Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preparation-before-Competition: Designing a Game-Based Environment to Facilitate Making Effort before Pet-Competitive Stage

Although competitive games have multi-fold benefits to students’ learning, such as motivation, satisfaction, and effectiveness, inappropriate competitive learning activities may have some negative impacts on students. From the literature, the authors have identified three main strategies which may reduce the negative impacts in competition game. However, because these strategies target only at the design of competition, the learning effects is limited. In fact, learning also happens in the preparation before competition. Hence, this study adopts preparation-before-competition approach to foster the habit of endeavor. That is, students make more effort to learn; they will win more easily. An animal companion system, entitled My-Pet-Trainer system, was implemented according to such approach. The system encourages students to improve their learning in the preparation stage where the virtual pets represent students’ open learner models before the competition stage. In addition, the paper also considers the symbiosis and emotional relationship with virtual pets to maintain long-term interactions.
Accuracy Estimation for Laser Point Cloud Including Scanning Geometry

Individual points produced by airborne laser scanning (ALS) may have large variation in their accuracy, a fact that is often omitted in the subsequent derivation of digital terrain models. The accuracy of a single point is governed by three main factors: First, the errors due to the direct georeferencing of the laser beam; second, the measurement errors of the laser itself; third, the variation of the range-finder error due to the changing scanning geometry. The influence of the first two sources can be estimated by means of error propagation via known functional relations of georeferencing. Nevertheless, the influence of the third component is much harder to assess as it requires a-priori knowledge of the local terrain normal to compute the incident angle and the laser footprint. We propose a novel approach that analyzes the scanning geometry quantitatively by estimating the local terrain normal directly from the laser point cloud. Adding this information to the error propagation yields a final quality indicator that reflects not only the georeferencing quality but also the scanning geometry. The paper presents first results of the developed algorithm and assesses the possibilities to use such q-indicators within DTM/DSM-production. Their benefits are especially investigated for automated data classification and generation of DTM quality metadata.
Wireless Sensor Networks for Climate Data Management Systems

This paper presents a framework for wireless sensor networks designed to capture and monitor micro-climates in a crop field. Recent developments and advances in wireless technology as well as affordability give rise to this emerging field in the realm of precision agriculture. The main purpose of this research is to develop an efficient telemetry system for measuring and storing micro-climates and environmental data. The data collected is to be used for building various models that could enhance our understanding about the effects of climate change on grapevine growth and wine quality within major wine regions in several countries being studied in the initial research. We propose a system architecture for wireless sensor networks and a database model for handling and storing sensor data streams in real-time. This architecture utilises Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) located in several vineyards in three continents. It collects data from WSN and continuously transmits physical or environmental conditions at different locations to a remote central data server. A web based application developed to enable remote online access to WSN data with interactive data retrieval and visualization functionalities.
Analysing the influences of ENSO and PDO on water discharge from the Yangtze River into the sea

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) are two important climate oscillations that affect hydrological processes at global and regional scales. However, few studies have attempted to identify their single and combined influences on water discharge variability at multiple timescales. In this study, we examine temporal variation in water discharge from the Yangtze River into the sea and explore the influence of the ENSO and the PDO on multiscale variations in water discharge over the last century. The results of the wavelet transform analysis of the water discharge series show significant periodic variations at the interannual timescale of 2 to 8 years and the decadal timescale of 15 to 17 years. Water discharge tended to be higher during the La Niña–PDO cold phase and lower during the El Niño–PDO warm phase. The results of the cross wavelet spectrum and wavelet coherence analyses confirm the relationship between the interannual (i.e., 2 to 8 years) and decadal (i.e., 15 to 17 years) periodicities in water discharge with the ENSO and the PDO, respectively. As an important large‐scale climate background, the PDO can modulate the influence of the ENSO on water discharge variability. In general, the warm PDO enhances the influence of El Niño events, and the cold PDO enhances the influence of La Niña events. Our study is helpful in understanding the influencing mechanism of climate change on hydrological processes and provides an important scientific guideline for water resource prediction and management.
BlobTree trees

In recent years several methods for modeling botanical trees have been proposed. The geometry and topology of tree skeletons can be well described by L-systems; however, there are several approaches to modeling smooth surfaces to represent branches, and not all of the observed phenomena can be represented by current methods. Many tree types exhibit nonsmooth features such as branch bark ridges and collars. In this research a hierarchical implicit modeling system is used to produce models of branching structures that capture smooth branching, branch collars and branch bark ridges. The BlobTree provides several techniques to control the combination of primitives, allowing both smooth and nonsmooth effects to be intuitively combined in a single blend volume. Irregular effects are implemented using precise contact modeling, constructive solid geometry and space warping. We show that smooth blends can be obtained, without noticeable bulging, using summation of distance based implicit surfaces. L-systems are used to create the branching structure allowing botanically based simulations to be used as input
High incidence of diabetes in men with sleep complaints or short sleep duration: a 12-year follow-up study of a middle-aged population.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the possible relationship among sleep complaints, sleep duration, and the development of diabetes prospectively over a 12-year period in a middle-aged Swedish population. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A random sample of 2,663 subjects aged 45-65 years living in mid-Sweden were sent a postal questionnaire including questions about sleep complaints, sleep duration, sociodemographic characteristics, behavioral risk factors, medical conditions, and depression (response rate 70.2%). Twelve years later, a new questionnaire with almost identical questions was sent to all the survivors (n = 1,604) in 1995, and the questionnaire was answered by 1,244 subjects (77.6%). RESULTS Men reporting new diabetes at follow-up more often reported short sleep duration (< or =5 h per night) (16.0 vs. 5.9%, P < 0.01), difficulties initiating sleep (16.0 vs. 3.1%, P < 0.001), and difficulties maintaining sleep (28.0 vs. 6.3%, P < 0.001) at baseline than men who did not develop diabetes. Women reporting new diabetes at follow-up reported long sleep duration (> or =9 h per night) more often at baseline than women not developing diabetes (7.9 vs. 2.4%, P < 0.05). In multiple logistic regression models, the relative risk (95% CI) for development of diabetes was higher in men with short sleep duration (2.8 [1.1-7.3]) or difficulties maintaining sleep (4.8 [1.9-12.5]) after adjustment for age and other relevant risk factors. Short or long sleep duration or sleep complaints did not influence the risk of new diabetes in women. CONCLUSIONS Difficulties maintaining sleep or short sleep duration (< or =5 h) are associated with an increased incidence of diabetes in men.
Hierarchical random-walk algorithms for power grid analysis

We present a power grid analyzer that combines a divide-and-conquer strategy with a random-walk engine. A single-level hierarchical method is first described and then extended to multilevel and "virtual-layer" hierarchy. Experimental results show that these algorithms not only achieve speedups over the generic random-walk method, but also are more robust in solving various types of industrial circuits. For example, a 71K-node circuit is solved in 4.16 seconds, showing a more than 4 times speedup over the generic method; a 348K-node wire-bond power grid, for which the performance of the generic method degrades, is solved in 75.88 seconds.
Quality of song learning affects female response to male bird song

Bird song is unusual as a sexually selected trait because its expression depends on learning as well as genetic and other environmental factors. Prior work has demonstrated that males who are deprived of the opportunity to learn produce songs that function little if at all in male–female interactions. We asked whether more subtle variation in male song–learning abilities influences female response to song. Using a copulation solicitation assay, we measured the response of female song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) to songs of laboratory–reared males that differed in the amount of learned versus invented material that they included and in the degree to which learned material accurately matched the model from which it was copied. Females responded significantly more to songs that had been learned better, by either measure. Females did not discriminate between the best–learned songs of laboratory–reared males and songs of wild males used as models during learning. These results provide, to our knowledge, a first experimental demonstration that variation in learning abilities among males plays a functionally important part in the expression of a sexually selected trait, and further provide support for the hypothesis that song functions as an indicator of male quality because it reflects variation in response to early developmental stress.
Open Access Research Article Phylogenomics with Incomplete Taxon Coverage: the Limits to Inference

article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Phylogenomic studies based on multi-locus sequence data sets are usually characterized by partial taxon coverage, in which sequences for some loci are missing for some taxa. The impact of missing data has been widely studied in phylogenetics, but it has proven difficult to distinguish effects due to error in tree reconstruction from effects due to missing data per se. We approach this problem using a explicitly phylogenomic criterion of success, decisiveness, which refers to whether the pattern of taxon coverage allows for uniquely defining a single tree for all taxa. Results: We establish theoretical bounds on the impact of missing data on decisiveness. Results are derived for two contexts: a fixed taxon coverage pattern, such as that observed from an already assembled data set, and a randomly generated pattern derived from a process of sampling new data, such as might be observed in an ongoing comparative genomics sequencing project. Lower bounds on how many loci are needed for decisiveness are derived for the former case, and both lower and upper bounds for the latter. When data are not decisive for all trees, we estimate the probability of decisiveness and the chances that a given edge in the tree will be distinguishable. Theoretical results are illustrated using several empirical examples constructed by mining sequence databases, genomic libraries such as ESTs and BACs, and complete genome sequences. Conclusion: Partial taxon coverage among loci can limit phylogenomic inference by making it impossible to distinguish among multiple alternative trees. However, even though lack of decisiveness is typical of many sparse phylogenomic data sets, it is often still possible to distinguish a large fraction of edges in the tree. Background Ready access to vast sequence databases and new data emerging from large-scale sequencing efforts is transforming efforts to infer the phylogenetic history of species. Efforts to build ever larger subtrees of the "tree of life" are pushing the field to grapple with highly species-rich data sets (plants: 2538 taxa [1]; legumes: 2228 taxa [2]; Asterales: 13,533 taxa [3]; eukaryotes: 73,060 taxa [4]). At the same time, some recent studies exploiting complete genome sequences or genomic libraries include 100s-1000s of loci [5-11]. The former tend to be data sets with many taxa and few loci; …
BFGS with Update Skipping and Varying Memory

We give conditions under which limited-memory quasi-Newton methods with exact line searches will terminate in n steps when minimizing n-dimensional quadratic functions. We show that although all Broyden family methods terminate in n steps in their full-memory versions, only BFGS does so with limited-memory. Additionally, we show that full-memory Broyden family methods with exact line searches terminate in at most n + p steps when p matrix updates are skipped. We introduce new limited-memory BFGS variants and test them on nonquadratic minimization problems.
Porphyria cutanea tarda and liver disease. A retrospective analysis of 17 cases from a single centre and review of the literature.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Sporadic Porphyria Cutanea Tarda (sPCT) is associated with liver disease, e.g. HCV infection, haemochromatosis and especially alcoholic liver disease. We conducted a retrospective analysis on the prevalence of liver disorders in association with Porphyria Cutanea Tarda (PCT), in a university referral centre. METHODS The PCT cases were retrieved from computerized databases. Patient files lacking information on the presence of concomitant liver disease were excluded from further analysis. RESULTS 29 PCT patients were retrieved from our databases, of which 17 patients with sPCT were retained for further analysis. Patients were middle aged (mean age: 43 +/- 3) and there was no gender difference (10 males vs. 7 females). Almost all patients had iron overload (14/17). 5 patients had chronic HCV, with type 1b in 3 of them, 7 abused alcohol, 4 patients had hereditary haemochromatosis (3 homozygous C282Y--1 heterozygous H63D/C282Y). In 3 patients sPCT was associated with medication intake and one patient had chronic hepatitis B (HBV). 13 patients were treated with phlebotomies, with success in 11/13. 4 patients were treated with chloroquine, 3 of which also underwent phlebotomies. Of the 5 patients with HCV, 3 were successfully treated with combined antiviral therapy; one of them is planned to be treated; one patient never received therapy and was lost from follow-up. One patient developed hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) during a median follow-up of 24 years. CONCLUSIONS We found a significant association between sPCT and liver disorders, such as chronic HCV infection, alcohol abuse, iron overload and hereditary haemochromatosis. Therefore, patients presenting with PCT should be screened for concomitant liver disease. Iron overload is present in a majority of patients, the majority of patients can be successfully treated with phlebotomies. The risk of developing HCC in our sPCT patients and in literature is low.
Human-Adaptive Determination of Natural Language Hints

Putting emphasis on making cognitive functions of hints explicit and allowing for the automatic incorporation in a natural dialogue context which simulates the dialectic process of a socratic teaching model, we developed a multi-dimensional hint taxonomy where each dimension defines a decision point for the associated function. We take domain knowledge into account for choosing the hint to be given with regard to the domain-knowledge dimension. We show how structured domain knowledge can be used to inform the automatic determination of the hint category to be produced and assists natural argument interaction in an ITS context.
A Wikipedia-LDA Model for Entity Linking with Batch Size Changing Instance Selection

Entity linking maps name mentions in context to entries in a knowledge base through resolving the name variations and ambiguities. In this paper, we propose two advancements for entity linking. First, a Wikipedia-LDA method is proposed to model the contexts as the probability distributions over Wikipedia categories, which allows the context similarity being measured in a semantic space instead of literal term space used by other studies for the disambiguation. Furthermore, to automate the training instance annotation without compromising the accuracy, an instance selection strategy is proposed to select an informative, representative and diverse subset from an auto-generated dataset. During the iterative selection process, the batch sizes at each iteration change according to the variance of classifier’s confidence or accuracy between batches in sequence, which not only makes the selection insensitive to the initial batch size, but also leads to a better performance. The above two advancements give significant improvements to entity linking individually. Collectively they lead the highest performance on KBP-10 task. Being a generic approach, the batch size changing method can also benefit active learning for other tasks.
A New Method for the Study of Velopharyngeal Function Using Gated Magnetic Resonance Imaging

&NA; The purpose of this project was to assess the feasibility of imaging the velopharynx of adult volunteers during repetitive speech, using gated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Although a number of investigators have used conventional MRI in the study of the human vocal tract, the mismatch between the lengthy time necessary to acquire sufficiently detailed images and the rapidity of movement of the vocal tract during speech has forced investigators to acquire images either while the subject is at rest or during sustained utterances. The technique used here acquired a portion of each image during repetitive utterances, building the full image over multiple utterance cycles. The velopharyngeal portal was imaged on a 1.5‐Tesla GE Signa LX 8.2 platform with gated fast spoiled gradient echo protocol. An external 1‐Hertz trigger was fed to the cardiac gate. Subjects synchronized utterance of consonant‐vowel syllables to a flashing light synchronized with the external trigger. Each acquisition of 30 phases per second at a single‐slice location took 22 to 29 seconds. Four consonant‐vowel syllables (/pa/,/ma/,/sa/, and /ka/) were evaluated. Subjects vocalized throughout the acquisition, beginning 5 to 6 seconds beforehand to establish a regular rhythm. Imaging of the velopharyngeal portal was performed for sagittal, velopharyngeal axial (aligned perpendicular to the “knee” of the velum), axial, and coronal planes. Volumes were obtained by sequential acquisition of six to 10 slices (each with 30 phases) in the axial or sagittal planes during repetition of the/pa/syllable. Spatiotemporal volumes of the single‐slice data were sectioned to provide time‐motion images (analogous to M‐mode echocardiograms). Three‐dimensional dynamic volume renderings of palate motion were displayed interactively (Vortex; CieMed, Singapore). A method suitable for the collection and visualization of four‐dimensional information regarding monosyllabic speech using gated MRI was developed. These techniques were applied to a population of adult volunteer subjects with no history of speech problems and two patients with a history of cleft lip and palate. The techniques allowed good real‐time visualization of velopharyngeal anatomy during its entire range of motion and was also able to image pathology‐specific anatomic differences in the subjects with cleft lip and cleft palate. These methods may be applicable to a wide spectrum of problems in speech physiology research and for clinical decision‐making regarding surgery for speech and outcomes analysis. (Plast. Reconstr. Surg. 109: 472, 2002.)
On the importance of Internet eXchange Points for today's Internet ecosystem

Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) are generally considered to be the successors of the four Network Access Points that were mandated as part of the decommissioning of the NSFNET in 1994/95 to facilitate the transition from the NSFNET to the "public Internet" as we know it today. While this popular view does not tell the whole story behind the early beginnings of IXPs, what is true is that since around 1994, the number of operational IXPs worldwide has grown to more than 300 (as of May 2013), with the largest IXPs handling daily traffic volumes comparable to those carried by the largest Tier-1 ISPs, but IXPs have never really attracted any attention from the networking research community. At first glance, this lack of interest seems understandable as IXPs have apparently little to do with current "hot" topic areas such as data centers and cloud services or software defined networking (SDN) and mobile communication. However, we argue in this article that, in fact, IXPs are all about data centers and cloud services and even SDN and mobile communication and should be of great interest to networking researchers interested in understanding the current and future Internet ecosystem. To this end, we survey the existing but largely unknown sources of publicly available information about IXPs to describe their basic technical and operational aspects and highlight the critical differences among the various IXPs in the different regions of the world, especially in Europe and North America. More importantly, we illustrate the important role that IXPs play in today's Internet ecosystem and discuss how IXP-driven innovation in Europe is shaping and redefining the Internet marketplace, not only in Europe but increasingly so around the world.
River Influence on the Nearshore Ecosystem of Western Lake Superior

i LIST OF FIGURES . vi LIST OF TABLES . vii LIST OF EQUATIONS . vii LIST OF SYMBOLS . viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ix Chapter 1: Introduction and Background . 1 Chapter 2: Physical, Chemical, and Biological Response to a Large Storm Event in the Nearshore Zone of Lake Superior . 13 Introduction . 13 Methods.19 Sampling Frequency & Spatial Coverage . 19 Horizontal Distribution of River Inflow . 25 Vertical Distribution of River Inflow . 30 Total Phosphorus & Organic Carbon Dynamics . 36 Phytoplankton Spatial & Temporal Variability . 39 Results . 42 Horizontal Distribution of River Inflow . 42 Vertical Distribution of River Inflow . 49 Total Phosphorus & Organic Carbon Dynamics . 61 Phytoplankton Spatial & Temporal Variability . 69 Discussion . 73 Chapter 3: Metabolic Response of the Nearshore Zone of Lake Superior to an Episodic Inflow Event . 8
The Pharmacology of Vitamin D , Including Fortification Strategies

The use of vitamin D has never been approached in the same way that we would expect to see for any modern drug. Unlike other nutrients, we have never had dietary intakes of vitamin D as a reasonable reference point for deciding on how much of this nutrient/drug that people should be consuming. The ambiguity between “nutrient” and “drug” is reasonable when it comes to vitamin D, because there were no meaningful amounts of vitamin D in the kinds of foods that Paleolithic humans would likely have been consuming.