Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MGLAIR Agents in a Virtual Reality Drama CSE Technical Report 2005-08

We provide an overview of the use of intelligent agents, implemented in the new MGLAIR architecture, in a virtual reality drama. For us, a virtual reality drama is a scripted play in which the computational agents are actors who have copies of the script, and one human audience member has been drafted to be a participant, but doesn’t have a copy of the script. The computational actors must improvise reactions to the human partpicipant’s actions, but keep the play moving along in as close agreement to the script as possible. The goal is to provide the human participant with a specific emotional experience. We explicate this philosophy; outline the previously described GLAIR architecture; explain the introduction of an organization into modalities that results in the new MGLAIR architecture; describe our current VR drama, The Trial, The Trail; and discuss the implementation of our actor-agents. Our discussion of the actor-agents focuses on their abilities to react to triggers (cues), their performance of contingent actions that are off the main-line arc of the script, their use of timers to pace the drama, and the organization of the cast of actor-agents into a multi-agent system.
Semiempirical Dissipation Source Functions for Ocean Waves. Part I: Definition, Calibration, and Validation

Abstract New parameterizations for the spectral dissipation of wind-generated waves are proposed. The rates of dissipation have no predetermined spectral shapes and are functions of the wave spectrum and wind speed and direction, in a way consistent with observations of wave breaking and swell dissipation properties. Namely, the swell dissipation is nonlinear and proportional to the swell steepness, and dissipation due to wave breaking is nonzero only when a nondimensional spectrum exceeds the threshold at which waves are observed to start breaking. An additional source of short-wave dissipation is introduced to represent the dissipation of short waves due to longer breaking waves. A reduction of the wind-wave generation of short waves is meant to account for the momentum flux absorbed by longer waves. These parameterizations are combined and calibrated with the discrete interaction approximation for the nonlinear interactions. Parameters are adjusted to reproduce observed shapes of directional wave spect.
A Smart pH-Responsive Three Components Luminescent Hydrogel

In this study, we report a novel three-component luminescent hydrogel, which is composed of amino acid derivatives (N,N′-di valine-3,4,9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic acid, NVPD), riboflavin (RF), and melamine (MM). The three-component hydrogel is attributed to multiple hydrogen bonds and the strong π-π stacking interaction between these molecules. Based on the strong hydrogen bonding of the gelator, when the reversible process between the gel and the solution take places it changes the pH of the system from 6.1 to 10.6. In addition, green fluorescence could be the emissive of the hydrogel under 498 nm and the conversion process of the aggregation state repeated reversibly by altering the value of ambient pH. This pH-responsive luminescent gel may display potential for use in nano pH sensors.
Acquired initiating mutations in early hematopoietic cells of CLL patients.

UNLABELLED Appropriate cancer care requires a thorough understanding of the natural history of the disease, including the cell of origin, the pattern of clonal evolution, and the functional consequences of the mutations. Using deep sequencing of flow-sorted cell populations from patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), we established the presence of acquired mutations in multipotent hematopoietic progenitors. Mutations affected known lymphoid oncogenes, including BRAF, NOTCH1, and SF3B1. NFKBIE and EGR2 mutations were observed at unexpectedly high frequencies, 10.7% and 8.3% of 168 advanced-stage patients, respectively. EGR2 mutations were associated with a shorter time to treatment and poor overall survival. Analyses of BRAF and EGR2 mutations suggest that they result in deregulation of B-cell receptor (BCR) intracellular signaling. Our data propose disruption of hematopoietic and early B-cell differentiation through the deregulation of pre-BCR signaling as a phenotypic outcome of CLL mutations and show that CLL develops from a pre-leukemic phase. SIGNIFICANCE The origin and pathogenic mechanisms of CLL are not fully understood. The current work indicates that CLL develops from pre-leukemic multipotent hematopoietic progenitors carrying somatic mutations. It advocates for abnormalities in early B-cell differentiation as a phenotypic convergence of the diverse acquired mutations observed in CLL.
Gateway vectors for the production of combinatorially‐tagged His6‐MBP fusion proteins in the cytoplasm and periplasm of Escherichia coli

Many proteins that accumulate in the form of insoluble aggregates when they are overproduced in Escherichia coli can be rendered soluble by fusing them to E. coli maltose binding protein (MBP), and this will often enable them to fold in to their biologically active conformations. Yet, although it is an excellent solubility enhancer, MBP is not a particularly good affinity tag for protein purification. To compensate for this shortcoming, we have engineered and successfully tested Gateway destination vectors for the production of dual His6MBP‐tagged fusion proteins in the cytoplasm and periplasm of E. coli. The MBP moiety improves the yield and solubility of its fusion partners while the hexahistidine tag (His‐tag) serves to facilitate their purification. The availability of a vector that targets His6MBP fusion proteins to the periplasm expands the utility of this dual tagging approach to include proteins that contain disulfide bonds or are toxic in the bacterial cytoplasm.
Pose-tolerant Non-frontal Face Recognition using EBGM

Traditional automatic face recognition methods focus on handling frontal or near frontal face images. Therefore, they cannot be directly applied to the pose-varied or non-frontal face images captured by non-intrusive video surveillance systems. In this paper, a non-frontal face recognition algorithm based on elastic bunch graph matching (EBGM) is proposed. The proposed method measures face similarity using facial features which are more robust to pose variation. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve a verification accuracy of 97% on face images with 30deg pan-angle. Also, the proposed method can reasonably tolerate plusmn10deg variation in the pan-angle, indicating its robustness in tolerating errors in pose estimation. This method can be easily extended to provide non-frontal face recognition up to half profile.
CONNECTED GRAPHS AND THEIR CONNECTIVITIES

: Let m and n be positive integers with n − 1 ≤ m ≤ (cid:0) n 2 (cid:1) and CG ( m, n ) be the set of all non-isomorphic connected graphs of order n and size m . The vertex-connectivity and the edge-connectivity of a graph G are denoted by κ ( G ) and λ ( G ), respectively. We prove that if π ∈ { κ, λ } , then there exist positive integers a and b such that { π ( G ) : G ∈ CG ( m, n ) } = { x ∈ Z : a ≤ x ≤ b } . Thus { π ( G ) : G ∈ CG ( m, n ) } is uniquely determined by min( π ; m, n ) = min { π ( G ) : G ∈ CG ( m, n ) } and max( π ; m, n ) = max { π ( G ) : G ∈ CG ( m, n ) } . The values of min( π ; m, n ) and max( π ; m, n ) are obtained in all situations.
Student-Powered Science: Science Education for and by African American Students

A liberatory pedagogy, from a Freirean perspective, seeks to transform the classroom into a dialogic and student-powered learning environment by restructuring the student-teacher dichotomy. The purpose is change—not only to individual students’ lives and opportunities but also to the wider social reality. While these are the goals of many science educators, we rarely see Freirean perspectives specifically applied to science teaching. This article considers liberatory pedagogy applied to science teaching where it is perhaps needed most—in a classroom with racially and economically marginalized youth—and explores the challenges that both the structures of urban science classrooms and traditional views about science education pose to the application of Freirean pedagogy.
Bullying behaviour in Irish schools: A nationwide study

Most of our knowledge of bullying behaviour in Irish schools has been gained from empirical studies carried out in Dublin (Byrne, 1994a; O’Moore & Hillery, 1989). The present paper, reports results from the first nationwide study of bullying behaviour in primary and post-primary schools in Ireland carried out during 1993–94. The results presented include data on the incidence of being bullied and bullying others, year differences, gender differences, types of bullying, where bullying occurs, whether teachers or parents are aware and pupils attitudes to bullying. Some correlations of bullying are also examined, in particular school size, class size, ability groupings and the social composition of school. Finally implications for intervention against bullying are discussed.
The Paradox of Anti-Americanism: Reflection on the Shallow Concept of Soft Power

This article deals with the seeming paradox of lasting American power and global anti-Americanism, which brings into question the relevance of the concept of soft power. Indeed, discontent over the current hegemon does not affect the consumption of its goods and the diffusion of its symbols. The contradiction results from the state-centric perspective of traditional scholars which does not shed light on the diverse aspects of American supremacy. In addition, Nye's notion of soft power does not stress the shaping of foreign societies by non-state actors and thus their important role in American predominance. As a consequence, the concept of soft power will be revised in order to reduce its “shallowness” and highlight the constraining aspect of today's prominent power. This article constitutes a revised version of a paper written for the First World International Studies Conference which took place in Istanbul at Bilgi University, 24–27 August 2005.
Iodine Deficiency Disorders

Iodine deficiency disorders are among the most significant public health problems in the world at the present time, especially among children and pregnant women, considered the highest risk population. These disorders hinder socio-economic development in the affected areas. IDD are a permanent natural occurrence that affects the entire planet, which means that the people living in iodine-deficient areas will always be exposed to the consequences of that deficiency, in particular increased perinatal mortality, mental retardation and brain developmental delay. Consequently, it is the major cause of preventable brain damage in childhood, and its elimination is one of the biggest challenges in public health. Iodine is present in small amounts in the body and its main role is to act as the substrate for thyroid hormone synthesis. When dietary requirements are not met, the frequency of IDD increases. In general, these disorders are underdiagnosed and, in many countries, there is no awareness of the associated problems or of the iodine status in the population. Methods: Accurate methodological review of the medical literature included in the MEDLINE database using the MeSH terms “iodine”, “disorders”, “iodide”, “deficiency”, combined with the logical operators “AND”, “OR” and “NOT” and the “also try” characteristic of data published in “any date”, limiting the search to results including the link with abstracts and full text, exclusively in humans and regardless of gender. For the preliminary evaluation, the following types of studies were selected: clinical trials, meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials, clinical practice guidelines, and review articles. The search was limited to papers published in English, and related to the population between 0 and 18, and adults 19 and over, from January 1974 to November 2014.
Neonatal Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials Are Affected by Clinical Conditions Occurring in Early Prematurity

Purpose: Cortical auditory evoked potentials may serve as an early indicator of developmental problems in the auditory cortex. The aim of the study was to determine the effect on neonatal cortical auditory processing of clinical conditions occurring in early prematurity. Methods: Sixty-seven preterm infants born at 29 weeks mean gestational age (range, 23–34 weeks) were recorded at a mean postconception age of 35 weeks, before discharge from the third level neonatal intensive care unit. The average of 330 responses to standard 1000 Hz pure tones delivered in an oddball paradigm was recorded at frontal location. Data of 45 of 67 recruited premature infants were available for analysis. Mean amplitudes calculated from the data points of 30 milliseconds centered on P1 and N2 peaks in the waveforms of each subject were measured. The effect of perinatal clinical factors on cortical auditory evoked responses was evaluated. Results: The amplitude of P1 component was significantly lower in infants with bronco-pulmonary dysplasia (P = 0.004) and retinopathy of prematurity (P = 0.03). The multivariate analysis, done to evaluate the relative weight of gestational age and bronco-pulmonary dysplasia and/or retinopathy of prematurity on cortical auditory evoked potentials components, showed an effect of clinical factors on P1 (P = 0.005) and of gestational age on N2 (P = 0.02). Conclusions: Cortical auditory processing seems to be influenced by clinical conditions complicating extremely preterm birth.
PP and PR interval variations in pediatric subjects being evaluated for obstructive sleep apnea

This work considers measures of RR, as a surrogate to the PP inrerval, and PR intervals in pediatric subjects with mildkevere obstructive sleep apnea, and control subjects. Analysis is carried out in a total of 50 subjects (ages 1-16 y, mean 8.7), of which 22 are control (AH1 0.06 +/-a. I3), I7 are mild, and I I are severe. A range of time domain features of RR and PR intervals were considered, with six measures showing statistical diyerences between control and apneic subjects. Spectral features (low frequency component of RR, and high frequency component of PR) also provided statistically significant differences between classes. Further time domain analysis was carried out by calculating the average RR and PR interval sequences in response to an obstructive event. The average RR sequence contained the well-known bradycardidtachycardia swing. However, in most obstructive sleep apnea subjects (2 I out of 28), the average PR sequence was out of phase with the RR pattern, indicative of a predominance of refractory effects in setting the AV condu.ction time in these subjects.
Convergent Inference with Leaky Joins

Over the past decade, a class of model database engines like BayesStore, MauveDB, and numerous others have emerged, allowing users to interact with probabilistic graphical models through queries. A key task for model databases, computing marginal probabilities grows exponentially in the complexity of the graph. Although exact solutions are feasible for smaller graphs, for larger graphs approximation techniques are required. Selecting an approach, whether approximate or exact, can be difficult for the wide range of models that a model database might be expected to handle. In this paper, we avoid this selection process by exploring algorithms that gracefully degrade from exact to approximate results through a standard technique known as online aggregation. We identify a mathematical construct from cryptography called a linear congruential generator, and show how it can be used as part of a convergent inference algorithm (CIA). We discuss lessons learned in trying to make CIAs scalable, and introduce a novel algorithm called leaky joins, that permits efficient, convergent online aggregation over graphical models. We conclude with experiments that demonstrate the utility of leaky joins for convergent inference: On both synthetic and real world bayes nets, leaky joins converge to exact marginal probabilities almost as fast as the state of the art Variable Elimination algorithm, while simultaneously achieving approximations that are almost as good as state of the art approximation algorithms.
Intraorganizational Influence

This study explored the influence of communication networks on job-related opinions in a public organization. Theoretical discussion pointed out that opinions of one’s own work and opinions of the organization represent two types of job-related opinions that might be differently attuned to social influence. Moreover, discussion of social influence mechanisms has suggested that current measurement of positional social influence suffers from a serious conceptual problem. According to the empirical results, job-related opinions were affected by social influence after controlling for other relevant variables. Opinions of the organization were more vulnerable to social influence than opinions of one’s own work. Structural equivalence was the most prominent mechanism of social influence. This study offers an alternative method of measuring positional social influence.
Levodopa vs . deep brain stimulation : computational models of treatments for Parkinson ' s disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease affecting the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta, which alters the neurodynamics of the brain by decreasing the ability of the basal ganglia to faithfully translate motor cortex signals. Levodopa is a pharmaceutical used to treat PD which is converted to dopamine after crossing the blood brain barrier. The project expands upon a simplified model of the basal ganglia developed by David Terman & Jonathan Rubin (2004) in order to study the neurodynamics of levodopa treatment on a patient with PD. The results are compared to those of a PD model studying the effects of high frequency deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus.
GENDER, CLASS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY IN PROFESSIONAL SAILING

Although the America's Cup, sailing's most prestigious international race, is nearly 150 years old, it was not until 1995 that the first women competed in it. Using feminist theory, it is suggested that female athletes have been barred from competition because sport has been constructed on the basis of men's rather than women's physical abilities. In particular, the unnecessary structuring of the crew position of grinder to emphasize upper-body strength has largely excluded women from a sport that does not inherently favor either men's or women's bodies. It is argued that sailing has been used as a site for demonstrating masculinity among sailing's upper- and middle-class, male participants. As such, the participation of women in sailing challenges perceptions of the `natural superiority' of male athletes and calls into question both the masculinity of male sailors and sailing itself.
Implementation of the cloud computing on the real-time sewing path designing system

Broidery CAD software has been widely used in the sewing pattern design by the broidery industry. All the Broidery CAD software is installed onto the computer of the swing machine company that offers the designing tool solely for the sewing pattern designer. The users of the swing machine are rejected by using the pattern design software due to no connection between the sewing machine and the computer loaded with the broidery CAD software. The swing machine users can not obtain the instant response from the broidery company. In this study, we propose an integrating real-time sewing path designing system that based on the concept of the cloud computing to allow different sewing machine users with different operating system to be able to connect to the company server to either retrieve the sewing path data or upload the new swing image or pattern by the Internet communication. The proposed system includes an application server that will perform the calculation function of converting the user desired sewing pattern into the sewing path and the stitch coordinates that can be fed into the sewing machine. The proposed system will change the conventional single-directional way of using the sewing pattern design process. By the cloud computing server, multiple users can share the sewing path data and modify the existing sewing path in the real-time manner. This provides a new way to solve the problem with no communication between designer and user and offer a creative way to enhance the functionality of the broidery machine.
Post-Secondary Enrollment: A New Frontier in Recruitment and Retention

This study examined the experiences of students who are enrolled in high school and college simultaneously, a growing phenomenon known as dual-enrollment. Using qualitative methods, the study examined such elements of dual-enrollment as why students chose to enroll in high school and college at the same time, how they perceived the college environment, and what they reported as benefits from this experience. None of the participants indicated that the institutions they attended made any effort to retain them as full time students after they completed high school, presumably missed opportunities for the post-secondary institutions included in the study. Building on the students' experiences, recommendations for retaining these students are suggested.
e-PAR

There is increasing interest in `moving upstream' in youth health promotion efforts to focus on building youth self-esteem, self-efficacy and civic engagement. Participatory Action Research (PAR) can be a powerful mechanism for galvanizing youth to become active agents of this change. Engaging youth in PAR and health promotion, however, is not always an easy task. This article describes a model (e-PAR) for using technology and Participatory Action Research to engage youth in community health promotion. The e-PAR Model was developed iteratively in collaboration with 57 youth and five community partners through seven projects. The Model is designed to be used with a group of youth working with a facilitator within a youth-serving organization. In addition to outlining the theoretical basis of the e-PAR Model, this article provides an overview of how the Model was developed along with implications for practice and research.