Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CODE-MIXING AND CODE CHOICE: A HONG KONG CASE STUDY . John Gibbons. Clevedon, England: Multilingual matters, 1987. Pp. ix + 173.

The topics and perspectives of these chapters in particular contribute to the representativeness of the volume and support one of the book's underlying themes, stated by the editor in the Preface: It is virtually impossible to teach language without culture. This view directly links the collection with current communicative approaches to language teaching. Since many of the diverse views presented are often contradictory, the addition of a rationale or framework for consideration of the readings would have been helpful. For example, without a frame of reference, it may be difficult for some readers to reconcile Valette's "culture tests," which check learners' mastery of cultural information in multiple-choice and short-answer items, with Osterloh's discussion of broad-based concerns for the relevance of many so-called communicative approaches to English language teaching. Similarly, a reader may ask how Brook's list of cultural items to be served up as hors d'oeuvres in the first five minutes of class can be related to Archer's focus on means of coping with the strange or uncomfortable situations that occur when individuals of different cultures interact. The inclusion of so many articles of historical significance for discussions of language and culture strongly suggests a chronological organization. Organization of the individual chapters by time of appearance would have offered a ready framework for representing the development of anthropological and sociolinguistic views of culture and its integration into language teaching from the time of Boas through the present, as in the work of Dunnett, Dubin, and Lezberg. The reader could then have traced the profession's move from regarding culture as an optional item in the curriculum to recognizing it as the very basis for expressing and interpreting meaning through language. Such an historical perspective would have helped the reader organize the vanous contradictions and consider authors' claims against earlier views. In spite of this shortcoming, the merit of this volume in providing a representative selection of historical, methodological, and philosophical viewpoints must be recognized. This text provides a basis for a clearer understanding of the role of culture in language use and for assessing developments in applications of this knowledge to language teaching practice. The reader may have to work a little to make connections, but the effort is worth the net gain in greater awareness of how far we have come and how far we have to go in bridging the cultural gap in second and foreign language teaching.
The greenhouse gas intensity and potential biofuel production capacity of maize stover harvest in the US Midwest

Agricultural residues are important sources of feedstock for a cellulosic biofuels industry that is being developed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy independence. While the US Midwest has been recognized as key to providing maize stover for meeting near‐term cellulosic biofuel production goals, there is uncertainty that such feedstocks can produce biofuels that meet federal cellulosic standards. Here, we conducted extensive site‐level calibration of the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) terrestrial ecosystems model and applied the model at high spatial resolution across the US Midwest to improve estimates of the maximum production potential and greenhouse gas emissions expected from continuous maize residue‐derived biofuels. A comparison of methodologies for calculating the soil carbon impacts of residue harvesting demonstrates the large impact of study duration, depth of soil considered, and inclusion of litter carbon in soil carbon change calculations on the estimated greenhouse gas intensity of maize stover‐derived biofuels. Using the most representative methodology for assessing long‐term residue harvesting impacts, we estimate that only 5.3 billion liters per year (bly) of ethanol, or 8.7% of the near‐term US cellulosic biofuel demand, could be met under common no‐till farming practices. However, appreciably more feedstock becomes available at modestly higher emissions levels, with potential for 89.0 bly of ethanol production meeting US advanced biofuel standards. Adjustments to management practices, such as adding cover crops to no‐till management, will be required to produce sufficient quantities of residue meeting the greenhouse gas emission reduction standard for cellulosic biofuels. Considering the rapid increase in residue availability with modest relaxations in GHG reduction level, it is expected that management practices with modest benefits to soil carbon would allow considerable expansion of potential cellulosic biofuel production.
PETS2009 and Winter-PETS 2009 results: A combined evaluation

This paper presents the results of the crowd image analysis challenge of the Winter PETS 2009 workshop. The evaluation is carried out using a selection of the metrics developed in the Video Analysis and Content Extraction (VACE) program and the CLassification of Events, Activities, and Relationships (CLEAR) consortium [13]. The evaluation highlights the detection and tracking performance of the authors' systems in areas such as precision, accuracy and robustness. The performance is also compared to the PETS 2009 submitted results.
Children's Grief Narratives in Popular Films

Children's grief narratives, conceptualized as portrayals of the grief process in children, in popular films are examined. Four films focus this study: Snow White, Bambi, The Land Before Time, and The Lion King. These films reflect a range of acknowledgment of death and descriptions of grief in their young characters. They also vary in the extent to which they are consistent with traditional models of grief that emphasize detachment and contemporary models that focus on the importance of ongoing connections with the deceased. These films are consistent in their portrayal of the availability and usefulness of support and comfort for grieving children. They are also uniform in their presentation of possibilities for hope and some forward development after loss. Use of popular films for children's death education and for grief education is discussed.
‘Poor girl’: a case of active psychosis': clinical commentary

This very interesting account of the psychoanalytic treatment of a manic depressive (bipolar) patient from a Lacanian perspective raises many questions about the possibilities of treating psychotic patients psychoanalytically. This topic has a long history, but took a signicant step when Abraham (1911) began analysing manic-depressives during periods of remission in order to explore psychic structure and possible determinants of the illness. Later, Freud (1917) himself stressed the exaggerated, unrestrained quality to the manic’s exuberance and the melancholic’s (depressive’s) grief, and pin-pointed a particular difculty in separating from the lost object. Since then, Klein (1935) has identified the management of weaning and other losses in infancy as contributing to relative vulnerability to depressive breakdown, insofar as it affects the quality of the object internalized. Her interest in manic depression eventually led to her theory of the developmental shift from the so-called paranoid-schizoid to depressive modes of mental organization in infancy (Klein 1940). Manic defences are a normal aspect of development, reecting an omnipotent attempt to deal with the threat of the loss of the object at the onset of the depressive position, when the infant comes to recognize the object as a whole object, available for relationships with somebody else. The manic-depressive patient, however, has particular difculties in negotiating the separateness of the object and the pre-genital Oedipal triangle. Omnipotent defences become delusional and self-idealizing, revolving around the patient rather than allowing independence to anybody else. The fragility of this defensive structure renders the patient vulnerable to a particularly self-absorbed kind of depression. Alternatively, the patient resorts to more primitive splitting and paranoid defences to deal with great terror of disintegration and annihilation. Eur. J. of Psychotherapy,Counselling & Health Vol 4 No 2 August 2001 pp.195–200
Low levels of HIV-1 infection in cutaneous dendritic cells promote extensive viral replication upon binding to memory CD4+ T cells

Earlier work has identified a cell population that replicates HIV-1 in the absence of standard T cell stimuli. The system consists of dendritic cells and memory T lymphocytes that emigrate from organ cultures of human skin and together support a productive infection with HIV-1. These emigrants resemble cells that can be found in mucous membranes and that normally traffic in afferent lymph. Here, we report that a low level of infection in the dendritic cell can initiate extensive HIV-1 replication in cocultures with T cells. First we extended our earlier work to larger skin specimens from cadavers. As long as the organ cultures were set up within 36 h of death, the emigrant leukocytes were comparable to cells from fresh surgical specimens in number, phenotype, and function. These mixtures of dendritic cells and T cells provided the milieu for a productive infection with several virus isolates. When purified dendritic cells were separately pulsed with virus and then mixed with T cells that had not been pulsed with HIV-1, active infection ensued. The infectivity of HIV-pulsed dendritic cells persisted for at least 1.5 d in culture, but was blocked if AZT was added during that time to block reverse transcription in the dendritic cells. The number of copies of proviral DNA in the dendritic cells corresponded to < 100 copies per 5 X 10(4) cells, but upon mixing with T cells, > 10(4) copies were found 5-7 d later. By contacting syngeneic T cells, extralymphoid depots of dendritic cells--even with a low viral burden as has been reported in vivo--may contribute to chronic HIV-1 replication in infected individuals.
Determining operational measures from multi-camera surveillance systems using soft biometrics

CCTV and surveillance networks are increasingly being used for operational as well as security tasks. One emerging area of technology that lends itself to operational analytics is soft biometrics. Soft biometrics can be used to describe a person and detect them throughout a sparse multi-camera network. This enables them to be used to perform tasks such as determining the time taken to get from point to point, and the paths taken through an environment by detecting and matching people across disjoint views. However, in a busy environment where there are 100's if not 1000's of people such as an airport, attempting to monitor everyone is highly unrealistic. In this paper we propose an average soft biometric, that can be used to identity people who look distinct, and are thus suitable for monitoring through a large, sparse camera network. We demonstrate how an average soft biometric can be used to identify unique people to calculate operational measures such as the time taken to travel from point to point.
A fast and efficient hybrid fractal-wavelet image coder

The excellent visual quality and compression rate of fractal image coding have limited applications due to exhaustive inherent encoding time. This paper presents a new fast and efficient image coder that applies the speed of the wavelet transform to the image quality of the fractal compression. Fast fractal encoding using Fisher's domain classification is applied to the lowpass subband of wavelet transformed image and a modified set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) coding, on the remaining coefficients. Furthermore, image details and wavelet progressive transmission characteristics are maintained, no blocking effects from fractal techniques are introduced, and the encoding fidelity problem common in fractal-wavelet hybrid coders is solved. The proposed scheme promotes an average of 94% reduction in encoding-decoding time comparing to the pure accelerated Fractal coding results. The simulations also compare the results to the SPIHT wavelet coding. In both cases, the new scheme improves the subjective quality of pictures for high-medium-low bitrates.
The Potential of Argument in Knowledge Building

It is a matter of quasi-consensus among argumentation researchers that engaging in argumentation sets the scene for changes in people’s views. However, the actual process by which such changes occur has not yet been entirely understood. This article represents an effort towards understanding how processes of knowledge building and transformation evolve in argumentation. To achieve this goal, it outlines a unit of analysis designed to capture the process by means of which knowledge is continuously updated through argumentation. Then, the analysis of fragments of people’s argumentation illustrates how this unit of analysis can be utilized. It also provides an account of some of the ways in which reasoning is organized in face-to-face argumentation as well as in the speaker’s own discourse.
Model-based Recursive Partitioning for Survival of Iranian Female Breast Cancer Patients: Comparing with Parametric Survival Models

Background: Precise diagnosis of disease risk factors via efficient statistical models is the primary step for reducing the heavy costs of breast cancer, as one of the most highly prevalent cancer throughout the world. Therefore, the aim of this study was to present a recently introduced statistical model in order to assess its proficiency for model fitting. Methods: The information of 1465 eligible Iranian women with breast cancer was used for this retrospective cohort study. The statistical performances of exponential, Weibull, Log-logistic and Lognormal, as the most proper parametric survival models, were evaluated and compared with ‘Model-based Recursive Partitioning’ in order to survey their capability of more relevant risk factor detection. Results: ‘Model-based Recursive Partitioning’ recognized the largest number of significant affective risk factors, whereas, all four parametric models agreed and unable to detect the effectiveness of ‘Progesterone Receptor’ as an indicator; ‘Log-Normal-based Recursive Partitioning’ could provide the paramount fit. Conclusion: The superiority of ‘Model-based Recursive Partitioning’ was ascertained; not only by its excellent fitness but also by its susceptibility for classification of individuals to homogeneous severity levels and its impressive visual intuition potentiality.
Design of Optimal 2-D Nongrid Sparse Arrays for Medical Ultrasound

Three-dimensional imaging with 2-D matrix probes is one of the most exciting recent ultrasound innovations. Unfortunately, the number of elements of a 2-D matrix probe is often very high, and reducing this number deteriorates the beam properties. In this paper, we propose a new sparse-array design technique with irregular element positioning, which significantly reduces the number of active elements as well as the grating-lobe level. In particular, we introduce a new cost function for optimizing the weighting coefficients of the elements and a new annealing-based algorithm to compute the lowest cost solutions. Numerical simulations show substantial improvements over standard sparse arrays.
Isolation of Infectious Cystic Fibrosis Patients: Results of a Systematic Review

Abstract Objective: Respiratory tract infections significantly contribute to morbidity and mortality among cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Therefore, pathogen transmission needs to be prevented. There are several guidelines for the care of CF patients, but no transparent systematic literature review has been published. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review (January 1966 to September 2004) dealing with segregation of CF patients colonized with Burkholderia cepacia species, Pandoraea species, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, or Alcaligenes species. Quality of studies was evaluated by taking patient population size, existence of control-patients, patient randomization, diagnostic approach, and bacteria typing methods into account. Results: One hundred ninety-nine studies were found. Evidence and quality of 102 publications were evaluated. In 99 publications, recommendations concerning segregation measures for infectious CF patients were determined including a total of 11,576 patients. No randomized, controlled trials had been conducted. Fifty of 56 authors strongly recommended isolation of CF patients infected with B. cepacia or Pandoraea species. In 31 of 39 studies, interpatient spread of Pseudomonas aeruginosa was documented or had been brought to an end by isolation of patients. Only five studies had addressed S. maltophilia or Alcaligenes species. Conclusions: Patients colonized with B. cepacia or Pandoraea species are to be separated from noncolonized patients in single rooms. Patients harboring multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, S. maltophilia, or Alcaligenes species may not share a room with immunocompromised patients, in intensive care units, or with other CF patients anywhere in the hospital.
Adaptation of pitch and spectrum for HMM-based speech synthesis using MLLR

Describes a technique for synthesizing speech with arbitrary speaker characteristics using speaker independent speech units, which we call "average voice" units. The technique is based on an HMM-based text-to-speech (TTS) system and maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) adaptation algorithm. In the HMM-based TTS system, speech synthesis units are modeled by multi-space probability distribution (MSD) HMMs which can model spectrum and pitch simultaneously in a unified framework. We derive an extension of the MLLR algorithm to apply it to MSD-HMMs. We demonstrate that a few sentences uttered by a target speaker are sufficient to adapt not only voice characteristics but also prosodic features. Synthetic speech generated from adapted models using only four sentences is very close to that from speaker dependent models trained using 450 sentences.
Brain tumour stem cells: possibilities of new therapeutic strategies

Cancers are composed of heterogeneous cell populations, including highly proliferative immature precursors and differentiated cells, which may belong to different lineages. Recent advances in stem cell research have demonstrated the existence of tumour-initiating, cancer stem cells (CSCs) in non-solid and solid tumours. These cells are defined as CSCs because they show functional properties that resemble those of their normal counterpart to a significant extent. This concept applies to CSCs from brain tumours and, particularly, to glioblastoma stem-like cells, which self-renew under clonal conditions and differentiate into neuron- and glia-like cells, and into aberrant cells, with mixed neuronal/astroglia phenotypes. Notably, across serial transplantation into immunodeficient mice, glioblastoma stem-like cells are able to form secondary tumours which are a phenocopy of the human disease. A significant effort is underway to identify both CSC-specific markers and the molecular mechanism that underpin the tumorigenic potential of these cells, for this will have a critical impact on the understanding of the origin of malignant brain tumour and the discovery of new and more specific therapeutic approaches. Lately, the authors have shown that some of the bone morphogenetic proteins can reduce the tumorigenic ability of CSCs in GBMs. This suggests that mechanisms regulating the physiology of normal brain stem cells may be still in place in their cancerous siblings and that this may lead to the development of cures that selectively target the population CSCs found in the patients' tumour mass.
Nod1 mediates cytoplasmic sensing of combinations of extracellular bacteria

During mucosal colonization, epithelial cells are concurrently exposed to numerous microbial species. Epithelial cytokine production is an early component of innate immunity and contributes to mucosal defence. We have previously demonstrated a synergistic response of respiratory epithelial cells to costimulation by two human pathogens, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae. Here we define a molecular mechanism for the synergistic activation of epithelial signalling during polymicrobial colonization. H. influenzae peptidoglycan synergizes with the pore‐forming toxin pneumolysin from S. pneumoniae. Radiolabelled peptidoglycan enters epithelial cells more efficiently in the presence of pneumolysin, consistent with peptidoglycan gaining access to the cytoplasm via toxin pores. Other pore‐forming toxins (including anthrolysin O from Bacillus anthracis and Staphylococcus aureusα‐toxin) can substitute for pneumolysin in the generation of synergistic responses. Consistent with a requirement for pore formation, S. pneumoniae expressing pneumolysin but not an isogenic mutant expressing a non‐pore‐forming toxoid prime epithelial responses. Nod1, a host cytoplasmic peptidoglycan‐recognition molecule, is crucial to the epithelial response. Taken together, these findings demonstrate a role for cytosolic recognition of peptidoglycan in the setting of polymicrobial epithelial stimulation. We conclude that combinations of extracellular organisms can activate innate immune pathways previously considered to be reserved for the detection of intracellular microorganisms.
Noise cancellation with improved residuals

An effective adaptive scheme for noise cancellation when the signal to be recovered has known autocorrelation is presented. Two algorithms that exploit a special form of prior information are investigated. In this approach the desired signal is removed from the output feedback by linear prediction: the prior information used is the desired signal's autocorrelation. Knowing this, one can find a filter that whitens the desired signal. Screening the error feedback through this filter removes most of the desired signal energy, reducing its interference with the coefficient update. This is the basis for the first algorithm discussed, namely, the least-mean-square algorithm with augmented predictor (LMS-AP) proposed by Orgren et al. (1986). In many applications the whitening filter may not be strictly positive real (SPR). In such cases a different algorithm is needed; one which is assuredly convergent regardless of the satisfaction of the SPR condition. A modified LMS algorithm with augmented predictor (MLMS-AP) which provides such an alternative is proposed. >