Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detection of building regions using airborne LiDAR : a new combination of raster and point cloud based GIS methods

In this paper, a new GIS workflow for fully automated building detection from airborne LiDAR data is introduced. The strengths of both raster and point cloud based methods are combined, in order to derive reliable building candidate regions serving as input for 3D building outline extraction and modeling algorithms. Input data are a normalized Digital Surface Model (nDSM) and a slope-adaptive echo ratio raster, which is a significant parameter for solid objects with low surface roughness, such as buildings. In contrast, high vegetation exhibits a local vertical distribution of laser echoes leading to a low echo ratio value. Potential building areas are detected in the raster domain using standard tools provided by GRASS GIS. Seed regions are identified by using a threshold on (i) object height >2.0 m and (ii) echo ratio >75 %. The following growing of the seed regions provides that building walls, overhanging roof parts, and areas obstructed by high vegetation are included. Finally, non-building regions are removed by an object-based classification using a threshold on average laser point surface roughness. The presented candidate region detection achieves high completeness (>97 %) with already moderate correctness (>70 %). By applying an existing 3D building outline extraction and modeling algorithm, the applicability of the derived candidate building regions is demonstrated.
Naps in school can enhance the duration of declarative memories learned by adolescents

Sleep helps the consolidation of declarative memories in the laboratory, but the pro-mnemonic effect of daytime naps in schools is yet to be fully characterized. While a few studies indicate that sleep can indeed benefit school learning, it remains unclear how best to use it. Here we set out to evaluate the influence of daytime naps on the duration of declarative memories learned in school by students of 10–15 years old. A total of 584 students from 6th grade were investigated. Students within a regular classroom were exposed to a 15-min lecture on new declarative contents, absent from the standard curriculum for this age group. The students were then randomly sorted into nap and non-nap groups. Students in the nap group were conducted to a quiet room with mats, received sleep masks and were invited to sleep. At the same time, students in the non-nap group attended regular school classes given by their usual teacher (Experiment I), or English classes given by another experimenter (Experiment II). These 2 versions of the study differed in a number of ways. In Experiment I (n = 371), students were pre-tested on lecture-related contents before the lecture, were invited to nap for up to 2 h, and after 1, 2, or 5 days received surprise tests with similar content but different wording and question order. In Experiment II (n = 213), students were invited to nap for up to 50 min (duration of a regular class); surprise tests were applied immediately after the lecture, and repeated after 5, 30, or 110 days. Experiment I showed a significant ~10% gain in test scores for both nap and non-nap groups 1 day after learning, in comparison with pre-test scores. This gain was sustained in the nap group after 2 and 5 days, but in the non-nap group it decayed completely after 5 days. In Experiment II, the nap group showed significantly higher scores than the non-nap group at all times tested, thus precluding specific conclusions. The results suggest that sleep can be used to enhance the duration of memory contents learned in school.
1 Technology and Industry Evolution

Scholars across a range of disciplines have found the life cycle metaphor useful in describing the evolution of industries. Subsequent to the first commercialization of a product, industries are seen to go through a progression that has substantial regularities in the time trends of key variables, such as number of firms, sales, price, and innovation patterns. Although life cycle models apply to a broad range of settings, our focus in this chapter is on the relationship between technological and industry evolution, two processes that we posit are inextricably linked. We begin by developing stylized observations about technology and industry development – that is, a generic industry life cycle model, building on empirical work from three areas of the literature: technology management, evolutionary economics, and organizational ecology. We then compare and contrast these literatures and finally propose a future research agenda motivated by this comparison. For purposes of exposition, we distinguish three stages of evolution – emergence/ growth, shakeout, and maturity1 – to describe the basic model put forth in the literature (Table 1.1). In the initial stage, high levels of uncertainty permeate every aspect of an industry. Firms experiment with a variety of technologies, since the performance trajectory of different technologies is unclear. Customers have undeveloped preferences and explore a range of product uses. The market is small and production processes are not specialized, so manufacturing is inefficient. Some industries never progress beyond emergence, but those that do generally experience
Position Paper, Tagging, Taxonomy, Flickr, Article, ToRead

In recent years, tagging systems have become increasingly popular. These systems enable users to add keywords (i.e., “tags”) to Internet resources (e.g., web pages, images, videos) without relying on a controlled vocabulary. Tagging systems have the potential to improve search, spam detection, reputation systems, and personal organization while introducing new modalities of social communication and opportunities for data mining. This potential is largely due to the social structure that underlies many of the current systems. Despite the rapid expansion of applications that support tagging of resources, tagging systems are still not well studied or understood. In this paper, we provide a short description of the academic related work to date. We offer a model of tagging systems, specifically in the context of web-based systems, to help us illustrate the possible benefits of these tools. Since many such systems already exist, we provide a taxonomy of tagging systems to help inform their analysis and design, and thus enable researchers to frame and compare evidence for the sustainability of such systems. We also provide a simple taxonomy of incentives and contribution models to inform potential evaluative frameworks. While this work does not present comprehensive empirical results, we present a preliminary study of the photo-sharing and tagging system Flickr to demonstrate our model and explore some of the issues in one sample system. This analysis helps us outline and motivate possible future directions of research in tagging systems.
Financial Distress Prediction in Emerging Market: Empirical Evidences from Iran

Method and apparatus are disclosed for mounting a flexible film semiconductor chip carrier on a second level electronic package. The resulting electronic packaging structure includes electrically conductive spacers, such as solder balls or solder coated copper balls, which electrically interconnect outer lead bonding pads on the flexible film semiconductor chip carrier and corresponding bonding pads on the second level electronic package, and which physically support the flexible film of the semiconductor chip carrier substantially in a plane above the surface of the second level electronic package. This electronic packaging structure is made using a special assembly fixture comprising a base plate, a pressure insert with a resilient member, and a top plate. The flexible film semiconductor chip carrier with the spacers attached thereto is placed over the resilient member of the pressure insert which is clamped together with the second level electronic package between the top and base plates. Then, this assembly is heated to reflow the solder of the spacers, and the assembly fixture is disassembled, leaving the flexible film semiconductor chip carrier mounted on the second level electronic package with the flexible film of the carrier having a planar geometry as desired. The spacers may be attached to the flexible film semiconductor chip carrier using a special template having a pattern of openings corresponding to the pattern of outer lead bonding pads on the flexible film semiconductor chip carrier.
Lip Syncronisation Based on Wave Patterns

This report contains a short introduction to the basic elements relevant to the topic of lip synchronization as well a general explanation of the idea behind it and attempts to conclude whether it would be possible to implement a fully automated tool for lip synchronization between a arbitrary voice file and an animated head. It then presents 2 different approaches to the speech processing problem, one utilizing the traditional approach of Hidden Markov models and another using Linear Predicative Analysis. A look at the possible implementation of the facial mimics is analyzed as well and in addition to this an evaluation of the products currently on the market is carried out. Based on these things it can be concluded that a fully automated tool for lip synchronization can be implemented and is currently in existence on the market but depending on what the needs are the question of whether an in house implementation should be un-dertaken or an off the shelf product would be viable does not yield a conclusive answer. In essence the choice stands between the 2 commercial products LifeStudio:HEAD, Lipsync 2.0 and an in house implementation of the LP based method with a parameterized approach to the facial animation.
I/O cost minimization: reachability queries processing over massive graphs

Given a directed graph G, a reachability query (u, v) asks whether there exists a path from a node u to a node v in G. The existing studies support reachability queries using indexing techniques, where both the graph and the index are required to reside in main memory. However, they cannot handle reachability queries on massive graphs, when the graph and the index cannot be entirely held in memory because of the high I/O cost. In this paper, we focus on how to minimize the I/O cost when answering reachability queries on massive graphs that cannot reside entirely in memory. First, we propose a new Yes-Label scheme, as a complement of the No-Label used in GRAIL [23], to reduce the number of intermediate results generated. Second, we show how to minimize the number of I/Os using a heap-on-disk data structure when traversing a graph. We also propose new methods to partition the heap-on-disk, in order to ensure that only sequential I/Os are performed. Third, we analyze our approaches and show how to extend our approaches to answer multiple reachability queries effectively. Finally, we conducted extensive performance studies on both large synthetic and large real graphs, and confirm the efficiency of our approaches.
Phosphoinositide-dependent Kinase Phosphorylation of Protein Kinase C Apl II Increases during Intermediate Facilitation inAplysia *

Phosphorylation of protein kinase Cs (PKCs) by phosphoinositide-dependent kinase I (PDK) is critical for PKC activity. In the nervous system of the marine molluskAplysia, there are only two major PKC isoforms, the calcium-activated PKC Apl I and the calcium-independent PKC Apl II, and both PKCs are persistently activated during intermediate memory. We monitored the PDK-dependent phosphorylation of PKC Apl I and PKC Apl II using phosphopeptide antibodies. During persistent activation of PKCs in Aplysia neurons, there is a significant increase in the amount of PDK-phosphorylated PKC Apl II in the particulate fraction but no increase in the amount of PKC Apl I phosphorylated by PDK. PDK phosphorylation of PKCs was not sensitive to inhibitors of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, PKC, or expression of a kinase-inactive PDK. Localization of PDK-phosphorylated PKC Apl II using immunocytochemistry revealed an enrichment of phosphorylated PKC Apl II at the plasma membrane. These data suggest that increased PDK phosphorylation of PKC Apl II is important for persistent kinase activation.
A Scientific Assessment of Sociodemographic Factors, Physical Activity Level, and Nutritional Knowledge as Determinants of Dietary Quality among Indo-Mauritian Women

A healthy diet is of particular concern throughout the life of women to avoid many chronic illnesses especially during their 30s to 50s. There are published data on dietary quality and its determinants among women, but there is a lack of similar data regarding women in Mauritius. This study aimed to investigate the association between age and dietary quality in relation to sociodemographic factors, physical activity level (PAL) and nutritional knowledge (NK). A survey-based study was conducted in 2012 among Indo-Mauritian women including 117 young (21.35 ± 1.98), 160 reaching middle age (34.02 ± 5.09) and 50 middle-aged (37.85 ± 8.32). Validated questionnaires were used to elicit information on the determinants. A food frequency table consisting of 18 food items was used to assess dietary quality. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the association between various factors and dietary quality. The mean dietary score of middle-aged women (18.70 ± 2.67) was closer to recommended dietary guidelines compared to young women (17.22 ± 3.40), and women reaching middle age (17.55 ± 3.29). Educational level, PAL, NK, and age were main determinants of dietary quality among Indo-Mauritian women (P < 0.05). Younger women with low educational level, PAL, and NK are at risk of poor dietary quality.
External Compton Radiation from Rapid Nonthermal Flares in Blazars

In this paper we extend our approach to modeling multifrequency emission variability from blazars to include external radiation Compton (ERC) emission and electron energy losses from inverse Compton scattering of seed photons originating outside the jet. We consider seed photon emission from a dusty molecular torus and the broad-line region (BLR) surrounding the central engine. We establish constraints on the properties of the molecular torus and BLR under which synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission dominates such that the results obtained in our previous paper are applicable. The focus of this study is on relative time delays between the light curves observed at different frequencies. For definiteness, we consider emission resulting from a collision between relativistic shocks, but the results apply more generally to conditions involving acceleration of relativistic electrons and/or magnetic field amplification at any type of front. Unlike SSC emission, ERC flares involving a constant field of seed photons are not delayed by light-travel time of the seed photons. The main cause of delays is from radiative energy losses, which result in frequency stratification behind the front and quench the flare first at the highest frequencies, then progressing to lower frequencies as time advances. However, if the spectrum of electrons injected at the shock front is characterized by a relatively high value of the minimum energy (a Lorentz factor γmin ~ 100 is sufficient), the ERC flare in the X-ray band can be delayed and may even peak after the injection has ceased. This effect is strongly frequency dependent, with a longer lag at lower frequencies and an X-ray spectral index that changes rapidly from positive (inverted spectrum) to steep values.
Realisability for Induction and Coinduction with Applications to Constructive Analysis

We prove the correctness of a formalised realisability interpretation of ex- tensions of first-order theories by inductive and coinductive definitions in an untyped λ-calculus with fixed-points. We illustrate the use of this interpretation for program extraction by some simple examples in the area of exact real number computation and hint at further non-trivial applications in computable analysis.
E-Newspaper classification and distribution based on user profiles and thesaurus.

Electronic mail offers the promise of rapid and primary communication of essential information. It becomes important to correctly use this technology as tool for sending an electronic version of the daily newspaper to the subscribers taking in our account their profiles. In this paper, we describe how a thesaurus-based system can simplify this task. This system provides the functions to index and retrieve a collection of E-mail messages based on thesaurus to create user profiles. The thesaurus is used not only for indexing and retrieving messages, but also for classifying E-Newspaper articles. By automatically indexing the daily newspaper articles using a thesaurus, the system can easily selects relevant E-Newspaper articles according to user profile and send an E-Mail message to the readers containing them. I. INTRODUCTION ith the advent of the World Wide Web, access to newspapers throughout the world has been revolutionized. For instance, international newspapers that may take weeks to arrive at the university, office or home can now be read over the Web the same day they are published. In addition, a far greater variety of newspapers are available over the Web than can be offered by one library. Bear in mind, however, that electronic newspapers accessible over the web have limitations: the entire print issue is rarely available, and advertisements, the classified pages, and items of local interest are often omitted; usually only the most recent issue (or the most recent week) can be electronically accessed, previous weeks, months, and years of the paper are usually not retained on the web; and the trend seems to be that more and more digital newspapers can be accessed only through a paid subscription, similar to that of a print newspaper. That we are in the age of information is evident quite clearly in newspapers as an information source. Nearly everywhere you can have newspapers delivered to your doorstep, each with hundreds of new articles each day. Nearly everywhere in
Student Governance: A Qualitative Study of Leadership in a Student Government Association

STUDENT GOVERNANCE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF LEADERSHIP IN A STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION by Walter P. May Student governance has been in existence as an integral part of higher education almost since the founding of the first college in colonial America. However, little is understood about the lived experience of students involved in student governance, and specifically those who participate in leadership positions within student government organizations such as the student government president. Therefore, the primary purposes of this study are to highlight experiences of students who served as presidents of a liberal arts college’s student government association and to examine the meanings these individuals construct out of their leadership experiences. This study employed qualitative methods, which included in-depth, open-ended, semi-structured interviews and journaling. The sample was made up of six students who served as student government association presidents at a small, private, liberal-arts college. From the data derived through the interview and journaling processes, an overall picture of the experiences of the participants and the meanings that the participants construct of their experiences was drawn. Based on the results, several themes regarding the participants’ experiences as student government presidents emerged from the data, which include: positive and negative facets of their presidencies, stress as a substantial element during their time in office, dissimilar experiences of women and minority students, varied experiences regarding relationships and conflicts with members of the campus community, the multiple roles required of a student government president, and personal approaches to leadership that a student government president must possess and hone. Conclusions based on the data were included and implications for student affairs practitioners were discussed as well as recommendations for further study were made. STUDENT GOVERNANCE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF LEADERSHIP IN A STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION by Walter P. May
Evidence in Managing the Learning Experience

Quality systems in general rely on the availability of appropriate evidence to permit the development of continuous improvement schemes. Practical service in managing the learning experience has highlighted the rich variety of sources of information available to the HE manager. Time basis has a critical importance in control, and the cycles of evidence collection occurs across the year are of variable value in terms of critique and analysis. The importance of formal mechanisms for quantitative and qualitative data collection are well established, but some of the use of such data is open to question, particularly where statistics are applied for small samples. The informal mechanisms are no less important, and can offer both short cycle opportunities for practical intervention and long-term quality improvements based on professionalism and systematic developments that are often not captured in the formal reporting cycles. The implications of typical problems and the value of the evidence sources within the context of likely use are assessed, with corrective actions indicated. The role of perception, and particularly of the setting and meeting of expectations, and the complexities arising from prior beliefs, is emphasised. Quality evidence is a matter of signposts for investigation; successful improvement of correct interpretation.
Half-Fan-Based Intensity-Weighted Region-of-Interest Imaging for Low-Dose Cone-Beam CT in Image-Guided Radiation Therapy

Objectives With the increased use of computed tomography (CT) in clinics, dose reduction is the most important feature people seek when considering new CT techniques or applications. We developed an intensity-weighted region-of-interest (IWROI) imaging method in an exact half-fan geometry to reduce the imaging radiation dose to patients in cone-beam CT (CBCT) for image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). While dose reduction is highly desirable, preserving the high-quality images of the ROI is also important for target localization in IGRT. Methods An intensity-weighting (IW) filter made of copper was mounted in place of a bowtie filter on the X-ray tube unit of an on-board imager (OBI) system such that the filter can substantially reduce radiation exposure to the outer ROI. In addition to mounting the IW filter, the lead-blade collimation of the OBI was adjusted to produce an exact half-fan scanning geometry for a further reduction of the radiation dose. The chord-based rebinned backprojection-filtration (BPF) algorithm in circular CBCT was implemented for image reconstruction, and a humanoid pelvis phantom was used for the IWROI imaging experiment. Results The IWROI image of the phantom was successfully reconstructed after beam-quality correction, and it was registered to the reference image within an acceptable level of tolerance. Dosimetric measurements revealed that the dose is reduced by approximately 61% in the inner ROI and by 73% in the outer ROI compared to the conventional bowtie filter-based half-fan scan. Conclusions The IWROI method substantially reduces the imaging radiation dose and provides reconstructed images with an acceptable level of quality for patient setup and target localization. The proposed half-fan-based IWROI imaging technique can add a valuable option to CBCT in IGRT applications.
Educating the Reflective School Leader*

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of the nature of reflective practice and an argument for emphasizing reflective practice in the preparation and professional development of school leaders. The authors argue that professional preparation that develops reflective practice is one way to resolve the theory-practice dichotomy and to improve professional practice. Further, they assert that preparation programs have the instructional methodologies that encourage and nurture reflection on the messy problems of practice.