Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The importance of task appropriateness in computer-supported collaborative learning

The study of learning in collaborative electronic environments is becoming established as Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) - an emergent sub-discipline of the more established Computer Supported Co-operative Work (CSCW) discipline (Webb, 1995). Using computers for the development of shared understanding through collaboration has been explored by Crook who suggests that success may depend partly on having a clearly specified purpose or goal (Crook, 1994). It is our view that the appropriateness of the task given to the student is central to the success or otherwise of the learning experience. However, the tasks that are given to facilitate collaborative learning in face-toface situations are not always suitable for direct transfer to the electronic medium. It may be necessary to consider redesigning these tasks in relation to the medium in which they are to be undertaken and the functionality of the electronic conferencing software used. DOI: 10.1080/0968776990070106
Communicating expressive intentions with a single piano note

Abstract We analysed how expressive intentions are communicated and perceived in a special context of musical production: improvisation on a single piano note. Two experiments were designed in order to find relations between performer's expressive intentions, four acoustical parameters (pitch, intensity, articulation and rhythmic density), and listener's perception of expressive content. Differences between musicians and non-musicians were analysed as well. In the first experiment, 6 performers (3 musicians and 3 non-musicians) improvised on a digital piano according to 8 expressive intentions. The experiment was planned in 4 phases, progressively limiting the musical means available to the performer. In all phases, improvisations were limited to only one piano note. In the second experiment, listeners described performer's improvisations by means of adjective ratings. Results support the position that few low level parameters, mainly intensity and rhythmic density, are important factors in the communication of expressive content from the performer to the listener and that listeners recognize most expressive intentions even when very few acoustical parameters are used.
Artificial neural network based peak load forecasting using Levenberg-Marquardt and quasi-Newton methods

Daily electrical peak-load forecasting has been done using the feedforward neural network based on the Levenberg-Marquardt back-propagation algorithm, Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno back-propagation algorithm and one-step secant backpropagation algorithm by incorporating the effect of eleven weather parameters, the type of day and the previous day peak load information. To avoid the trapping of the network into a state of local minima, the optimisation of user-defined parameters viz. learning rate and error goal has been performed. Training data set has been selected using a growing window concept and is reduced as per the nature of the day and the season for which the forecast is made. For redundancy removal in the input variables, reduction of the number of input variables has been done by the principal component analysis method of factor extraction. The resultant data set is used for the training of a three-layered neural network. To increase the learning speed, the weights and biases are initialised according to the Nguyen and Widrow method. To avoid over-fitting, an early stopping of training is done at the minimum validation error.
Features Microcirculatory Disturbances in the Area of Double-Row Enteric Anastomosis in Immature and Mature Dogs

Experiments were performed on 20 puppies and 15 adult dogs of both sexes. We determined pronounced microcirculation disturbance after the formation of tworow anastomosis on puppies in suture region and surrounding areas of the small intestine. Predominantly transition of liquid portion of the blood from vessels in tissue occurs because of a essential increase in vascular permeability transition, that has been demonstrated by a significant increase in capillary filtrate and plasma protein loss. These rates have increased respectively to 8.86 times
Deriving Accessible Science Books for the Blind Students of Physics

We present a novel integrated methodology for the development and production of accessible physics and science books from the elementary up to tertiary educational levels. This language independent approach adopts the Design‐for‐All principles, the available international standards for alternative formats and the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines. Moreover it supports both static (embossed and refreshable tactile) and dynamic (based on synthetic speech and other sounds) accessibility. It can produce Tactile Books (Embossed Braille and Tactile Graphics), Digital Talking Books (or Digital Audio Books), Large Print Books as well as Acoustic‐Tactile Books for the blind and visually impaired students as well as but for the print‐disabled. This methodology has been successfully applied in the case of blind students of the Physics, Mathematics and Informatics Departments in the University of Athens.
Basic Extended Kalman Filter – Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping

Most real systems are non-linear. Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) uses non-linear models of both the process and observation models while the Kalman Filter (KF) uses linear models. EKF is a good way to learn about Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM). Much of the literature concentrates on advanced SLAM methods which stems from EKF or uses probabilistic techniques. This makes it difficult for new researchers to understand the basics of this exciting area of research. SLAM asks if it is possible for a robot, starting with no prior information, to move through its environment and build a consistent map of the entire environment. Additionally, the vehicle must be able to use the map to navigate and hence plan and control its trajectory during the mapping process. The applications of a robot capable of navigating, with no prior map, are diverse indeed. Domains in which 'man in the loop' systems are impractical or difficult such as sub-sea surveys and disaster zones are obvious candidates. Beyond these, the sheer increase in autonomy that would result from reliable, robust navigation in large dynamic environments is simply enormous (Newman 2006). SLAM has been implemented in a number of different domains from indoor robots to outdoor, underwater, and airborne systems. In many applications the environment is unknown. A priori maps are usually costly to obtain, inaccurate, incomplete, and become outdated. It also means that the robot‘s operation is limited to a particular environment (Neira 2008). This goal of the chapter is to provide an opportunity for researchers who are new to, or interested in, this exciting area with the basics, background information, major issues, and the state-of-the-art as well as future challenges in SLAM with a bent towards EKF-SLAM. It will also be helpful in realizing what methods are being employed and what sensors are being used. It presents the 2 – Dimensional (2D) feature based EKF-SLAM technique used for generating robot pose estimates together with positions of features in the robot’s operating environment, it also highlights some of the basics for successful EKF – SLAM implementation: (1) Process and observation models, these are the underlying models required, (2) EKF-SLAM Steps, the three-stage recursive EKF-SLAM process comprising prediction, observation and update, (3) Feature Extraction and Environment modelling, a 3
Evolution of flow cytometry standard, FCS3.0, into a DICOM-compatible format

The International Society for Analytical Cytology, ISAC, has developed a flow cytometry standard (FCS) to permit data interchange, ISAC will soon replace FCS 2.0 with FCS 3.0. Unfortunately, the proposed FCS 3.0 is still fraught with problems, which are of sufficient magnitude as to warrant its early replacement. The most reasonable replacement is as a supplement to the digital imaging and communications in medicine, DICOM 3.0, standard. The recent digital microscopy extension of DICOM can be extended and modified to include flow cytometry data. DICOM includes: image graphics objects, specifications for describing: studies, reports, the acquisition of the data and the individuals involved, physician, patient, etc. Storing the present FCS data in a database, which has already been accomplished with the QC tracker software, will facilitate the transition of FCS to DICOM.
An overview of the distribution of dental care facilities in Mangalore taluk, India.

Objective: Equitable distribution of health care facilities is a guiding principle of Primary Heath Care. Although Mangalore taluk is a reputed center for medical education and health care, location of these facilities has not been evaluated to date. Therefore, a systematic survey was conducted to evaluate distribution of dental care facilities in Mangalore taluk, India. Material and Methods: List of Primary Health Centers, Community Health Centers and government hospitals, and details of the dental personnel and dental care facilities available at these centers was obtained from the District Health Officer (DHO). Data on registered private dental practitioners was obtained from the DHO and the Indian Dental Association. Information was obtained from dental colleges in the taluk regarding outreach activities and collaborations with the public sector. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. Results: Dentists are posted only at the CHCs and the District Hospital where they provide only basic dental services due to a lack of infrastructure. Of the 189 private dental clinics, 91% are located in urban areas of the taluk. They provide all modalities of dental care but are inaccessible to a majority of the rural population. Dental schools provide dental services to people in their vicinity, conduct outreach camps and have adopted four PHCs. Conclusion: An uneven distribution of dental care facilities exists with an overwhelming majority concentrated in the urban areas of the taluk.
Zolav®: a new antibiotic for the treatment of acne

Background Acne is a prominent skin condition affecting >80% of teenagers and young adults and ~650 million people globally. Isotretinoin, a vitamin A derivative, is currently the standard of care for treatment. However, it has a well-established teratogenic activity, a reason for the development of novel and low-risk treatment options for acne. Objective To investigate the effectiveness of Zolav®, a novel antibiotic as a treatment for acne vulgaris. Materials and methods Minimum inhibitory concentration of Zolav® against Propionibacterium acnes was determined by following a standard protocol using Mueller-Hinton broth and serial dilutions in a 96-well plate. Cytotoxicity effects on human umbilical vein endothelial cells and lung cells in the presence of Zolav® were investigated by determining the growth inhibition (GI50) concentration, total growth inhibition concentration, and the lethal concentration of 50% (LC50). The tryptophan auxotrophic mutant of Escherichia coli strain, WP2 uvrA (ATCC 49979), was used for the AMES assay with the addition of Zolav® tested for its ability to reverse the mutation and induce bacterial growth. The in vivo effectiveness of Zolav® was tested in a P. acnes mouse intradermal model where the skin at the infection site was removed, homogenized, and subjected to colony-forming unit (CFU) counts. Results Susceptibility testing of Zolav® against P. acnes showed a minimum inhibitory concentration of 2 µg/mL against three strains with no cytotoxicity and no mutagenicity observed at the highest concentrations tested, 30 µM and 1,500 µg/plate, respectively. The use of Zolav® at a concentration of 50 µg/mL (q8h) elicited a two-log difference in CFU/g between the treatment group and the control. Conclusion This study demonstrates the potential of Zolav® as a novel treatment for acne vulgaris.
Recombinant Probiotics for Allergen Immunotherapy

Research efforts to improve the efficacy of Allergen Immunotherapy (AIT) involve the discovery of new adjuvant. Some strains of probiotic bacteria are able to induce up-regulation of co-stimulatory molecules in DCs, promote TH1 cytokine production and trigger Treg differentiation and activity. In mouse models, they have been shown to prevent or suppress the harmful TH2 response and to potentiate allergen- or allergoid-based immunotherapy of type I allergic diseases. These observations could explain the effectiveness of the prolonged administration of probiotics in the prevention of allergic disorders in infants. Consequently, the probiotics could be used as adjuvant for AIT. However, the simultaneous administration of probiotics and AIT might not come to specific responses because of degradation and not optimal presentation to APC. Moreover, the lack of specificity of the immunological response might be overcome by using probiotic bacteria expressing the sensitizing allergen. This would allow the stimulation of the intestinal immune system by both immunomodulating factors at the same site. Only a few studies noticed the development of AIT strategies based on recombinant bacteria expressing the allergen. However, most of them reported basic favorable immunomodulatory properties, rather than showing the development of immune tolerance or symptoms reduction. The allergen sequestration inside the bacterial cell may represent limits for these preventive and therapeutic approaches. Recently, our research group developed a novel AIT strategy based on a food-grade bacterium Streptococcus thermophilus (ST) with TH1 skewing property, able to produce the allergen intracellularly and to release it at the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) level thanks to its intrinsic autolytic behavior with tolerance induction, and readdressing the pre-existing allergen-elicited TH2 response. Hence, the present knowledge on the subject will be critically considered in this review, underlying the most recent experimental achievements.
Dietary Patterns among Colorectal Cancer Patients in Southwest of Iran: A Cross-Sectional Study

Colorectal cancer is one of the three most common cancers in the world and also one of the four leading causes of death among cancerous patients with global prevalence [1,2]. This cancer is associated with a high incidence and mortality among developed countries [3]. In Iran, which is located in southwest Asia, colorectal cancer is one of the five most common cancers in both genders and in the Khuzestan province (in the south west of Iran) colorectal cancer is among the eight most common cancers [4]. Genetic and environmental factors are involved in the incidence of colorectal cancer. Nutrition also plays an important role in the incidence and control of this disease. Recent studies have shown that improved eating diet could potentially reduce colorectal cancer up to 70 percent. High-fat meals especially meals rich of saturated animal fat that are common in Western diet increases chances of involvement by this cancer [5].
Comparing Computer Input Devices Using Kinematic Variables

Throughput (TP) is a global measure of input device efficiency but provides little information about user's movement behavior when interacting with a device. Psychomotor models of movement provide a framework from which to develop new “during” movement variables that can be used to explain why efficiency differences occur. Data from a previous study examining the usability of a mouse, trackball and RollerMouse™ was re-examined using TP and the kinematic variables peak velocity of the primary movement (PV) and proportion of total distance traveled in primary phase (%PMD). Partial correlation analysis found %PMD and PV to be significantly related to TP and negatively related with each other, suggesting a “speed/accuracy” tradeoff. Further analysis confirmed the variables were useful in discriminating between devices and found that the most efficient device was less constrained by the “speed/accuracy” tradeoff. It was concluded that kinematic variables offer a useful way of understanding efficiency differences between devices.
A Simulated Annealing to Solve Four-Stage Open Shops with Parallel Machines

This paper considers the scheduling problem of the four-stage open shop with parallel machines per stage observed in the chip sorting operation of light emitting diode (LED) testing. In this operation, each job (epiwafer) should be processed by the four working stages without predetermined processing route in order to separate specific LED grades. The considered problem is one of hard combinatorial optimization problems which have not been received much attention in the literature. Due to its computational complexity, in this study, two simulated annealing (SA) algorithms with different initial solutions are proposed to minimize total weighted completion times of jobs. A set of twenty benchmark solutions from a five-job problem is used to evaluate the performances of two SAs. Computational results reveal that the algorithms perform efficient and effective whatever the dimensions of problems are small or large.
La sicurezza dell'escitalopram in gravidanza e nell'allattamento The safety profile of escitalopram in pregnancy and breastfeeding

Riv Psichiatr 2013; 48(6): 407-414 407 RIASSUNTO. Introduzione. L’escitalopram (ESC) e considerato uno dei piu efficaci inibitori selettivi della ricaptazione della serotonina(SSRI) nel trattamento della depressione maggiore. I dati su tollerabilita e sicurezza in gravidanza e puerperio sono tuttora limitati. Scopo dello studio e revisionare la letteratura sul rischio di malformazioni maggiori (MM) e/o complicanze perinatali conseguenti all’esposizione a ESC in gravidanza e allattamento e presentare i casi trattati nel Centro DEGRA, Clinica Psichiatrica, Ospedali Riuniti, Ancona. Metodi. Su PubMed e MEDLINE sono state ricercate le seguenti parole chiave: “escitalopram”, “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors”, “major malformations”, “perinatal complications”, “pregnancy”, “breastfeeding”, “lactation”, selezionando gli articoli in lingua inglese. Abbiamo riportato 8 casi di donne trattate con ESC durante gravidanza e/o allattamento per disturbo depressivo e/o d’ansia, inviate al Centro DEGRA. Risultati. La revisione della letteratura ha evidenziato: incidenza di MM dopo esposizione a ESC sovrapponibile alla popolazione generale non esposta, ma aumentato rischio di basso peso alla nascita. Nei neonati esposti durante l’allattamento non sono state osservate complicanze. Nella casistica del centro DEGRA: non sono stati rilevati MM o aborti e tutti i bambini sono nati con normale indice di APGAR. E stato osservato un caso di sindrome da sospensione in un neonato esposto nel III trimestre a benzodiazepine e paroxetina. I due neonati esposti durante l’allattamento non hanno riportato complicanze. Conclusioni. Dalle evidenze finora disponibili, ESC sembra essere un SSRI efficace e ben tollerato a dosaggi terapeutici nel trattamento dei disturbi affettivi in gravidanza e allattamento. La nostra casistica e in linea con quanto finora pubblicato. Tuttavia, sarebbero necessari ulteriori studi su campioni piu numerosi.
Comparison of mean-field tracker and joint probabilistic data association tracker in high-clutter environments

This paper briefly reviews the development of the mean-field event-averaged maximum likelihood estimation (MFEAMLE) tracker and compares its tracking performance with that of a joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) filter. The JPDA and MFEAMLE approaches are similar in that they both average over measurement to track associations. However, there are several features of MFEAMLE that improve its estimation performance at high target and clutter densities while simplifying the required computation enough to make real-time performance feasible. To enhance tracking of close targets, the filter explicitly models the error correlations that occur between such target pairs, rather than assuming that they are independent. These error correlations arise from the measurement to track association ambiguity present when target separations are comparable to the measurement errors in the sensors. In order to reduce the computational load, a mean-field approximation is used to perform the summation over all associations. In performance comparison on simulated data, smaller average errors and less track loss were obtained for the MFEAMLE tracker than with JPDA.
A Markov Prediction Model Based on Page Hierarchical Clustering

The Markov prediction model is the basis of Web prefetching and personalized recommendation. It can be used to extract connotative Web link hierarchy. The visualized site structure can not only help users understand the relationships between the pages they have visited, but also suggest where they can go next. But the existence of a large amount of Web objects results in data redundancy and model hugeness. Therefore, how to mine and improve the link structure of a website has become a chief problem and it has positive meanings for prefetching. This paper presents an improved method that simplifies the topology structure of a website and extracted the conceptual link hierarchy which can make the organization clearly and legibly. First, the Markov Tree is constructed for the reason that a more capable mechanism for representing past activity in a form usable for prediction is a Markov Tree. In this case the Markov chain model can be defined as a three-tuple (A, S, P), where A is the collection of operation, S is the state space consisting of all the states in a link structure, and P is the one-step transition probability matrix. The transition probability matrix is calculated based on the Markov tree. Second, an algorithm is given to extract the hierarchical tree from the above matrix. The website link hierarchy (WLH) is obtained accordingly. A WLH only contains a trunk link which is a hyperlink from a page on a higher conceptual level to a page on its adjacent lower conceptual level. With the levels increment, there must be more and more pages in each level. It may blur the structure of the website. In order to tackle the problem, a clustering algorithm is proposed to cluster conceptually-related pages on same levels based on their in-link and out-link similarities, which are measured by the concept of weighted Euclidean distance. After the pages in WLH have been clustered, WLC can be constructed. Finally, the simplified model will be used for Web page prediction. Three parameters, i.e. precision, recall, and PRS have been employed to measure the performance in the experiments. Experiments based on two real Web log data demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, which can not only have good overall performance and clustering effect but also keep the relative higher prediction accuracy and recall.
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in Developing Countries

Located in the interface of chemistry, medicine, pharmaceutics, ethnopharmacolgy and industry (cosmetics, perfumes etc.), medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP) are considered as one of the most challenging research fields. The developments in analytical chemistry, medicinal chemistry and molecular genetics have resulted in new insights, and in same instance, confirmed principles that had been proposed decades ago. As a consequence, a plethora of MAP products (fresh and dried plants, drugs, extracts and essential oils, among others) are currently marketed. However, in a growing number of phytoproducts, the quality and quantity are often questioned especially, in the developing countries.