists a rare population of nearby compact UV-luminous galaxies (UVLGs) that closely resemble high-redshift Lyman break galaxies (LBGs). We present HST images in the UV, optical, and Hα and resimulate them at the depth and resolution of the GOODS/UDF fields to show that the morphologies of UVLGs are also similar to those of LBGs. Our sample of eight LBG analogs thus provides detailed insight into the connection between star formation and LBG morphology. Faint tidal features or companions can be seen in all of the rest-frame optical images, suggesting that the starbursts are the result of a merger or interaction. The UV/optical light is dominated by unresolved (~100-300 pc) super starburst regions (SSBs). A detailed comparison with the galaxies Haro 11 and VV 114 at z = 0.02 indicates that the SSBs themselves consist of diffuse stars and (super) star clusters. The structural features revealed by the new HST images occur on very small physical scales and are thus not detectable in images of high-redshift LBGs, except in a few cases where they are magnified by gravitational lensing. We propose, therefore, that LBGs are mergers of gas-rich, relatively low-mass (M* ∼ 1010 M☉) systems, and that the mergers trigger the formation of SSBs. If galaxies at high redshifts are dominated by SSBs, then the faint-end slope of the luminosity function is predicted to have slope α ∼ 2. Our results are the most direct confirmation to date of models that predict that the main mode of star formation in the early universe was highly collisional.
Information reduction for environment perception of an intelligent robot arm equipped with a 3D range camera

This paper discusses a perceptual system for intelligent control of a service robot. The robot should be able to perceive the environment flexibly to realize intelligent behaviors. We focus on the perceptual system based on the perceiving-acting cycle discussed in ecological psychology. We propose a perceptual system composed of the retinal model and the spiking-neural network to realize concept of the perceiving-acting cycle. The proposed method is applied to the robot arm equipped with a 3D-range camera. This proposed method reduces the staggering volumes of information to 4.2%. As experimental results, we show that the integrated perceptual system can adapt effectively in the dynamic environment.
TRECVID 2008 - Goals, Tasks, Data, Evaluation Mechanisms and Metrics

The TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation (TRECVID) 2008 is a TREC-style video analysis and retrieval evaluation, the goal of which remains to promote progress in content-based exploitation of digital video via open, metrics-based evaluation. Over the last 7 years this effort has yielded a better understanding of how systems can effectively accomplish such processing and how one can reliably benchmark their performance. In 2008, 77 teams (see Table 1) from various research organizations --- 24 from Asia, 39 from Europe, 13 from North America, and 1 from Australia --- participated in one or more of five tasks: high-level feature extraction, search (fully automatic, manually assisted, or interactive), pre-production video (rushes) summarization, copy detection, or surveillance event detection. The copy detection and surveillance event detection tasks are being run for the first time in TRECVID. This paper presents an overview of TRECVid in 2008.
Bmc Complementary and Alternative Medicine Study Protocol for a Pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial in General Practice Investigating the Effectiveness of Acupuncture against Migraine

Background: Migraine is a chronic neurologic disease that can severely affect the patient's quality of life. Although in recent years many randomised studies have been carried out to investigate the effectiveness of acupuncture as a treatment for migraine, it remains a controversial issue. Our aim is to determine whether acupuncture, applied under real conditions of clinical practice in the area of primary healthcare, is more effective than conventional treatment.