Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Family size and children’s education in Vietnam

Data from the nationally representative 1994 Inter-Censal Demographic Survey are used to examine the association between family size and children s schooling in Vietnam. The data provide information on several education measures for all children over age 10, including children no longer residing in the household. Although a clear inverse bivariate association between family size and children s school attendance and educational attainment is evident, multivariate analysis controlling for urban/rural residence, region, parents’ education, household wealth, and child’s age, reveals that much of this association, especially that predicting educational attainment, is attributable to these other influences. Moreover, much of the effect that remains after statistical adjustment for the other influences is seen mainly at the largest family sizes. We consider the implications of these findings for current population policy in Vietnam and the possible features of the Vietnamese context that might account for the modest association.
Linear Text Segmentation Using Affinity Propagation

This paper presents a new algorithm for linear text segmentation. It is an adaptation of Affinity Propagation, a state-of-the-art clustering algorithm in the framework of factor graphs. Affinity Propagation for Segmentation, or APS, receives a set of pairwise similarities between data points and produces segment boundaries and segment centres -- data points which best describe all other data points within the segment. APS iteratively passes messages in a cyclic factor graph, until convergence. Each iteration works with information on all available similarities, resulting in high-quality results. APS scales linearly for realistic segmentation tasks. We derive the algorithm from the original Affinity Propagation formulation, and evaluate its performance on topical text segmentation in comparison with two state-of-the art segmenters. The results suggest that APS performs on par with or outperforms these two very competitive baselines.
Assessing the Cognitive Complexity of Information Needs

Information retrieval systems can be evaluated in laboratory settings through the use of user studies, and through the use of test collections and effectiveness metrics. In a larger investigation we are exploring the extent to which individual user differences and behaviours can affect the scores generated by a retrieval system. Our objective in the first phase of that project is to define information need statements corresponding to a range of TREC search tasks, and to categorise those statements in terms of task complexity. The goal is to reach a position from which we can determine whether user actions while searching are influenced by the way the information need is expressed, and by the fundamental nature of the information need. We describe the process used to create information need statements, and then report inter- and intra-assessor agreements across four annotators. We conclude that assessing the relative cognitive complexity of tasks is a complex activity, even for experienced annotators.
The contact allergen nickel sensitizes primary human endothelial cells and keratinocytes to TRAIL-mediated apoptosis

Primary endothelial cells are fully resistant to TNF‐related apoptosis‐inducing ligand (TRAIL)‐mediated apoptosis. Here, we demonstrate that certain environmental conditions, such as exposure to the widespread allergen nickel, can dramatically increase the susceptibility of naturally resistant primary endothelial cells or keratinocytes to TRAIL‐induced apoptosis. While nickel treatment increased surface expression of the apoptosis‐inducing TRAIL receptors TRAIL‐R1 and TRAIL‐R2, it also up‐regulated the apoptosis‐deficient TRAIL‐R4, suggesting that modulation of TRAIL receptor expression alone is unlikely to fully account for the dramatic sensitization effect of nickel. Further analysis of candidate mediators revealed that nickel strongly repressed c‐FLIP at mRNA and protein levels. Accordingly, increased activation of Caspase‐8 and Caspase‐3 following nickel treatment was observed. Importantly, depletion of c‐FLIP by RNA interference could largely recapitulate the effect of nickel and sensitize endothelial cells to TRAIL‐dependent apoptosis in the absence of nickel pre‐treatment. Conversely, ectopic expression of c‐FLIPL largely protected nickel‐treated cells from TRAIL‐mediated apoptosis. Our data demonstrate that one key mechanism of sensitization of primary human endothelial cells or keratinocytes is transcriptional down‐regulation of c‐FLIP. We hypothesize that environmental factors, exemplified by the contact allergen nickel, strongly modulate death ligand sensitivity of endothelial cells and keratinocytes thus influencing vascular and epidermal function and integrity under physiological and pathophysiological conditions.
Enhanced design of filterless class-D audio amplifier

In this work, we propose an enhanced design method for filterless class-D audio amplifier based on multilevel architecture. The multilevel technique consists of a multilevel converter and a time division adder followed by modulator. In this method, the modulated signal is arranged into several time divisions and then be integrated into a binary numeric. After that, the binary numeric is encoded to be a set of parallel control signal for multilevel converter. The multilevel converter will deliver multilevel signal to loudspeaker instead of conventional two-level signals. Consequently, improve the total-harmonic-distortion (THD) and signal-noise-ratio (SNR) significantly without sacrificing power efficiency. Moreover, we can apply the proposed method to many class-D amplifier designs simply insert a time division adder behind modulator and replace output stage with multilevel converter.
Morphing Planar Graph Drawings with Unidirectional Moves

Alamdari et al. showed that given two straight-line planar drawings of a graph, there is a morph between them that preserves planarity and consists of a polynomial number of steps where each step is a \emph{linear morph} that moves each vertex at constant speed along a straight line. An important step in their proof consists of converting a \emph{pseudo-morph} (in which contractions are allowed) to a true morph. Here we introduce the notion of \emph{unidirectional morphing} step, where the vertices move along lines that all have the same direction. Our main result is to show that any planarity preserving pseudo-morph consisting of unidirectional steps and contraction of low degree vertices can be turned into a true morph without increasing the number of steps. Using this, we strengthen Alamdari et al.'s result to use only unidirectional morphs, and in the process we simplify the proof.
Single-Plane Dual-Modality Tomography for Multiphase Flow Imaging by Integrating Electrical Capacitance and Ultrasonic Sensors

This paper presents an experimental study of a single-plane dual-modality tomography (DMT) system integrating electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) and ultrasonic tomography (UT) for water–oil–gas three-phase flow imaging. The soft-field (ECT) and hard-field (UT) systems measure different physical parameters, making them both a fine combination in complementing each system’s limitations. The DMT system consists of 16 units of customized ECT sensors and 16 units of UT transducers, which are composited on a single-plane arrangement to perform concurrent measurement. A finite-element method is used to model and study its feasibility and performance before engaging with the actual hardware. The DMT system is carried out on a vertical test column and horizontal stratified flow to obtain sensor data from each modality by inspection of separate tomographic image using linear back-projection (LBP) image reconstruction algorithm and convolution back projection with Gaussian filtering (CBPF). A fuzzy logic pixel fusion method is used for image fusion process. To evaluate the reconstructed images, the mean structural similarity index (MSSIM) method and the mutual information method (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$M_{F})$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are employed on both the LBP and CBPF image results. The analysis and assessments proved that the CBPF method has successfully improvised the image results and thus has better MSSIM rating and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$M_{F}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> over the LBP method with an enhancement up to 12.55% and 8.92%, respectively.
Learning-Based Cell Selection Method for Femtocell Networks

In open-access non-stationary femtocell networks, cellular users (also known as macro users or MU) may join, through a handover procedure, one of the neighboring femtocells so as to enhance their communications/increase their respective channel capacities. To avoid frequent communication disruptions owing to effects such as the ping-pong effect, it is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the cell selection method. Traditionally, such selection method is usually a measured channel/cell quality metric such as the channel capacity, the load of the candidate cell, the received signal strength (RSS), etc. However, one problem with such approaches is that present measured performance does not necessarily reflect the future performance, thus the need for novel cell selection that can predict the \textit{horizon}. Subsequently, we present in this paper a reinforcement learning (RL), i.e, Q- learning algorithm, as a generic solution for the cell selection problem in a non-stationary femtocell network. After comparing our solution for cell selection with different methods in the literature (least loaded (LL), random and capacity-based), simulation results demonstrate the benefits of using learning in terms of the gained capacity and the number of handovers.
Developing a Community of Practice to Support Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Nature of Science Instruction

This study explored ‘To what extent will preservice teachers with adequate nature of science (NOS) conceptions and who participate in a community supporting NOS instruction teach NOS in their internship settings? ’ Using a combination of focus group discussions and peer feedback, five preservice teachers met with university personnel bi-monthly during their internships to share NOS teaching and assessment ideas and ask questions. Field notes and voice recordings were used to track conversations at focus group settings and videotapes were made of science instruction in each internship setting. None of the preservice teachers had cooperating teachers who taught NOS, yet results showed that all five preservice teachers were able to explicitly teach NOS in their science lessons, albeit in different ways and to different degrees.
Directing JavaScript with arrows

JavaScript programmers make extensive use of event-driven programming to help build responsive web applications. However, standard approaches to sequencing events are messy, and often lead to code that is difficult to understand and maintain. We have found that arrows, a generalization of monads, are an elegant solution to this problem. Arrows allow us to easily write asynchronous programs in small, modular units of code, and flexibly compose them in many different ways, while nicely abstracting the details of asynchronous program composition. In this paper, we present Arrowlets, a new JavaScript library that offers arrows to the everyday JavaScript programmer. We show how to use Arrowlets to construct a variety of state machines, including state machines that branch and loop. We also demonstrate how Arrowlets separate computation from composition with examples such as a drag-and-drop handler and a bubblesort animation.
Prediction of Outcome in Borderline Personality Disorder

In order to study outcome heterogeneity in borderline personality disorder (BPD), the author performed correlations of more than 50 predictor variables with 7 independent outcome dimensions, assessed at a mean of 14 years after the index hospitalization, in a group of 33 BPD patients selected for minimal comorbidity with affective illness, substance dependence, or other personality disorders. Predictors are reported that achieved statistical significance, generally across multiple outcome dimensions. Results suggest that outcome prediction in BPD differs from outcome prediction in schizophrenia. A history of parental divorce, long duration of prior hospitalization, and the presence of specific personality disorder criteria predicted poor outcome in BPD. The presence of self-destructive acts during the index treatment predicted good outcome.
The Reproducibility of the 4 mmol/l Lactate Threshold in Trained and Untrained Women

Lactate threshold measurements are part of the routine testing done for training and diagnostic purposes. The reproducibility of the 4 mmol.l-1 threshold has, however, rarely been investigated. Twenty-seven untrained and 10 endurance-trained females each performed two incremental spiroergometric treadmill tests at 5% grade, with three-minute speed increase intervals. Running speed at the threshold increased from 1.9 to 2.1 m.sec-1 in the untrained and remained constant at 3.4 m.sec-1 in the trained group. Heart frequency and oxygen uptake did not change significantly in either group. The variability of changes between untrained individuals expressed by correlation coefficients was r = 0.63 for oxygen uptake, 0.55 for running speed and 0.42 for heart frequency. These figures for the trained persons were r = 0.61; 0.92 and 0.88 respectively. The higher reproducibility of the anaerobic threshold in trained women supports the high value attached to the anaerobic threshold in training guidance. For untrained women, training recommendations of the basis of treadmill tests must consider treadmill running speed to be 0.14m.sec-1 higher than initially achieved during the first test because of coordination problems. Training-guidance-based heart frequency must take into account a higher variability for untrained than for trained females.
Distance learning in early childhood teacher education: The experience of Pacific Oaks College

There are currently many incentives for colleges, universities, and professors of early childhood education to begin offering courses via distance education formats. Although this is only one of several technological competencies called for in present-day teacher education (Smith, Barker, Baker, & Dickson, 1996), it is the competency which advocates believe best combines elements of ease and convenience of instruction, college outreach efforts to attract more students, and an introduction to technological knowledge which is seen by many to be a fundamental skill of the teacher of the 21 t century. Distance education in early childhood teacher education, instruction which is conducted without the immediate physical presence of participants, takes many different forms. Among these number interactive and noninteractive telecommunication presentations, radio communication, and, increasingly, use of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Tong, Chiu / LAY THEORIES AND ORGANIZATION OF IMPRESSIONS Lay Theories and Evaluation-Based Organization of Impressions: An Application of the Memory Search Paradigm

People may believe that personal attributes are fixed entities that cannot be changed (hold an entity theory). Alternatively, they may believe that qualities of a person are malleable (hold an incremental theory). In the present research, the authors used Sternberg’s (1966) memory search task to examine entity and incremental theorists’ cognitive strategies in memory search. It was hypothesized that entity theorists, who have a greater tendency to make spontaneous evaluation of people, would organize impressions in short-term memory according to whether the stimulus persons are positively or negatively evaluated. Next, they might compare the probe only to the stimulus persons with matched valence or discard the ones that did not match the probe in valence. By comparison, incremental theorists, who tend not to make immediate evaluative trait judgments, should be less likely to use these evaluation-based strategies. These hypotheses were confirmed in two memory search experiments, in which the names of positive or negative persons were used as stimuli.
A marketing science perspective on recognition-based heuristics (and the fast-and-frugal paradigm)

Marketing science seeks to prescribe better marketing strategies (advertising, product development, pricing, etc.). To do so we rely on models of consumer decisions grounded in empirical observations. Field experience suggests that recognition-based heuristics help consumers to choose which brands to consider and purchase in frequently-purchased categories, but other heuristics are more relevant in durable-goods categories. Screening with recognition is a rational screening rule when advertising is a signal of product quality, when observing other consumers makes it easy to learn decision rules, and when firms react to engineering-design constraints by offering brands such that a high-level on one product feature implies a low level on another product feature. Experience with applications and field experiments suggests four fruitful research topics: deciding how to decide (endogeneity), learning decision rules by self-reflection, risk reduction, and the difference between utility functions and decision rules. These challenges also pose methodological cautions.
Contour-based 3D point cloud simplification for modeling freeform surfaces

The reconstruction of accurate freeform surface models of 3D scanned objects is a common task encountered in creating virtual reality environments for anatomical reconstruction, cartography, cultural artifact modeling, digital archaeology, infrastructure renewal, and computer-aided design. Difficulties occur in reconstructing smooth surfaces from these scanned data sets because the acquired data is very large and is often infiltrated with scanning errors. For surface reconstruction, visualization, and interactive virtual modeling, it is necessary to reduce the amount of raw scanned data. Many existing data simplification techniques are complex and not directly applicable to spline-based surface models. A novel two stage contour-based data simplification algorithm is introduced in this paper and applied to facial surface reconstruction, which may be used for human modeling for computer games or model creation for virtual museums. The first stage extracts a series of equally spaced sectioned contours directly from a dense 3D data points. In the second stage, each extracted contour is redefined as a cubic B-spline curve by reduced number of control points defined by a user defined reduction ratio. A lofted surface is finally created from these reconstructed contours. The effectiveness of the synthetic surface reconstruction algorithm is demonstrated using its deviation values from its original point cloud data set. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm generates a fairly accurate spline based facial model with only 5–20% of the actual scanned data, based upon the surface complexity. Performance can be improved by increasing the number of extracted contours, followed by a greater reduction ratio in the second data simplification stage.
Equipment Errors: A Prevalent Cause for Fallacy in Blood Pressure Recording - A Point Prevalence Estimate from an Indian Health University

Background: Blood pressure (BP) recording is the most commonly measured clinical parameter. Standing mercury sphygmomanometer is the most widely used equipment to record this. However, recording by sphygmomanometer is subject to observer and instrumental error. The different sources of equipment error are faulty manometer tube calibration, baseline deviations and improper arm bladder cuff dimensions. This is further compounded by a high prevalence of arm bladder miss-cuffing in the target population. Objectives: The study was designed to assess the presence of equipment malcalibrations, cuff miss-matching and their effect on BP recording. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional check of all operational sphygmomanometers in a health university was carried out for the length of the manometer tube, deviation of resting mercury column from “0” level, the width and length of arm bladder cuff and extent of bladder cuff-mismatch with respect to outpatient attending population. Results: From the total of 50 apparatus selected, 39 (78%) were from hospital setups and 11 (22%) from pre-clinical departments. A manometer height deficit of 13 mm was recorded in 36 (92.23%) of the equipment in hospital and 11 (100%) from pre-clinical departments. Instruments from both settings showed significant deviation from recommended dimensions in cuff bladder length, width and length to width ratio (P < 0.001). Significant number of apparatus from hospital setups showed presence of mercury manometer baseline deviation either below or above 0 mmHg at the resting state (χ2 = 5.61, D. F. = 1, P = 0.02). Positive corelationship was observed between manometer height deficit, baseline deviation and width of arm cuff bladder (Pearson correlation, P < 0.05). Bladder cuff mismatching in response to the target population was found at 48.52% for males and 36.76% for females. The cumulative effect of these factors can lead to an error in the range of 10-12 mmHg. Conclusion: Faulty equipments and prevalent arm bladder cuff-mismatching can be important barriers to accurate BP measurement.
Gray Matter Abnormalities in Schizophrenia Patients with Tardive Dyskinesia: A Magnetic Resonance Imaging Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

Objective The pathophysiological mechanism of TD remains unknown. All previous studies, using the region-of-interest method, focused on basal ganglion areas, were with inconsistent results. This whole-brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM) study investigate the grey matter abnormality of TD and its correlates with clinical ratings. Method High resolution T1-weighted brain volumetric MRI from 25 schizophrenia patients with TD (TD group), 25 age-, gender-, and handedness-matched schizophrenia patients without TD (non-TD group), and 25 matched healthy subjects (NC group) were analyzed using a VBM approach. Clinical ratings included the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS), Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS), and the Simpson-Angus Scale (SAS). Results The TD group had significantly smaller total gray matter volumes than the NC group (p = 0.05). Compared to the non-TD group, the TD group had significantly higher PANSS negative (p<0.001), SAS (p<0.001), and AIMS (p<0.001) scores; and smaller bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, which correlated negatively with the PANSS negative scores (r = −0.366, p<0.05); and smaller right superior frontal gyrus, which correlated negatively with AIMS scores (r = −0.399, p<0.001), and PANSS general score (r = −0.338, p<0.05). Limitations The cross-section design can’t separate the gray matter change to TD from the context of the illness of schizophrenia, although TD with more severe clinical psychopathology could be a phenotype. Conclusions The schizophrenia patients with TD had significantly reduced gray matter, mostly at the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and the right superior frontal gyrus, which correlated with severity of clinical symptoms and involuntary movement, respectively.