Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deep Learning in Robotics

New machine learning methods and parallel computation opened the door to many applications in computer vision. While computer vision is progressing rapidly because of that, there are not as many and as successful real world applications in robotics. In this thesis, we investigate two possible causes of this problem and we provide potential solutions. In particular, using recurrent networks to deal with temporal information and using human robot interaction for incremental learning. Robotics is time dependent. The environment is perceived through time and tasks are being performed by time indexed trajectories. This important property has been generally neglected in the deep learning community. The main focus instead is on improving benchmarks on single image tasks or analyzing videos in batches. Consequently, real-time video analysis received less attention. But this is exactly what robots need to have. Processing single images will not provide sufficient information to observe the environment and processing a batch of images will be too delayed to be used for planning and decision-making in real-time. As a solution to this problem, we propose a recurrent fully convolutional neural network(RFCNN) for segmentation, which is very useful in different robotics scenarios. This type of network accepts a series of images ending with the current image to infer the segmentation for the last image. We showed how such networks can be designed and trained in an end-to-end fashion. An extensive set of experiments on several different architectures and benchmarks were made. We observed a consistent improvement by using RFCNN over non-recurrent counterparts. While deep learning methods are the most general machine learning solutions available, they still suffer from the change in the data distribution between training and test. Even though it is not limited to robotics, their effect is most apparent
Determinação do Número de Agrupamentos em Conjuntos de Dados Multidimensionais utilizando Algoritmos Genéricos

A analise de agrupamentos tem sido utilizada com sucesso nas mais diversas areas de pesquisa com o objetivo de agrupar dados semelhantes segundo suas caracteristicas. Uma tecnica eficiente na analise de agrupamentos e a utilizacao da funcao de densidade de probabilidade que apresenta o numero de agrupamentos graficamente. Os algoritmos geneticos foram utilizados com sucesso para informar o numero de agrupamentos em um conjunto de dados unidimensional. Os metodos existentes para a analise de agrupamentos em dados multidimensionais necessitam de um numero aproximado de agrupamentos para localiza-los. O desempenho destes metodos depende diretamente deste numero de agrupamentos. O proposito deste trabalho e utilizar os algoritmos geneticos para predizer o numero de agrupamentos em dados multidimensionais.
Dynamic software metric estimation (DSME): Tool using ArgoUML

Software cost estimation had been a challenge for the researchers. Due to various technologies and further researches in software development, the field of cost estimation gained an enormous scope for studies. Moreover, the growth of internet based technology and distribution made this problem quite popular. Component based software development strategies have been found to be advantages for software development companies. Cost estimation using static metric has been found to be helpful in pre decisions whereas dynamic metrics are helping for estimating cost of maintenance, system loads and suggests the improvement if required in the technology. The present paper proposes and provides an implementation of the DSME tool for evaluating the software metrics using dynamic metrics. For estimation of dynamic metrics current focus is on time sequence diagram processed using ArgoUML software tool.
Gender Differences in Intimate Partner Violence via Electronic Communication Technology: An Exploratory Study of Older Adolescents and Young Adults

Much work has been done on factors that contribute to intimate partner violence (IPV), including growing up in a violent home and the role of peers. Despite the ascendency in the past decade of the Internet and social media in modern life, research on how electronic communication technology (ECT) facilitates IPV is still in the early stages. Prior research suggests differences between males and females in both IPV, and in electronic communication as relates to dating violence. The present study examined gender differences in relationship violence and ECT-usage among young women and men ages 18 to 30 that were dating, engaged and married. This study builds on earlier research that used samples of dating adolescents. Neither gender nor ECT was a strong predictor of IPV. Aggression towards peers, and peers’ IPV experiences, were positive, moderate, and consistently significant predictors of IPV. Implications for prevention and intervention programming are discussed.
Overview of the Computer Programming Learning Environments for primary education

Over the past decade, the assessment of the general educational value of computer programming and computational thinking has been constantly increasing and, as a result, they are introduced to increasingly younger ages. In parallel, educational programming environments are significantly progressing, providing a variety of options for different ages. This paper presents an overview of the modern learning programming environments for primary education and proposes a classification system with categories corresponding to the technological and educational dimensions of the area. The paper aims to support teachers in learning design for the interdisciplinary approach of programming and the development of computational thinking.
The psychophysiological differences between expert and novice rifle shooters during the aiming period

Purpose: Determination of mental status of the rifle shooters during the shooting performance is critical for the development of mental training programs according to their skill levels. The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychophysiological differences of expert and novice rifle shooters. Material: Fourteen expert (age: 28.08±9.12 years, height: 176.12±4.24 cm, weight: 73.56±5.28 kg) and twenty novice shooters (age: 21.08±3.12 years, height: 177.42±3.74 cm, and weight: 71.56±3.57 kg) participated in the current study. The participants performed five shootings from a distance of 10m. The averages of each shooter’s five shooting scores, values of attention and meditation, and heart rate between 5-sec before shooting and shooting moment were obtained. Results: It was determined that shooting scores (10.02 ±0.49 vs. 7.6±2.86, p<0.01, respectively) and meditation level (71.50±21.05 vs. 52.93±20.54, p<0.05, respectively) were significantly higher in the experts while attention level (73.63±21.11 vs. 59.76±21.26, p<0.05, respectively), and heart rate (105.34±12.12 vs. 98.67±7,12 bpm, p<0.05, respectively) were found higher in the novices. Conclusions: The novices and experts present different psychophysiological responses during the aiming period. It is suggested that the psychophysiological differences can be useful to categorize shooters and to provide feedback in training because it is important to develop programs according to group levels, especially in the development of mental training programs. Besides, it is determined that the mobile EEG device is an effective method for determining the mental status of athletes in sports specific activities.
Making learning effective – quantity and quality of pre-service teachers’ feedback

ABSTRACT Feedback is an essential formative assessment practice that has the potential to influence student learning and achievement positively. Providing effective feedback, however, is a challenging task for teachers. Especially beginning teachers struggle with the provision of information that supports students in developing and improving their competences. Learning to provide feedback thus is an important aspect of teacher education. The present exploratory study investigates pre-service chemistry teachers’ practices regarding the judgement of students’ level of achievement and the provision of feedback in the context of the control-of-variables strategy. A sample of N = 40 bachelor and master students at Kiel University judged students’ written artefacts and provided feedback with the aim to support students in their progression towards the learning goals. The quality of the feedback was coded with respect to its correct judgement of the students’ current levels of achievement and the support it provided regarding next steps in learning. The results show that only a few of the pre-service teachers could correctly judge students’ current levels of achievement and provide feedback that is expected to be effective. Overall, the findings indicate a need for more research in this field and a need for the implementation of formative assessment practices as a topic in pre-service teacher education.
MATLAB and GAMS: Interfacing Optimization and Visualization Software

This document briefly describes a link between GAMS and MATLAB, both of which the user is assumed to have already. The software gives MATLAB users the ability to use all the optimization capabilities of GAMS, and allows visualization of GAMS models directly within MATLAB. The most recent version can be downloaded directly from http://www.cs. wisc.edu/math-prog/matlab.html
On the Capability Notion in Business Informatics

The business environments of today are changing rapidly, entailing complex and dynamic organizational constellations. Enterprises operating in these conditions need to have the capability to deliver their services in a variety of business contexts with sustainable quality and moreover to leverage them to competitive advantage. Lately the notion of capability has gained a growing attention, due to a number of factors: the notion directs business investment focus, it can be used as a baseline for business planning, and it leads directly to service specification and design. Linguistically, capability means having power of doing something. Historically, the notion of capability has been examined in Economics [1], Sociology [2, 3], and Management Science [4, 5, 6]. Capability is seen as originating from competence-based management and military frameworks, offering a complement to traditional enterprise modelling approaches by representing organizational knowledge from a result-based perspective. Thus it is as an abstraction away from the specifics of how (process), who (agent) and why (goals), i.e. with focus on results and benefits. More recently, capability is gaining more attention in the context of business-IT alignment. In the specification and design of services using business planning as the baseline [7], capability is seen as the fundamental abstraction to describe what a core business does in the sense of the capacity to achieve a desired outcome. It is viewed as a hierarchy, where each level is a decomposition of one or more capabilities at a higher level. Capabilities are further mapped to solutions, such as IT applications. Similarly, in [8, 9], capability is seen as an ability or capacity for a company to deliver value, either to customers or shareholders, right beneath the business strategy. At the same time capability should allow fairly straightforward integrations with established enterprise model components, such as goals (through " goal fulfilment "), processes (through " modelling "), and services (through " servicing "). The latter relation, specific to service-oriented engineering has been described in Service Oriented Architecture [10], i.e. a capability is seen as existing business functionality able to address a well-defined need implemented through a service accessible through an interface. In addition to the outlined related concepts, in [11], capability is set closely to the notion of business context to enable an enterprise to achieve business goals in varying and dynamically changing environments. However, the knowledge, role and the usage of enterprise capabilities in the named disciplines in terms of people …
A Toolkit for Exploring Augmented Reality through Construction with Children

Augmented Reality begins to be widely mainstream among children, due to some interactive successes in video games and social networks. Based on this interest, we present CartonEd, an open and complete toolkit suitable for children dedicated to the construction of an augmented reality headset device. The toolkit let the children play and explore augmented reality with and beyond handheld devices. Inspired by the Do-It-Yourself movement, the toolkit includes different components such as blueprints, tutorials, videos, mobile apps, a software development kit and an official website. Among the mobile applications, one is implemented to guide the children through the construction process while experiencing augmented reality. To validate our solution (in particular the construction process and the guiding app) and understand its effect on children in regard to their relation to the augmented reality, we conducted four construction sessions. Our study examines the usability of the guiding app and the construction process. We report in this paper the main components of the CartonEd toolkit and the results of an evaluation among 57 children and teenagers (ages 8-16), showing a positive outcome about their own constructed device (all functional), their feelings and wishes regarding the augmented reality.
Intercultural communication and the possibility of English as a lingua franca

When hailed by another ship, pirates, who were multinational in origin, usually answered that they came ‘from the seas,’ not from any particular country. Some pirates explained to captives that they had ‘sold their nation’ for booty. They made the point with brutal clarity after the declaration of war against Spain . in March 1719, when the British admiralty and royal officials throughout the Americas desperately hoped that pirates would come in, accept the King’s commissions, and go back to sea as privateers. (Marcus Rediker, 2004, Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates and the Golden Age: 8)
An Evolutionary Ecological Framework for Understanding Human Behavioral Syndromes: Commentary on Lukaszewski et al. 2017

In their recent paper, Lukaszewski et al. proposed a socioecological hypothesis for analyzing the covariations between the Big Five personality traits. The hypothesis states that the shared variance between the personality traits is higher in less complex societies marked by lower economic development, urbanization, and niche diversity. We welcome this hypothesis and add an additional framework for understanding the covariation between the traits—behavioral syndromes. We state that behavioral syndromes and their effects on fitness should be the primary target for the evolutionary ecological analysis of the relations between human personality traits on a population level. Behavioral syndromes are extensively studied in animal behavioral ecology which provides an opportunity for the comparative study of personality. We point to the behavioral syndromes in Lukaszewski et al. data, especially to the agreeableness–conscientiousness correlation, which roughly corresponds to the aggressiveness–impulsiveness behavioral syndrome in animals. We point to other potentially problematic issues and provide recommendations for future research.
Leadership for “The All of It”: Formalizing Teacher-Leader Networks

Background/Context Research underscores that school improvement relies on leadership that stretches beyond a principal, but significant developments to the design of school level leadership lags. This paper shares data and interpretations of school leadership organized as a network of formalized teacher-leader roles that are ranked, titled, and differently paid. Purpose/Research Question The study examined the functions, tasks, and boundaries of different teacher-leader roles as well as teachers’ perceptions of their legitimacy and value. It also explored whether formal roles generated negative side effects on school climate or teacher relations. Focus of Study Ongoing skepticism of role formalization and ranking within teaching directed the study's attention to an extensive empirical case of formalization. Setting Data were collected from eight secondary schools in England, where formalized teacher-leader roles are long established and associated with school performance. Research Design The study was designed as a descriptive investigation of a leader system. It was conceptually framed by perspectives on schools as organizations and literatures on role formalization, leadership, and school improvements. Data Collection and Analysis Observation, artifact, and interview data were collected. Description and analysis focused on the design of leader roles, the activities and conditions they generated, and school member perceptions of their legitimacy and value. Findings/Results Formal roles that blend teaching with instructional and managerial leadership gain legitimacy and pass tests of goodness and value for teachers when they directly contribute to teachers’ day-to-day work and success, as when they elevate working conditions, bring disciplinary knowledge and local understandings to learning and problem solving, and contribute to individual and collective efficacy. Conclusions/Recommendations Networks of formal teacher-leader roles can bring more substantial and reliable resources to the conditions of teaching and school organizations than informal leadership or targeted coaching roles. Fears of negative social and professional consequences do not emerge when roles remain rooted in teaching, when leaders’ tasks flow across logistical, instructional, and social dimensions of teachers’ work, and when norms emphasize help and reciprocity.
IS GENDER AND EDUCATION OF TOURISTS’ DETERMINANT FOR VALUE PERCEPTIONS?

Benefits that tourists get from destination experiences are of critical importance in terms of their level of satisfaction and even of their intentions with regard to destinations. For this reason, destination management organizations (DMOs) must provide tourists with experiences that will ensure multifactorial benefits. However, in order to correctly direct tourists' value perceptions regarding their experiences, DMOs must understand what kind of value tourists get from their experiences in the destinations. Especially, understanding the way value perceptions are formed in line with gender factor, which is a fundamental market segmentation scale, and taking steps accordingly are of vital importance for DMOs. Therefore, it was firstly examined in the current study whether or not the perceived value perceptions of tourists differ according to their gender. Secondly, it was examined whether there would be a difference in perceived value in accordance with the interaction between gender and educational and financial background of tourists.
REAL EXCHANGE RATE SHOCKS, ASYMMETRIC ADJUSTMENT AND LONG-RUN EQUILIBRIUM IN LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

This paper investigates the possibility that long-run relative purchasing power parity is dependent upon the nature of real exchange shocks that are experienced. While existing studies involving developed and less developed countries often find against purchasing power parity having employed linear tests of non-stationarity or non-cointegration, we employ a new cointegration test, recently advocated by Enders and Siklos and Enders and Dibooglu, that tests for an asymmetric adjustment towards parity with respect to positive and negative real exchange rate shocks. Using a sample of ten African economies with data taken from the post-Bretton Woods floating exchange rate era, long-run purchasing power parity holds in eight of these cases if an explicit distinction is made between positive and negative shocks. Across the sample, we find variation in the type of asymmetry experienced and the roles played price and nominal exchange rate adjustment.
The Effects of Job Characteristics on Work Engagement in the Retail Sector Jharkhand, India

Employees play a key role in the success of any organization. They help achieve organizational objectives. Several studies indicate those employees who are highly engaged can help the organization respond to changes in the environment, competition and change in the workforce. The extent to which an employee believes in the mission and purpose of an organization and demonstrates commitment through their own action and attitude towards their employer is the commitment of employees. The present study investigates the relationship between job characteristic as antecedent of work engagement in the retail sectors. A sample of 71 employees from different retail sector was selected randomly. Around 100 questionnaires were distributed and only 71 questionnaires were properly filled. The standard scale of measures was used i.e. Job Diagnostics Survey (JC) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scales (UWES) was used. The Linear regression analysis revealed that job characteristics significantly affecting the work engagement. The analyses predict that Task significance is highly significant and have a positive relationship between work engagements. Skill variety, Task Identity, Autonomy has also positive relationship but feedback has no significant relationship
Analysing prospective teachers’ self-efficacy belief, teaching motivation and attitudes towards teaching from the perspective of several variables

This study aims to analyse prospective teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, teaching motivation, and attitudes towards teaching from the aspect of a number of variables. The research data were collected through “Teachers’ Sense of Self-efficacy Scale”, “Motivation to Teach Scale”, “Attitude Scale of Teaching Profession”. The study group was composed of 543 undergraduate students and taking teaching formation courses. Consequently, it was found that the prospective teachers who had chosen the department of study or graduation voluntarily had higher self-efficacy, motivation and attitudes than those who had not chosen the department voluntarily. The difference was found significant for both independent variables, but the interaction effect of the independent variables was not found significant for the dependent variables considered in this study. In addition to that, on examining the correlations between variables, it was found that the highest correlation was between intrinsic motivation and attitudes whereas the lowest correlation was between self-efficacy and motivation. The regression analysis performed indicated that attitudes had significant effects on self-efficacy and motivation. The findings suggested that such factors as attitudes, self-efficacy, and motivation should be taken into consideration in teacher training, and that other variables thought to have significant effects on teaching profession should also be analysed in studies to be conducted in the future.