Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Model for Teaching a Foreign Language Class Based on the Principles of Chaos/ Complexity Theory

Chaos/complexity theory first appeared in studies of the natural sciences like physics and mathematics over 50 years ago. This up to date theory has been used in different fields to study complex systems, including social studies particularly the study of language and second language acquisition. Language learning in an instructional context is complex, chaotic, dynamic, open, nonlinear, self- organizing, adaptive, sensitive to initial conditions and creates fractals, strange attractors and feedback. In this study the present researcher has thought of applying chaos/complexity features into teaching second language class. The aim of this study is to familiarize English teachers with chaos/ complex theory and have a greater awareness of this up to date theory of pedagogy. At least forty theories of SLA have been proposed, but none of them gives a complete explanation of this complete process. Complexity theory takes into account all factors and may offer a sound language teaching model. In a training session, the researcher introduced the features of chaos/complexity theory in SLA to English teachers and also provided some practical educational implications to use into their teaching practice. Finally teachers’ feedback and attitudes were analyzed through content analysis and grounded theory to see whether their feedback and opinions are positive or negative. Chaos theory produces a multidimensional classroom that students and facilities interact. The language class context is exactly mirrored by 15 features, which emphasized the elements in natural system. And finally, students will learn how to learn, how to live pleasantly and will be empowered by English language.
PROJECTE DE FI DE CARRERA

A number of applications have emerged over recent years that use datagram transport. These applications include real time video conferencing, Internet telephony, and online games such as Quake and StarCraft. These applications are all delay sensitive and use unreliable datagram transport. Applications that are based on reliable transport can be secured using TLS, but no compelling alternative exists for securing datagram based applications. In this paper we present DTLS, a datagram capable version of TLS. DTLS is extremely similar to TLS and therefore allows reuse of pre-existing protocol infrastructure. Our experimental results show that DTLS adds minimal overhead to a previously non-DTLS capable application.
Transit detections of extrasolar planets around main-sequence stars - I. Sky maps for hot Jupiters

Context. The findings of more than 350 extrasolar planets, most of them nontransiting Hot Jupiters, have revealed correlations between the metallicity of the main-sequence (MS) host stars and planetary incidence. This connection can be used to calculate the planet formation probability around other stars, not yet known to have planetary companions. Numerous wide-field surveys have recently been initiated, aiming at the transit detection of extrasolar planets in front of their host stars. Depending on instrumental properties and the planetary distribution probability, the promising transit locations on the celestial plane will differ among these surveys. Aims. We want to locate the promising spots for transit surveys on the celestial plane and strive for absolute values of the expected number of transits in general. Our study will also clarify the impact of instrumental properties such as pixel size, field of view (FOV), and magnitude range on the detection probability. Methods. We used data of the Tycho catalog for ≈1 million objects to locate all the stars with 0 m mV 11.5 m on the celestial plane. We took several empirical relations between the parameters listed in the Tycho catalog, such as distance to Earth, mV ,a nd (B −V), and those parameters needed to account for the probability of a star to host an observable, transiting exoplanet. The empirical relations between stellar metallicity and planet occurrence combined with geometrical considerations were used to yield transit probabilities for the MS stars in the Tycho catalog. Magnitude variations in the FOV were simulated to test whether this fluctuations would be detected by BEST, XO, SuperWASP and HATNet. Results. We present a sky map of the expected number of Hot Jupiter transit events on the basis of the Tycho catalog. Conditioned by the accumulation of stars towards the galactic plane, the zone of the highest number of transits follows the same trace, interrupted by spots of very low and high expectation values. The comparison between the considered transit surveys yields significantly differing maps of the expected transit detections. While BEST provides an unpromising map, those for XO, SuperWASP, and HATNet show FsOV with up to 10 and more expected detections. The sky-integrated magnitude distribution predicts 20 Hot Jupiter transits with orbital periods between 1.5 d and 50 d and mV < 8 m , of which two are currently known. In total, we expect 3412 Hot Jupiter transits to occur in front of MS stars within the given magnitude range. The most promising observing site on Earth is at latitude = −1.
Small Restoration, Big Impacts: How Habitat Influences Native Pollinators in Intensive Agricultural Landscapes

SMALL RESTORATION, BIG IMPACTS: HOW HABITAT INFLUENCES NATIVE POLLINATORS IN INTENSIVE AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES Caitlin Paterson Advisor: University of Guelph, 2014 Professor A.S. MacDougall This study examined the impact of small-scale restoration of tallgrass prairie on native bee community composition on farms in Southern Ontario, Canada. Three farms with various crops (corn (Zea), Saskatoon berries (Amelanchier alnifolia), squash, pumpkin, zucchini, melon (Curcurbitaceae), soybeans (Glycine), and green beans (Phaseolus)) were surveyed in the summer of 2013. Availability of nesting and foraging habitat for bees was estimated and a combination of pan-trapping and sweep netting was used to capture specimens on 40 plots per farm. Results were analysed using ordination-based techniques in R, and indicated that prairie provides a diverse floral resource on which a complex and abundant array of bees forage. Restored habitat accounted for 33% of the total richness and 72% of the total abundance of native bees. This demonstrates that even small-scale restoration (~10% of each farm) may have an impact on the ability of farms in southern Ontario to support native bees.
Fiscal Stabilization and the Credibility of the U.S. Budget Sequestration Spending Austerity

The credibility of fiscal stabilization programs plays a critical role in their macroeconomic outcomes, yet formal assessments of that credibility are typically missing from analyses of the economic consequences and effectiveness of those programs. This paper remedies that omission for the most recent fiscal consolidation attempt in the U.S.: the 2011-mandated budget sequestration spending cuts in discretionary spending slated to begin in 2013. The credibility of those cuts is assessed with a novel methodology that draws on the “event-study” and Business Cycle Accounting traditions. The paper finds that the fiscal austerity program had little, if any, credibility around the time it was scheduled to become effective and that studies that don’t take this lack of credibility into account might overestimate the quantitative impact of the budget sequestration on key macroeconomic variables by a factor of three or more. These findings expose the dangers of extrapolating policy lessons extracted from the budget sequestration experience to other fiscal stabilization programs, without gauging first their credibility. Properly adapted and extended, the methodology the paper developed with that purpose could prove useful for the systematic assessment of the credibility of other fiscal stabilization programs, of the impact of their credibility on aggregate outcomes and, ultimately, of the chances of those programs to successfully eliminate structural fiscal imbalances.
Carbon cycle, vegetation, and climate dynamics in the Holocene: Experiments with the CLIMBER‐2 model

Multiple proxy data reveal that the early to middle Holocene (ca. 8–6 kyr B.P.) was warmer than the preindustrial period in most regions of the Northern Hemisphere. This warming is presumably explained by the higher summer insolation in the Northern Hemisphere, owing to changes in the orbital parameters. Subsequent cooling in the late Holocene was accompanied by significant changes in vegetation cover and an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. The essential question is whether it is possible to explain these changes in a consistent way, accounting for the orbital parameters as the main external forcing for the climate system. We investigate this problem using the computationally efficient model of climate system, CLIMBER‐2, which includes models for oceanic and terrestrial biogeochemistry. We found that changes in climate and vegetation cover in the northern subtropical and circumpolar regions can be attributed to the changes in the orbital forcing. Explanation of the atmospheric CO2 record requires an additional assumption of excessive CaCO3 sedimentation in the ocean. The modeled decrease in the carbonate ion concentration in the deep ocean is similar to that inferred from CaCO3 sediment data [ Broecker et al., 1999 ]. For 8 kyr B.P., the model estimates the terrestrial carbon pool ca. 90 Pg higher than its preindustrial value. Simulated atmospheric δ13C declines during the course of the Holocene, similar to δ13C data from the Taylor Dome ice core [ Indermühle et al., 1999 ]. Amplitude of simulated changes in δ13C is smaller than in the data, while a difference between the model and the data is comparable with the range of data uncertainty.
Hydrodynamic modeling of electron transport in silicon quantum wires

An extended hydrodynamic model self-consistently coupled to the 2D Schrödinger and 3D Poisson equations is introduced, to describe charge transport in Silicon Nanowires. It is been formulated by taking the moments of the multisubband Boltzmann equation, and the closure relations for the fluxes and production terms have been obtained by means of the Maximum Entropy Principle. The low-field mobility for a Gate-All-Around in a SiNW transistor has been evaluated.
Frequency-Domain Assessment of Integration Schemes for Earthquake Engineering Problems

Although numerical integration is a technique commonly employed in many time-dependent problems, usually its accuracy relied on a time interval small enough. However, taking into account that time integration formulae can be considered to be recursive digital filters, in this research a criterion based on transfer functions has been employed to characterize a wide range of integration algorithms from a frequency approach, both in amplitude and in phase. By adopting Nyquist’s criterion to avoid the aliasing phenomena, a total of seven integration schemes have been reviewed in terms of accuracy and distortion effects on the frequency content of the signal. Some of these schemes are very well-known polynomial approximations with different degrees of interpolation, but others have been especially defined for solving earthquake engineering problems or have been extracted from the digital signal processing methodology. Finally, five examples have been developed to validate this frequency approach and to investigate its influence on practical dynamic problems. This research, focused on earthquake and structural engineering, reveals that numerical integration formulae are clearly frequency-dependent, a conclusion that obviously has a relevant interest in all dynamic engineering problems, even when they are formulated and solved in the time-domain.
TOEFL iBT Speaking, Goal – orientation and self-assessment a study of Iranian EFL learners

Owing to the growing attention to learner's independence and autonomy, self-assessment has received considerable attention in recent years. Nevertheless, this notion is not well-known to most English language teachers and students in Iran where traditional assessment is still dominant. This study explored the effect of self-assessment on EFL learners’ TOEFL iBT speaking score, goal orientation as well as scrutinizing the relationship between Iranian EFL learners' goal-orientation and their speaking scores in TOEFL iBT test. To do so, 72 advanced EFL learners who were both male and female studying in Jahan Elm institute of higher education in Mashhad, Iran participated in the current study. Experimental group consisted of 36 EFL learners while control group encompassed 36 EFL learners. All participants took TOEFL iBT test, goal orientation questionnaire during the first and final week of the semester (i.e. pretest, posttest) and being trained through the TOEFL iBT software. Independent sample t test and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to find the difference between the two groups in terms of their speaking scores and goal orientated behavior and to find the relationship between goal orientation and speaking score of TOEFL iBT test. Results from the two post measurements indicated that students in the experimental group showed statistically significant gains on speaking scores and their goal orientated behavior as compared with the control group. Moreover, outcomes illustrated the existence of significant positive correlation between the learning goal orientation and TOEFL iBT speaking scores of EFL learners. In sum, the results of this study suggest that self-assessment should be integrated into regular TOEFL iBT preparation courses in order to help TOEFL iBT candidates become independent learners and ultimately achieve more satisfactory results in English proficiency tests, particularly TOEFL iBT test.
Adjoint-based control of afterbody flow unsteadiness in the compressible regime

The theoretical study of a compressible afterbody flow in the subsonic regime is presented. It relies on sensitivity analyses developed in the framework of the linear global stability theory and aims at predicting beforehand the effect of a steady bulk and wall forcing on the growth rate of linear global modes. Such an analysis stands as a step in the perspective of a full control of afterbody flow unsteadiness. The sensitivity functions are derived analytically using adjoint methods and presented for the global mode responsible for the onset of a periodic regime. Various control methods are investigated, including an additional control device in the lee of the main body, heat sources, and boundary forcing. The obtained results show that the global mode is sensitive to momentum forcing along the separation line, to a localized heating in the core of the recirculating bubble, and to a blowing velocity close to the edge of the base.
SOPHIANN: Aprendizado de Processos Através da Extração de Conhecimento via Redes Neurais

Resumo: O estudo de processos do mundo real pode se tornar uma tarefa ar- dua. Objetos reais, especialmente aqueles relacionados a processos industriais, sao dificieis de modelar e compreender. Este trabalho busca reduzir a distância entre modelar um processo industrial e compreende-lo, baseando-se em Analise Formal de Conceitos para obter regras a partir de redes neurais previamente treinadas. Neste artigo uma ferramenta, Sophiann, e apresentada. A ideia prin- cipal e auxiliar usuarios na aprendizagem de processos industriais complexos. Abstract: Learning about real world process is not an easy task. Real objects, specially those related to industrial process, are difficult to model and under- stand. This work aims to reduce the gap between modelling an industrial pro- cess and understanding it. It is based on Formal Concept Analysis to obtain rules from neural networks previously trained. In this paper a tool, named Sophiann, is presented. The main idea is to help users learn about complex industrial processes.
The Effects of External Beam Irradiation on Ear Cartilage: An Animal Model

Adjuvant therapy of the head and neck has become the mainstay for treatment of head and neck malignancies. Although important for local control, complications do arise with the use of this adjuvant therapy. We have recently noted changes in the ear architecture in patients that have undergone postoperative irradiation therapy. In an attempt to identify changes in the cartilage thickness, we conducted an animal model to determine the etiology of our clinical observation. Eighteen New Zealand white rabbits were utilized. Three experimental irradiated groups were designed for single dose external cobalt60 beam therapy at 20, 25 and 30 Gy. The right ear served as matched nonirradiated control. After two months the cartilage underwent quantitative histomorphometric analysis using an inverted microscope, digitized camera and computer software. Irradiation did not significantly affect the thickness of cartilage upon comparing control and irradiated groups. There was no change seen in vascularity or tissue composition that could be identified. In conclusion, it appears that alterations in thickness of the cartilage did not result in the clinical examples demonstrated. The etiology to the changes noted clinically are unknown, but may be related to fibrosis and scarring of the dermis/epidermis. Further evaluation is warranted.
Hydraulic Bureaucracies and the Hydraulic Mission: Flows of Water, Flows of Power

Anchored in 19th century scientism and an ideology of the domination of nature, inspired by colonial hydraulic feats, and fuelled by technological improvements in high dam constructions and power generation and transmission, large-scale water resources development has been a defining feature of the 20th century. Whether out of a need to increase food production, raise rural incomes, or strengthen state building and the legitimacy of the state, governments – North and South, East and West – embraced the 'hydraulic mission' and entrusted it to powerful state water bureaucracies (hydrocracies). Engaged in the pursuit of iconic and symbolic projects, the massive damming of river systems, and the expansion of large-scale public irrigation these hydrocracies have long remained out of reach. While they have enormously contributed to actual welfare, including energy and food generation, flood protection and water supply to urban areas, infrastructural development has often become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, fuelling rent-seeking and symbolising state power. In many places projects have been challenged on the basis of their economic, social or environmental impacts. Water bureaucracies have been challenged internally (within the state bureaucracies or through political changes) and externally (by critiques from civil society and academia, or by reduced funding). They have endeavoured to respond to these challenges by reinventing themselves or deflecting reforms. This paper analyses these transformations, from the emergence of the hydraulic mission and associated water bureaucracies to their adjustment and responses to changing conditions.
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES AND BIOANALYTICAL CHARACTERIZATION FOR A NOVEL NON-TOXIC FLEXIBLE PHOTOPOLYMER FORMULATION CLASS

We present herein a new class of resin formulations for stereolithography, named FlexSL, with a broad bandwidth of tunable mechanical properties. The novel polyether(meth)acrylate based material class has outstanding material characteristics in combination with the advantages of being a biocompatible (meth)acrylate based processing material. FlexSL shows very promising results in several initial biocompatibility tests. This emphasizes its non-toxic behavior in a biomedical environment, caused mainly by the (meth)acrylate based core components. A short overview of mechanical and processing properties will be given in the end. The herein presented novel FlexSL materials show a significant lower cytotoxicity in contrast to commercial applied acrylic stereolithography resins. Further biocompatibility tests according to ISO 10993 protocols are planned. On the one hand, there are technical applications for this material (e.g. flaps, tubes, hoses, cables, sealing parts, connectors and other technical rubber-like applications), and on the other hand, broad fields of potential biomedical applications in which the FlexSL materials can be beneficial are obvious. Especially these could be small series production of medical products with special flexible material requirements. In addition, the usage for individual soft hearing aid shells, intra-operative planning services and tools like intra-op cutting templates and sawing guides is very attractive. The possibility to modify the FlexSL resins also for high-resolution applications makes it possible to manufacture now very flexible micro-prototypes with outstanding material characteristics and very fine structures with a minimum resolution of 20 mym and a layer thickness of minimal 5 myrn. These resin formulations are applicable and adjustable to other stereolithographic equipment available on the market.
But first, are you experienced? The consequences of timing, age, and adult condition on reproductive performance in Greater Crested Terns Thalasseus bergii

McLEAY, L.J., PAGE, B.P. & GOLDSWORTHY, S.D. 2017. But first, are you experienced? The consequences of timing, age, and adult condition on reproductive performance in Greater Crested Terns Thalasseus bergii. Marine Ornithology 45: 205–215. Among bird species with defined breeding seasons, rates of reproductive success are higher among individuals that breed earlier in the season and decrease as the season progresses. Seasonal decreases in breeding success have been explained by decreases in prey availability or by variations in parental “quality,” mediated by age-related experience or phenotype. We examined seasonal patterns of primary production, as an indicator of prey availability, in relation to the breeding phenology of three Greater Crested Tern Thalasseus bergii colonies in gulf waters of South Australia. We then determined the influence of reproductive timing on the reproductive performance (chick growth and survival) of Greater Crested Terns and the role of parental “quality” in reproductive success by measuring reproductive timing in relation to parental age and body condition. In contrast to expectations, increased primary production was observed in winter months, long after the chick fledging period. High production in winter may benefit newly fledged juvenile terns that have relatively less skill and experience than adults. Chick hatching was synchronised among colonies located 250 km apart, and the timing of breeding had a significant effect on reproductive performance. Chicks reared by older adults hatched earlier in the breeding season than younger adults, and exhibited better growth and body condition (hatch mass, linear growth rate, and asymptotic mass) and higher rates of survival. There was less support for the effects of body condition, measured by a body condition index (BCI), on reproductive timing, and no significant relationship between adult age and body condition. However, individuals less than seven years old had significantly poorer body condition than those that were older. The seasonal patterns in age-related breeding success we observed may be explained by parents’ age-related improvements in breeding and foraging proficiency, shaped through their need to provision their chicks with a single prey item that is small enough for the chick to swallow.