Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improved relevance feedback using density-based clustering

Relevance feedback (RFB) involves requesting some user judgments for an initial set of search results and then using these judgments to improve search results. Typical queries may have multiple possible interpretations or facets, only one of which is relevant to a user's need, but top search results may be dominated by one interpretation or facet. Thus, if the user is only given the top results to inspect, none of them may be relevant. One way to solve this is to intentionally diversify the top few results to cover multiple interpretations. This paper proposes the use of density-based clustering for the purpose of results diversification in the context of RFB. Other traditional clustering algorithms are also used for a comparative study. Clustering is compared to a baseline that nominates the top results from an initial ranked list and compared to using the top results after re-ranking using Maximal Marginal Relevance. The results show that density-based clustering achieves the best results with a statistically significant improvement of 12% over the baseline.
Peak locations in all-pass signals - the Makhoul Conjecture Challenge

The Makhoul Conjecture Challenge (Makhoul, 2000) has been published. To answer was the question whether or not the location of the peak of a digital stable all-pass filter lies in [0,2p-1], where p is the order of the all-pass filter. We construct numerous counter-examples, prove a new theorem stating that there is at least an upper bound on the order of p/sup 3/2/ for the location of the peak, and discuss the algebraic structure of all-pass filters and their impulse responses. The paper is heavily based on an experimental approach.
Effect of Gross Motor Group Exercise on Functional Status in Chronic Stroke: A Randomized Controlled Trial

[Purpose] The aim of this study was to understand the effects of task-oriented gross motor group exercise based on motor development on chronic stroke patients’ joint, bone, muscle, and motor functions and activities of daily living. [Subjects] Twenty-eight stroke patients hospitalized at P municipal nursing facility for the severely handicapped were randomly assigned to the gross motor group exercise group (experimental group, n=14) or the control group (n=14). [Methods] The two groups performed morning exercise led by a trainer for 30 minutes a day, 5 times a week for 6 weeks in total. The experimental group performed a gross motor group exercise in addition to this exercise for 50 minutes a day, 3 times a week for 6 weeks in total. Before the experiment, all subjects were measured with the Modified Barthel Index (MBI) and for their neuromuscular skeletal and motor-related functions according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. [Results] Significant improvements were found in the experimental group’s neuromusculoskeletal and motor-related functions and MBI test, except for the stability of joint functions. The control group showed no significant difference from the initial evaluation. [Conclusion] The gross motor group exercise based on motor development is recommended for chronic stroke patients with severe handicaps.
Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications 1-planarity of Graphs with a Rotation System 68 Auer Et Al. 1-planarity of Graphs with a Rotation System

A graph is 1-planar if it can be drawn in the plane such that each edge is crossed at most once. 1-planarity is known NP-hard, even for graphs of bounded bandwidth, pathwidth, or treewidth, and for near-planar graphs in which an edge is added to a planar graph. On the other hand, there is a linear time 1-planarity testing algorithm for maximal 1-planar graphs with a given rotation system. In this work, we show that 1-planarity remains NP-hard even for 3-connected graphs with (or without) a rotation system. Moreover, the crossing number problem remains NP-hard for 3-connected 1-planar graphs with (or without) a rotation system.
Filter‐ versus wrapper‐based feature selection for credit scoring

We address the problem of credit scoring as a classification and feature subset selection problem. Based on the current framework of sophisticated feature selection methods, we identify features that contain the most relevant information to distinguish good loan payers from bad loan payers. The feature selection methods are validated on several real‐world datasets with different types of classifiers. We show the advantages following from using the subspace approach to classification. We discuss many practical issues related to the applicability of feature selection methods. We show and discuss some difficulties that used to be insufficiently emphasized in standard feature selection literature. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 20: 985–999, 2005.
OPTICAL-TOSAR IMAGE REGISTRATION BASED ON GAUSSIAN MIXTURE MODEL

Image registration is a fundamental in remote sensing applications such as inter-calibration and image fusion. Compared to other multi sensor image registration problems such as optical-to-IR, the registration for SAR and optical images has its specials. Firstly, the radiometric and geometric characteristics are different between SAR and optical images. Secondly, the feature extraction methods are heavily suffered with the speckle in SAR images. Thirdly, the structural information is more useful than the point features such as corners. In this work, we proposed a novel Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based Optical-to-SAR image registration algorithm. The feature of line support region (LSR) is used to describe the structural information and the orientation attributes are added into the GMM to avoid Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm falling into local extremum in feature sets matching phase. Through the experiments it proves that our algorithm is very robust for optical-toSAR image registration problem. * Corresponding author. This is useful to know for communication with the appropriate person in cases with more than one author.
The Use of Culturally-Familiar Literature in the EFL Classroom

A Master of Arts thesis in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) by Sadaf Khalil Ahmad entitled, "The Use of Culturally-Familiar Literature in the EFL Classroom," May 2013. Thesis advisor is Dr. Khawlah Ahmed. Available are both hard and soft copies of the thesis.
Presentation of Preferred Stimuli as an Intervention for Aggression in a Person With Dementia

Aggressive behaviors in elderly nursing home residents increase the risk of injury and stress for both residents and staff. Aggression is commonly treated with antipsychotic medications despite the risks of serious iatrogenic effects. This single-case design study evaluated a nonpharmacological intervention that involved making a preferred item continuously available and regularly orienting the participant to that item during caregiving sessions. The presentation of preferred stimuli was effective in reducing both physical and verbal aggression in the resident. The findings are significant, given the paucity of studies on nonpharmacological, restraint-free interventions for aggressive behaviors in elderly persons with dementia.
Magnetic Tunnel Junctions for Spintronic Memories and Beyond

In this paper, recent developments in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) are reported with their potential impacts on integrated circuits. MTJs consist of two metal ferromagnets separated by a thin insulator and exhibit two resistances, low (Rp) or high (Rap) depending on the relative direction of ferromagnet magnetizations, parallel (P) or antiparallel (AP), respectively. Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) ratios, defined as (Rap $Rp)/Rp as high as 361%, have been obtained in MTJs with Co40Fe40B20 fixed and free layers made by sputtering with an industry-standard exchange-bias structure and post deposition annealing at Ta = 400 degC. The corresponding output voltage swing DeltaV is over 500 mV, which is five times greater than that of the conventional amorphous Al-O-barrier MTJs. The highest TMR ratio obtained so far is 500% in a pseudospin-valve MTJ annealed at Ta = 475 degC, showing a high potential of the current material system. In addition to this high-output voltage swing, current-induced magnetization switching (CIMS) takes place at the critical current densities (JCO) on the order of 106 A/cm2 in these MgO-barrier MTJs. Furthermore, high antiferromagnetic coupling between the two CoFeB layers in a synthetic ferrimagnetic free layer has been shown to result in a high thermal-stability factor with a reduced JCO compared to single free-layer MTJs. The high TMR ratio enabled by the MgO-barrier MTJs, together with the demonstration of CIMS at a low JCO, allows development of not only scalable magnetoresistive random-access memory with feature sizes below 90 nm but also new memory-in-logic CMOS circuits that can overcome a number of bottlenecks in the current integrated-circuit architecture
Impedance-based contact control of a free-flying space robot with a compliant wrist for non-cooperative satellite capture

This paper presents the impedance-based contact control of a free-flying space robot utilizing a compliant wrist for non-cooperative satellite capture operation. An open loop impedance control law based on contact dynamics model is introduced to realize a desired coefficient of restitution defined between a manipulator hand of a space robot and a contact point on a free-flying target. The coefficient of restitution and the damping ratio are expressed as a function of contact and impedance parameters; and hence, the impedance parameters are tuned by setting a desired coefficient of restitution and a desired damping ratio. The collision experiment using twodimensional microgravity emulator, called air-floating test bed, verifies that the proposed open loop control law is capable of realizing a desired coefficient of restitution with fairly small errors.
Randomized clinical efficacy of superficial peeling with 85% lactic acid versus 70% glycolic acid*

BACKGROUND: Peeling is a procedure which aims to accelerate the process of skin exfoliation. OBJECTIVES Development of formulations containing lactic acid at 85% or glycolic acid at 70% and the evaluation of these formulations on clinical efficacy in reduction of fine wrinkles. METHODS Preliminary stability tests were carried out and an in vivo study was performed with three groups with 9 representatives each. One was the control group, which used only sunscreen; another one used lactic acid+sunscreen, and the last group used acid glycolic+sunscreen. Clinical efficacy was assessed with a CCD color microscope, through the digitization of images before and after treatment. The applications were carried out by a dermatologist, once a mont h every 30 days, during 3 months. The area with wrinkles was calculated by planimetry point counting, in accordance with Mandarin-de-Lacerda. RESULTS The formulations were stable in the visual and Ph evaluation. There was no improvement in the control group; for lactic acid, there was significant improvement after the second peeling application on the outer lateral area of the right eye and after the third application on the outer lateral area of the left eye. For the glycolic acid group, there was significant improvement in the outer lateral area of the left eye after the first application, and of the right eye region, after three applications. The formulations used must be kept under refrigeration and should be manipulated every 30 days. CONCLUSIONS Both peelings were effective in reducing fine wrinkles of the outer lateral eye area after three applications (p≤0.05%). It was observed that peeling efficacy in the external-lateral region of one eye might be different compared with that in skin of the external-lateral region of the other eye, relative to the speed of skin improvement.
Promotion of Iron Oxide Reduction and Extracellular Electron Transfer in Shewanella oneidensis by DMSO

The dissimilatory metal reducing bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, known for its capacity of reducing iron and manganese oxides, has great environmental impacts. The iron oxides reducing process is affected by the coexistence of alternative electron acceptors in the environment, while investigation into it is limited so far. In this work, the impact of dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO), a ubiquitous chemical in marine environment, on the reduction of hydrous ferric oxide (HFO) by S. oneidensis MR-1 was investigated. Results show that DMSO promoted HFO reduction by both wild type and ΔdmsE, but had no effect on the HFO reduction by ΔdmsB, indicating that such a promotion was dependent on the DMSO respiration. With the DMSO dosing, the levels of extracellular flavins and omcA expression were significantly increased in WT and further increased in ΔdmsE. Bioelectrochemical analysis show that DMSO also promoted the extracellular electron transfer of WT and ΔdmsE. These results demonstrate that DMSO could stimulate the HFO reduction through metabolic and genetic regulation in S. oneidensis MR-1, rather than compete for electrons with HFO. This may provide a potential respiratory pathway to enhance the microbial electron flows for environmental and engineering applications.
Modeling and path planning of the City-Climber robot part II: 3D path planning using mixed integer linear programming

This is the second part of a series papers on modeling and path planning of the City-Climber robot. This paper presents a path planning method for the City-Climber robot using mixed integer linear programming (MILP) in 3D building environments that consist of objects with primitive geometrical shapes. In order to use MILP to solve obstacle avoidance problems, we first simplify and decouple the robot dynamic model by introducing a restricting admissible control. The decoupled model and obstacle can be rewritten as a linear program with mixed integer linear constraints that account for the collision avoidance. A key benefit of this approach is that the path optimization can be readily solved using the AMPL and CPLEX optimization software with a Matlab interface. Simulation results show that the framework of MILP is well suited for path planning and obstacle avoidance problems for the wall-climbing robot in 3D environments.
Mother Merge and Her Children

This paper examines in detail the proposition that a set of fundamental syntactic relations (domination, sisterhood, c-command, etc) can be founded in the computational operation Merge, itself taken to be fundamental and indispensable. In doing this, it pursues one aspect of minimalist methodology in an unusually rigorous fashion. The outcome of the investigation is that Chomsky’s initial approach to this issue, as outlined in ‘Minimalist Inquiries,’ has a number of unattractive consequences. Alternatives avoiding some of these consequences are explored, and the proposal that asymmetric c-command, rather than general c-command, should be taken as fundamental is considered in detail. It is further argued that claims to exclude some well-known relations (e.g. head-specifier) on principled grounds cannot be sustained. Finally, the recent proposal that probe-goal, a restricted variant of ccommand, should be accommodated in the set of fundamental relations at the expense of sisterhood is shown to be inadequate.
Risk of second malignancies in patients with early-stage classical Hodgkin's lymphoma treated in a modern era

Second malignancies remain an issue affecting morbidity and mortality in long‐term survivors of early stage Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL). We undertook this study to determine if treatment in the modern era resulted in decreased second malignancies. Patients diagnosed with stage I–II cHL between 1988 and 2009 who received radiation therapy (RT) were selected from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Freedom from second malignancy (FFSM) was estimated using the Kaplan–Meier method. Univariate analysis (UVA) was performed using the Log‐Rank test, and included age, gender, year of diagnosis, and stage. Multivariable analysis (MVA) was performed using Cox Proportional Hazards modeling. The study cohort included 8807 patients. The median age at diagnosis was 32 years (range: 2–85). The majority of patients had stage II disease (n = 6044, 69%), 597 (7%) had extranodal involvement (ENI), and 1925 (22%) had B symptoms. Median follow‐up for the entire cohort was 7.2 years (range: 0–22). Five hundred twenty‐three (6%) patients developed a second malignancy. Median latency to second malignancy was 5.8 years (range: 0.1–21.5). Of the 523 patients that developed a second malignancy, 228 (44%) occurred in the first 5 years, 139 (27%) were diagnosed between years 5–10, and 156 (30%) beyond 10 years. The 10 year FFSM for patients treated between 1988 and 1999 was 93.0% versus 95.1% for patients treated between 2000 and 2009 (P = 0.04), On MVA, treatment between 2000 and 2009 was associated with a HR for second malignancy of 0.77 (95% Confidence Interval: 0.62–0.96, P = 0.02) compared to the treatment between 1988 and 1999. Our analysis suggests that in patients treated with RT for stage I or II cHL, treatment prior to 2000 had a slightly higher risk of second malignancy compared to treatment in 2000 and later. Further studies, with longer follow‐up of patients treated in the modern era are needed to confirm these findings.
Mindfulness and Transformation in a College Classroom

Community college classrooms afford students from a variety of backgrounds the possibility to engage and inform one another with respect to their unique perspectives and life experiences. Unfortunately, in many of these situations, students find themselves self-critical, and their internal comparisons with others may impede the potential of a transformational educational experience. This article discusses the benefit of utilizing mindfulness meditation as a way of bringing students more in touch with their internal processes, which in turn allows them greater availability to others in the classroom and thus creates more transformational learning experiences for these community college students.
The interaction of result set display dimensionality and cognitive factors in information retrieval systems

A visual information retrieval environment provides visualization features that help users manage the large result sets that are typical in many information retrieval environments. In many of these visual interfaces the spatial layout of document surrogates is used to communicate information about document to query interrelationships. In these systems it is difficult to determine if the spatial layout is responsible for system effectiveness differences or if other system features are involved. In this study we examine the effectiveness of a two-dimensional display format compared to a more standard (one-dimensional) sorted result list. The Visual Information Browsing Environment (VIBE) (Olsen et al., 1993; Korfhage, 1997) was modified to produce two systems that varied only on result display dimensionality. The effectiveness of a display is determined by the degree to which the visual representation is consistent with the cognitive abilities of the users of a system. For this reason we also investigated the interaction of the verbal and spatial abilities of users, as measured by cognitive factors batteries, with the dimensionality of the result display. Subjects took two Factor-Referenced Cognitive Tests (Ekstrom, French, and Harman, 1976): Factor VZ: Visualization (Paper Folding Test--VZ-2) the Verbal Fluency (Controlled Associations, test FA-1). Subjects were broken into two groups, one for each display type. They used the systems to search for full-text documents that described species of plants that matched other descriptions of the same species. The interface effectiveness was measured by number of tasks solved, recall effort and median task completion time. Automated system monitoring provided detailed information about the search behavior of individual subjects.
Characterization of dual-stage moisture diffusion, residual moisture content and hygroscopic swelling of epoxy molding compounds

Experimental and FEM studies have been undertaken in order to characterize the non-Fickian behavior of moisture absorption, temperature-dependent residual moisture content and hygroscopic swelling of epoxy molding compounds exposed to moist environments. Moisture absorption and desorption tests of two molding compounds and two IC packages using these materials have been carried out by gravimetric methods. Finite element analysis has been performed to simulate the anomalous dual-stage moisture absorption. To consider the residual moisture remaining in the package after the desorption process, a simple method has been developed, which allows for consideration of bake-out conditions and provides much more flexibility, enabling calculation of the non-Fickian moisture desorption with a specific residual moisture content. The coefficient of moisture expansion (CME) has been also measured by coupling the results of thermal mechanical analyzer (TMA) and Thermal Gravitational Analyzer (TGA) at different temperatures. It has been shown that the moisture desorption model of this study can be used as an alternative for TGA.
Representing and Reasoning with Intervals

1. Abstract Geologists around the world often specify numerically measured information such as age or speed with non-numerical words such as “Jurassic” or “fast” rather than actual numerical values or ranges of numerical values. These qualitative descriptions, which may adhere to different standards, can be applied at different levels of detail or abstraction. This presents difficulties in building knowledge-based systems that have to compare temporally and spatially related information such as geological age or landslide movement rates.
The Speech Recognition System Based On Bark Wavelet MFCC

Bark wavelet is a new wavelet which is especially designed for speech signal. Its base function satisfies time and bandwidth product least. Moreover, the Bark wavelet divides frequency band based on auditory model. This paper uses Bark wavelet in MFCC. It was used to make preprocessing before FFT. On the other hand, it was used to instead of DCT in MFCC for overcoming the DCT's disadvantage of fixed time-frequency resolution. Thus, a kind of good anti-noisy speech feature coefficient was obtained. Experimental results of speech recognition demonstrate that this new feature is more robust than the MFCC feature in noise environment and large vocabulary
Emotions at Work within Organizations

This article, written in consistency with the pedagogical personalist perspective and following a critical-argumentative methodological approach, aims at investigating some needs, problems and emotional effects of organized work (paying prevalent attention to productive organizations) and at highlighting the importance of workers’ emotional training. Specifically, at first the article lingers on a criticism of the supposed equivalence between the emergence of the emotional dimension and the “psycho-welfarist deceit”, then focuses on the exigencies of psychological presence, on the relational emotional dynamics and on the repercussions of these emotional plots and other ones on the persons who work inside the organizations and, finally, emphasizes the value, the goals and the modes of an emotional training responding to the treated issues.
Adding value to formal test oracles

Test oracles are programs which check the output of test cases run on other programs. We describe techniques which add value to formally-defined test oracles in three ways: (a) by measuring functional coverage of test suites, (b) by giving automated support to the process of validating the oracles, and (c) by automating the generation of test cases from the oracles. The techniques involve the use of coverage measures and AI-based search algorithms. We describe the application of these techniques in the verification and validation of a complex piece of real-world software.