Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
METADATA IN E-LEARNING SYSTEMS: FOCUS ON ITS VALUE FOR THE USER

It is widely agreed upon that ‘good’ metadata are a key factor for efficient use of e-learning systems. Generally, two fundamentally different types of metadata exist: Metadata generated by the system when content is created or added, and metadata generated by humans for humans. The latter takes one of two forms: (I) A number of fields in a form that have to be filled in by the creator of a piece of learning content; and (II) A list of pre-defined, standardised descriptors from which the applying ones have to be selected (ontology). Either approach aims at overcoming potentially differing valuations of metadata descriptors due to individual interpretations. Both approaches heavily depend on the e-learning application’s underlying knowledge domain, and are often driven by the requirements imposed by the services defined for the data repository in use. E-learning systems per definition incorporate at least two roles: the teacher’s and the student’s. The teacher produces and codifies, students and other teachers search and retrieve learning content. Each of these tasks relies eventually on a set of metadata descriptors. As a consequence, a considerable number of efforts have been undertaken in order to improve metadata applications for elearning systems. Unfortunately however, most of these efforts have been directed towards more automated systems, that devalue the teacher and student by assigning them merely the roles of information source and sink. We think that it has been overseen, that it is eventually the teachers and their students that need to work with and hence access resources within an e-learning system. The crucial question is: What are the relevant metadata descriptors in order to suitably support the users’ the teacher’s and student’s work with an e-learning system and the information contained therein? In this paper we hence first list fundamental requirements to be met by metadata descriptors to suit the users well. We subsequently also propose a set of 22 descriptors that, as a whole, meet these requirements and are therefore intended for a user-friendly pragmatical application in e-learning systems.
Investigating the switch continuity principle assumed in Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM)

Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) researchers have always assumed the switch continuity principle (SCP), which assumes that only one appliance ever changes state at any given point in time. However, SCP cannot be relied upon 100% of the time, especially when unsupervised NILM is used to guess what appliances might be in a house. This principle breaks under certain conditions based on the data capture choices made: number of occupants, number of appliances, measurement unit, measurement precision, and sampling frequency. This paper identifies and explores the conditions under which SCP can and cannot be assumed. This is done through empirical tests performed on two of the most popular datasets used for NILM.
A Survey of Link Prediction in Complex Networks

Networks have become increasingly important to model complex systems composed of interacting elements. Network data mining has a large number of applications in many disciplines including protein-protein interaction networks, social networks, transportation networks, and telecommunication networks. Different empirical studies have shown that it is possible to predict new relationships between elements attending to the topology of the network and the properties of its elements. The problem of predicting new relationships in networks is called link prediction. Link prediction aims to infer the behavior of the network link formation process by predicting missed or future relationships based on currently observed connections. It has become an attractive area of study since it allows us to predict how networks will evolve. In this survey, we will review the general-purpose techniques at the heart of the link prediction problem, which can be complemented by domain-specific heuristic methods in practice.
Pilot of Direct Observation of Clinical Skills (DOCS) in a Medicine Clerkship: Feasibility and Relationship to Clinical Performance Measures

Purpose: To assess the feasibility of Direct Observation of Clinical Skills (DOCS), a program for formative assessment of students’ clinical skills during a medicine clerkship and to determine relationships between DOCS measures and other clinical performance measures. Method: From August, 2004 through June, 2005, Medicine Clerks assigned to the primary on-campus clinical site were asked to participate in the pilot phase of the DOCS program. Students were asked to complete at least one DOCS exercise focused on interviewing, physical examination, or oral case presentation. Results: Of the 79 students who rotated on the Medicine Clerkship during the pilot period, 79% (n = 62) participated in DOCS, and 163 forms were submitted for evaluation. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of the clinical observations occurred while on-call or during daily rounds. Seventy-three (73%) of observations were completed in 30 minutes or less. In 89% of encounters students received at least 5 minutes of verbal feedback. Satisfaction ratings from both students and observers were “moderately satisfied” or better. Global ratings from DOCS physical exam and case presentation sections were strongly correlated with both faculty ratings of clinical performance and final clerkship grade. DOCS measures were not statistically related to clerkship written examination scores. Conclusions: These data support the feasibility of the DOCS session for formative assessment of student interviewing, physical examination, and oral case presentation skills during a medicine clerkship. Observer ratings from DOCS physical examination and case presentation sections were found to be predictors of final clerkship grade.
A phase III trial of surgery with or without adjunctive external pelvic radiation therapy in intermediate risk endometrial adenocarcinoma: a Gynecologic Oncology Group study.

BACKGROUND Despite their low risk for recurrence, many women with endometrial adenocarcinoma receive postoperative radiation therapy (RT). This study was developed to determine if adjunctive external beam irradiation lowers the risk of recurrence and death in women with endometrial cancer International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stages IB, IC, and II (occult disease). METHODS Four hundred forty-eight consenting patients with "intermediate risk" endometrial adenocarcinoma were randomized after surgery to either no additional therapy (NAT) or whole pelvic radiation therapy (RT). They were followed to determine toxicity, date and location of recurrence, and overall survival. A high intermediate risk (HIR) subgroup of patients was defined as those with (1) moderate to poorly differentiated tumor, presence of lymphovascular invasion, and outer third myometrial invasion; (2) age 50 or greater with any two risk factors listed above; or (3) age of at least 70 with any risk factor listed above. All other eligible participants were considered to be in a low intermediate risk (LIR) subgroup. RESULTS Three hundred ninety-two women met all eligibility requirements (202 NAT, 190 RT). Median follow-up was 69 months. In the entire study population, there were 44 recurrences and 66 deaths (32 disease or treatment-related deaths), and the estimated 2-year cumulative incidence of recurrence (CIR) was 12% in the NAT arm and 3% in the RT arm (relative hazard (RH): 0.42; P=0.007). The treatment difference was particularly evident among the HIR subgroup (2-year CIR in NAT versus RT: 26% versus 6%; RH=0.42). Overall, radiation had a substantial impact on pelvic and vaginal recurrences (18 in NAT and 3 in RT). The estimated 4-year survival was 86% in the NAT arm and 92% for the RT arm, not significantly different (RH: 0.86; P=0.557). CONCLUSIONS Adjunctive RT in early stage intermediate risk endometrial carcinoma decreases the risk of recurrence, but should be limited to patients whose risk factors fit a high intermediate risk definition.
Efficient Parallel Data Mining with the Apriori Algorithm on FPGAs

The Apriori algorithm is a popular and foundational member of the correlationbased datamining kernels used today. However, it is a computationally expensive algorithm and running times can stretch to days for large databases, as database sizes can reach from Gigabytes and computation requires multiple passes. Through the use of a new type of systolic array architecture, time required for processing can be dramatically reduced. Our array architecture implementation on a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro 100 provides a 4x performance improvement over the fastest software implementation available running on a dual 2.8 GHz Xeon system with 3 GB RAM. The system is easily scalable and introduces an efficient “systolic injection” method for intelligently reporting unpredictably generated mid-array results to a controller without chance of collision or excessive stalling. The off-chip bandwidth required is 250MB/s, allowing for practical implementation with off-the-shelf memory controllers. The off-chip memory requirements are negligible.
Character animation and embodiment in teaching computational thinking

classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. SIGGRAPH 2014, August 10 – 14, 2014, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 2014 Copyright held by the Owner/Author. ACM 978-1-4503-2958-3/14/08 Character Animation and Embodiment in Teaching Computational Thinking
Learning Performance of Normal and MutantDrosophila after Repeated Conditioning Trials with Discrete Stimuli

A new olfactory conditioning procedure is described using short training trials with discrete presentation of conditioned stimuli (CS) and unconditioned stimuli (US). A short odor presentation along with a single-shock stimulus produced modest but reliable and reproducible learning. Multiple trials presented sequentially improved performance with increasing trial number. Trial spacing had a significant impact on performance. Two trials presented with a short intertrial interval (ITI) produced no improvement over a single trial; two trials with a 15 min ITI significantly boosted performance. This effect required two associative trials, because substituting one of the trials with the CS alone, US alone, or an unpaired CS–US failed to boost performance. The increase in initial performance with two trials decayed within 15 min after training. Thus, the effect is short-lived. The utility of using a battery of tests, including a single short trial, two massed trials, and two spaced trials, to investigate parameters of memory formation in several mutants was demonstrated.
Human or Automatic Answers? A User's Based Study

Understanding the different ways of the information seeking behavior of users, and their implications is an important challenge of Web information services. In this paper we examine the suitability of Web search engines (SE) and community question-answering (community QA) to satisfy the different expectations of users: queries expecting knowledge-based answers, and queries expecting subjective opinion-based answers. From this categorization, we conducted a user study of the results obtained from three Web SE, and three communities QA. In this way, we found that SE result in a better alternative when the query is designed to get a uni-objective answer, while communities QA provide better results if the question gets multi-objective answers. On the other hand, when the query expects a subjective answer, none of these systems provides a very effective answer that can fulfill the expectations from the user. Knowing more about the type of queries that require human support would be useful to improve the user search experience in SE.
Adaptive Combinatorial Testing

Combinatorial Testing (CT) has been proven to be effective in detecting and locating the interaction triggered failure in the last 20 years. But CT still suffers from many challenges, such as modeling for CT, sampling mechanisms for test generation, applicability and effectiveness. To overcome these issues of CT, adaptive combinatorial testing (ACT) is proposed in this paper, which improves the traditional CT with a well established adaptive testing method as the counter part of adaptive control and aims to make CT more flexible and practical. ACT can significantly enhance testing quality, software reliability and support testing strategy adjustment dynamically. To support further investigation, a preliminary form of concrete strategy for ACT is given as a heuristic guideline.
Nurse stress at two different organizational settings in Alexandria

Objective: The objective of the study was to explore the difference in stress levels among nurses working at two different health care organizations and the determinants of nurse stress within each organization. Job stress is defined as the harmful emotional and physical reactions resulting from the interactions between the worker and her/his work environment where the demands of the job exceed the worker’s capabilities and resources. Methodology: A convenient sample of nurses in two hospitals in Alexandria; Shark Al Madina (n = 120) and Karmouz (n = 170) hospitals. All nurses present at the time of the study were approached to be included in the study. The response rate for Shark Al Madina hospital was 94% and for Karmouz hospital, 71%. Data collection took place using a nurse stress questionnaire previously developed and tested for validity and reliability to measure stress in clinical nursing practice. The 5% level of significance was used throughout the statistical analysis for all relevant tests. Results: The highest mean stress scores were the same for both hospitals. The dimension of coping with new situations was 2.7 ± 0.6 at Shark Al Madina hospital and was 2.5 ± 0.7 at Karmouz hospital while the dimension of job security was 2.7 ± 0.6 and 2.5 ± 0.7 at Shark Al Madina and Karmouz hospitals, respectively. Stepwise multiple regression for Shark Al Madina hospital model revealed workload (β = 1.38), security (β = 5.04), and shortage of support staff (β = 3.39). For the Karmouz hospital model, stepwise multiple regression revealed security (β = 4.78) and shortage of resources (β = 3.66). Conclusion: Stressors among nurses appear to be the same despite the differences in organizational or hierarchical structure where they work or the type of consumer they serve. It is important to reduce occupational stress in nurses and to strengthen their coping resources to prevent nurse burnout. This could be achieved with job redesign, modification of shift work systems, and by offering occupational health education as well as assurance regarding job security especially during the global financial crisis.
From Genome to Function: Systematic Analysis of the Soil Bacterium Bacillus Subtilis

Bacillus subtilis is a sporulating Gram-positive bacterium that lives primarily in the soil and associated water sources. Whilst this bacterium has been studied extensively in the laboratory, relatively few studies have been undertaken to study its activity in natural environments. The publication of the B. subtilis genome sequence and subsequent systematic functional analysis programme have provided an opportunity to develop tools for analysing the role and expression of Bacillus genes in situ. In this paper we discuss analytical approaches that are being developed to relate genes to function in environments such as the rhizosphere.
Space and Time in Perception and Action: Perceptual asynchronies and the dual-channel differential latency hypothesis

The dual-channel differential latency hypothesis (Öğmen et al. 2004) successfully accounts for many aspects of the flash-lag effect (FLE). Here we use the dual-channel differential latency hypothesis to explain an illusion of perceived line length that can be viewed as one component of an illusion reported by Cai and Schlag (2001a). In the phenomenon studied here, a flash is presented collinear with a moving line that is simultaneously changing in length. The moving line is perceived to be misaligned with the flash (the FLE) and the length of the moving line is perceived to differ from its physical length at the instant of the flash. We designate this phenomenon the Cai line-Length Effect (CLE). Our analysis treats a horizontally moving line that also changes its vertical length as composed of two simultaneous motion components: (1) horizontal motion, and (2) vertical expansion or contraction. We measured perceived position misalignment and length misperception in the CLE paradigm, as well as separately for stimuli with the individual motion components of the CLE, as a function of target luminance. Perceived position misalignment and length misperception varied similarly with target luminance, both in the CLE paradigm and when the individual motion components were tested separately. The misperception of stimulus position and length in the CLE reflects an additional processing delay that may be caused by an interaction between the motion components in two directions. We conclude that the dual-channel differential latency hypothesis can account for the perceived spatiotemporal misalignment of stimulus features defined by motion components in terms of the neural latencies involved in processing these motion components.
PLC-to-DSL Interference: Statistical Model and Impact on DSL

Newly available standards for broadband access using Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) have a high degree of spectrum overlap with home networking technologies using broadband Power Line Communications (BB-PLC) and this overlap leads to Electromagnetic Compatibility issues that may cause performance degradation in DSL systems. This paper studies the characteristics of measured PLC-to-DSL interference and presents novel results on its statistical characterization. The frequency-dependent couplings between power line cables and twisted-pairs are estimated from measurements and a statistical model based on a mixture of two truncated Gaussian distributions is set forth. The proposed statistical model allows the accurate evaluation of the impact of BB-PLC interference on various DSL technologies, in terms of both average and worst-case impacts on data rate. This paper further provides an extensive assessment of the impact of PLC-to-DSL interference at various loop lengths and for multiple profiles of Very-high rate Digital Subscriber Lines (VDSL2), Vectored VDSL2 (V-VDSL2), and G.fast. The results of this paper confirm that the impact of PLC interference varies with loop length and whether vectoring is used or not. Furthermore, the average impact is found to be generally small but worst-case couplings can lead to substantial degradation of DSL.
Cushing's Disease Presented by Reversible Dilated Cardiomyopathy

Introduction. Dilated cardiomyopathy is rarely reported among CS patients especially without hypertension and left ventricular hypertrophy. Materials and Methods. We hereby report a Cushing's syndrome case presenting with dilated cardiomyopathy. Results. A 48-year-old female patient was admitted to our clinic with severe proximal myopathy and dilated cardiomyopathy without ventricular hypertrophy. Cushing's disease was diagnosed and magnetic-resonance imaging of the pituitary gland revealed a microadenoma. Under diuretic and ketoconazole treatments, she underwent a successful transnasal/transsphenoidal adenomectomy procedure. Full recovery of symptoms and echocardiographic features was achieved after six months of surgery. Conclusion. Cushing's syndrome must be kept in mind as a reversible cause of dilated cardiomyopathy. Recovery of cardiomyopathy is achieved with successful surgery.
On the Integration of i* into RUP

Altought widely used and recognized in the scientific community, the i* framework has, until now, failed to impose itself into enterprise practices. There are many ways that can be followed to favor industry-adoption. Among them, we believe that an integration into the (Rational) Unified Process, which already includes business modeling as a preliminary step in software development and furnishes custom syntax and semantic to do so could be an interesting approach. This paper summarizes the ideas of a research aimed at mapping i* model elements and RUP/UML business modeling ones with the best possible semantic match. The willingness is to provide RUP practitioners a powerful tool for capturing and analyzing social and organizational contexts of software systems based on the syntax they already know with as closely as possible related semantics.
Angular momentum transport and disc morphology in smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of galaxy formation

We perform controlled N-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of disc galaxy formation by cooling a rotating gaseous mass distribution inside equilibrium cuspy spherical and triaxial dark matter haloes. We systematically study the angular momentum transport and the disc morphology as we increase the number of dark matter and gas particles from 10 4 to 10 6 , and decrease the gravitational softening from 2 kpc to 50 pc. The angular momentum transport, disc morphology and radial profiles depend sensitively on force and mass resolution. At low resolution, similar to that used in most current cosmological simulations, the cold gas component has lost half of its initial angular momentum via different mechanisms. The angular momentum is transferred primarily to the hot halo component, by resolution-dependent hydrodynamical and gravitational torques; the latter arising from asymmetries in the mass distribution. In addition, disc particles can lose angular momentum while they are still in the hot phase by artificial viscosity. In the central disc, particles can transfer away over 99 per cent of their initial angular momentum due to spiral structure and/or the presence of a central bar. The strength of this transport also depends on force and mass resolution - large softening will suppress the bar instability, and low mass resolution enhances the spiral structure. This complex interplay between resolution and angular momentum transfer highlights the complexity of simulations of galaxy formation even in isolated haloes. With 10 6 gas and dark matter particles, disc particles lose only 10-20 per cent of their original angular momentum, yet we are unable to produce pure exponential profiles due to the steep density peak of baryons within the central kpc. We speculate that the central luminosity excess observed in many Sc-Sd galaxies may be due to star formation in gas that has been transported to the central regions by spiral patterns.
Migrating from COBOL to Java

This paper is an industrial report on a project for migrating an airport management system from a Bull mainframe using COBOL as a programming language and IDS as a database system to a distributed UNIX platform using Java and Oracle. The focus here is on the automated language transformation, performed in three phases - reengineering, conversion and refinement. The tools used are COBRedo for reengineering the COBOL code, COB2Java for converting COBOL to Java and JavRedoc for documenting the converted Java code. The paper describes the migration process and the tools used in it and the reviews the current state of the project. Keywords: Migration, Reengineering, Legacy systems, COBOL, Java, Object-oriented transformation.