Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Children’s Interaction Ability Towards Multi-Touch Gestures

The modern, powerful and multi-touch technology has gained attention among younger users. The devices are not only limited to entertainment purposes, but is also increasingly introduced for learning purposes at kindergartens and preschool. However, the number of studies that address the interaction of multi-touch gestures among kindergarten children are still limited. In fact, such interactions foster great learning potential in developmental skills for children. This paper specifically focuses on the priority of children’s interaction abilities towards multi-touch gestures such as rotation, zoom-in and zoom-out. This study had involved ten kindergarten children in a kindergarten located in Kajang, Selangor between ages of four to six years old. A direct observation technique was used in this study. The findings show three items from the aspects of motor and cognitive skills (such as touch input unable to reach screen sensitivity, unintentional touches and fingers touching the object inaccurately) are the interaction ability that should be prioritized. Thus, this study suggests that the development of an adaptive multi-touch gestures application should be adapted into to children’s motor and cognitive skills, besides the other aspects.
Synchronization between Two Fixed Cavity Mode Locked Lasers

An active mode locked fibre ring laser is designed as a slave laser, driven by a commercial Ti:Sapphire laser acting as a master. The master-slave synchronization was stabilized for frequency detuning, but the output pulse width of the slave laser was observed to increase. The increase in pulse width was asymmetric about the ring cavity resonance frequency, a consequence of an asymmetry in the detuning range of the higher order cavity modes. We find that the detuning range decreases as the square of the mode number, in agreement with
The Identification of Cultural Diversity Factors in Swaziland’s Public Schools

Swaziland is a small country situated in-between South Africa and Mozambique towards the southern tip of Africa. A former British colony Swaziland has a history of colonial education based on colonial interests and built on diverse education in the past. This study focuses specifically on cultural diversity in the Swaziland education sector and the management thereof. In doing so the cultural diversity factors that prevail in the Swaziland education sector are identified based on theoretical and empirical research. Swaziland achieved independence in 1968 upon which history documents its educational policy reform to a more inclusive, equal and progressive education regime. The present Swaziland education sector has evolved in shape and size and the current teacher workforce profile in Swaziland consists of both local and regional (African) teachers. This in itself creates an atmosphere of diversity: in this case cultural diversity. Success in managing teacher provisioning, development and management and evaluation of education provisioning requires an acute sensitivity to many managerial elements including that of cultural diversity. Five cultural diverse management factors have been identified. They are Cultural bias, Cultural tolerance, Cultural association, Cultural Inequality and Cultural minorities. These factors explain a satisfactory cumulative variance of 55%, but have a lower order reliability as measured by Cronbach Alpha ( DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n23p540
Early warning signals also precede non-catastrophic transitions

Synthesis The quickly expanding literature on early warning signals for critical transitions in ecosystems suggests that critical slowing down is a key phenomenon to measure the distance to a tipping point in ecosystems. Such work is broadly misinterpreted as showing that slowing down is specific to tipping points. In this contribution, we show why this is not the case. Early warning signals based on critical slowing down indicate a broader class of situations where a system becomes increasingly sensitive to perturbations. Ecosystem responses to external changes can surprise us by their abruptness and irreversibility. Models have helped identifying indicators of impending catastrophic shifts, referred to as 'generic early warning signals'. These indicators are linked to a phenomenon known as 'critical slowing down' which describes the fact that the recovery rate of a system after a perturbation decreases when the system approaches a bifurcation - such as the classical fold bifurcation associated to catastrophic shifts. However, contrary to what has sometimes been suggested in the literature, a decrease in recovery rate cannot be considered as specific to approaching catastrophic shifts. Here, we analyze the behavior of early warning signals based on critical slowing down in systems approaching a range of catastrophic and non-catastrophic situations. Our results show that slowing down generally happens in situations where a system is becoming increasingly sensitive to external perturbations, independently of whether the impeding change is catastrophic or not. These results highlight that indicators specific to catastrophic shifts are still lacking. More importantly, they also imply that in systems where we have no reason to expect catastrophic transitions, slowing down may still be used in a more general sense as a warning signal for a potential decrease in stability
Tick Size Pilot Plan and Market Quality

This paper examines the effects of the Tick Size Pilot Plan on average stock market quality. We compare changes in market quality, as measured by spreads, quoted depth, trading volume, volatility, and price efficiency, between the Test and Control Groups. Overall, we find that on average, relative to stocks in the Control Group, market quality deteriorates for stocks in the Test Groups. Specifically, we find that stocks in the Test Groups experience an increase in spreads and volatility and a decrease in price efficiency, relative to stocks in the Control Group. We find that displayed depth at the best quotes increases for all Test Groups. However, when we compare the displayed depth at the best quotes to the total displayed depth within five cents of the best quotes prior to the Pilot, we find that the displayed depth only increases for stocks in the Test Group subject to the trade-at rule. We find that displayed depth within fifteen cents of the best displayed quotes increases for all Test Groups. However, this increase in depth does not appear to lower the transaction costs of large orders, which also increase when the tick size widens. We find that the deterioration in market quality appears to be greater for stocks that had average quoted spreads less than the increased tick size (i.e., less than five cents) during the pre-Pilot period. Our evidence suggests that these findings are mainly driven by the widening of quoting increments as opposed to imposing a trading increment or a trade-at rule, as we only find a few significant differences between the different Test Groups (e.g. the Test Group subject to the trade-at rule).
Applying Design Science Research to develop a Technique to Evaluate the Usability and User eXperience of Learning Management Systems

As Internet-based technology becomes more accessible, learning institutions have been adopting platforms such as Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to support and also complement face to face learning. Their widespread adoption raises the importance to evaluate them regarding quality in use attributes such as usability and User eXperience (UX). This paper presents the application of Design Science Research (DSR) to develop a technique and a tool to evaluate the usability and UX of LMSs called TUXEL. By applying DSR, we ensure a high level of rigor in the development process, combining theory and practice. The empirical studies indicated that TUXEL is adequate, in addition to providing better results compared to other techniques.
Comparison of phytoplankton blooms triggered by two typhoons with different intensities and translation speeds in the South China Sea

Two phytoplankton blooms in the South China Sea (SCS), triggered by 2 typhoons with different intensities and translation speeds, were compared using remotely sensed chlorophyll a (chl a), sea surface temperature (SST), vector wind field, and best-track typhoon data. Typhoon Ling-Ling in 2001 was strong, with a maximum sustained surface wind speed of 59 m s(-1), and fast-moving with a mean translation speed of 4.52 m s(-1). Typhoon Kai-Tak in 2005 was weak with a maximum sustained surface wind speed of 46 m s(-1), and slow-moving with a mean translation speed of 2.87 m s(-1). The weak, slow-moving typhoon Kai-Tak induced phytoplankton blooms with higher chl a concentrations, while the strong, fast-moving typhoon Ling-Ling induced blooms over a larger area. On average, about 7 typhoons per year affect the SCS, among which 41% are strong (> 50 m s(-1)) and 59% are weak, while 64% are fast-moving (>4.4 m s(-1)) and 36% are slow-moving. We conservatively estimate that typhoon periods may account for 3.5% of the annual primary production in the oligotrophic SCS.
Comparative Analysis of different types of Malaria Diseases using First Order Features

Malaria is majorly caused by three parasitic organisms namely, P. malaria, P. vivax, P. falciparum. Physician (Microbiologists, Laboratory technicians, Medical Practitioners, and medical experts) examines erythrocytes under light microscope to study the color and morphological changes toward malaria diagnosis. Assessment accuracy depends on the physician-pathological understanding. To help physicians in cases where they may be wrong, developing a computer assisted malaria parasite detection tool has helped modern pathological services where a physician is able to get assistance in order to quickly make better decision toward malaria diagnosis. Segmentation of medical images helps in identifying features that are needed for clinical diagnosis. First order features always give accurate information about the medical image and useful for identification and analysis. In this work, first order features which entails the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, energy, Skewness, kurtosis, area, entropy were extracted from the infected malaria images. The corresponding results show a significant steady value which could be useful during classification of medical images. The work is ongoing, the aim of the work is to classify the malaria parasite and to come up with a diagnostic system that will be able to diagnose tissue and blood cell based diseases like malaria, Ebola etc. General terms Malaria diseases, Parasitic organism
Patterns and uncertainties of species' range shifts under climate change

Although bioclimatic modelling is often used to estimate potential impacts of likely climate changes, little has been done to assess the reliability and variability of projections. Here, using four niche‐based models, two methods to derive probability values from models into presence–absence data and five climate change scenarios, I project the future potential habitats of 1350 European plant species for 2050. All 40 different projections of species turnover across Europe suggested high potential species turnover (up to 70%) in response to climate change. However variability in the potential distributional changes of species across climate scenarios was obscured by a strong variability in projections arising from alternative, yet equally justifiable, niche‐based models. Therefore, projections of future species distributions and derived community descriptors cannot be reliably discussed unless model uncertainty is quantified explicitly. I propose and test an alternative way to account for modelling variability when deriving estimates of species turnover (with and without dispersal) according to a range of climate change scenarios representing various socio‐economic futures.
Benchmarking of triple stores scalability for MPSoC trace analysis

A Multi Processor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) is a complex embedded system used in consumer electronic devices, such as smartphones, tablets and set-top boxes. In order to cope with the complexity of MPSoC architectures, software developers rely on post-mortem trace analysis for application de-bugging or optimization. The traces are explored to localize expected and unexpected programs behaviors. However, the low semantic value of low-level trace events make the trace exploration difficult. We propose to perform trace exploration through an ontology which adds semantics to events and provides a declarative language for querying data. Because traces can be huge, such an ontology contains a large number of instances stored as RDF triples. Because analysts need fast results on classical computer, an efficient system for query answering is preferred. Therefore, saturating , loading and querying those triples pose a scalabil-ity challenge to state-of-the-art knowledge base repositories (KBR). In this paper, we have conducted a benchmark of 7 KBRs: Jena, Sesame-native, Sesame-memory, tdb, sdb, rdf-3x and vertical-mdb, to test their scalability in a non-distributed environment close to analyst environment. We used these KBRs to analyze real traces through VIDECOM, an ontology we designed for trace analysis of applications on MPSoC. Results show that vertical-mdb has a loading rate 3 times faster than the others. It is the only KBR able to saturate the biggest trace of our dataset without exceeding system memory and to run complex queries on it in an acceptable time. Other approaches failed, due to memory limitation or inefficient join implementation.
The Mechanisms of Telomere and Telomerase Regulation in Hematologic Malignancies

Human chromosome ends are capped by telomeric DNA composed of long arrays of (TTAGGG)n repeats. During each cell division, telomeric DNA is shortened by 50-100 bp. This attenuation of chromosome ends results in a loss of coding sequences and end-to-end chromosomal fusions, leading to chromosomal instability and aberrations. Therefore, telomere shortening is a critical event that acts as a mitotic clock to measure cellular life span. Telomerase, a ribonucleoprotein composed of a catalytic subunit (TERT), an RNA template (TERC), and the dyskerin protein, elongates telomeric sequences in germ cells and immature precursors such as hematopoietic stem cells. Telomerase is activated by multiple signaling pathways and its activity is regulated at the levels of gene transcription and translation, as well as post-translational modifications, trafficking, and assembly of the protein. Telomerase is upregulated in most cancer cells, including hematologic malignancies. Telomere shortening and telomerase activation are correlated with the prognosis and aggressiveness of various hematologic tumors. Therefore, targeting telomerase may be an attractive therapeutic strategy for hematologic malignancies. In fact, several strategies of telomerase inhibition, such as G-quadruplex-interacting agents, catalytic/reverse transcriptase inhibitors, oligonucleotides, and immunotherapy, have been developed as therapeutic methods.
Information Integration Seedling for Data Integration and exploitation System that Learns (DIESEL)

Abstract : The goal of the University of Washington effort under DIESEL is to develop a unified approach to entity, schema and concept matching. Entity resolution is the problem of determining which mentions in the data correspond to the same object (e.g., "J. Smith" and "Jane Smith" may be the same person). Schema matching is the problem of determining which fields in a database or other structure correspond to the same attributes (e.g., "Contact" and "Telephone" may be the same attribute). Concept matching (a.k.a. ontology alignment) is the problem of determining which concepts in two taxonomies correspond to each other (e.g., "Faculty" in one taxonomy may mean the same as "Staff" in another). To date, each of these problems has been addressed separately, assuming that the other two have been solved a priori (e.g., schema matching may be performed assuming that objects and concepts have already been resolved). In most cases, however, all three problems are present simultaneously, and a truly robust and widely applicable information integration system therefore needs to solve the three simultaneously.
Oxygen Ion Energization at Mars: Comparison of MAVEN and Mars Express Observations to Global Hybrid Simulation

We study oxygen ion energization in the Mars‐solar wind interaction by comparing particle and magnetic field observations on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) and Mars Express missions to a global hybrid simulation. We find that large‐scale structures of the Martian‐induced magnetosphere and plasma environment as well as the Mars heavy ion plume as seen by multispacecraft observations are reproduced by the model. Using the simulation, we estimate the dynamics of escaping oxygen ions by analyzing their distance and time of flight as a function of the gained kinetic energy along spacecraft trajectories. In the upstream region the heavy ion energization resembles single‐particle solar wind ion pickup acceleration as expected, while within the induced magnetosphere the energization displays other features including the heavy ion plume from the ionosphere. Oxygen ions take up to 80 s and travel the distance of 20,000 km after their emission from the ionosphere to the induced magnetosphere or photoionization from the neutral exosphere before they have reached energies of 10 keV in the plume along the analyzed spacecraft orbits. Lower oxygen ion energies of 100 eV are reached faster in 10–20 s over the distance of 100–200 km in the plume. Our finding suggests that oxygen ions are typically observed within the first half of their gyrophase if the spacecraft periapsis is on the hemisphere where the solar wind convection electric field points away from Mars.
Normative Data of Optic Nerve Head in Nepalese Population by ConfocalScanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy

Purpose: The present study had an aim to ascertain normative data of Optic Nerve Head parameters by using Confocal Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy. These normal data can be used as baseline reading for future references; can be used for comparison with special cases like with those having high myopia, glaucoma and other pathologies.
The Impact of 3D Data Quality on Improving GNSS Performance Using City Models Initial Simulations

Abstract. There is an increasing demand for highly accurate positioning information in urban areas, to support applications such as people and vehicle tracking, real-time air quality detection and navigation. However systems such as GPS typically perform poorly in dense urban areas. A number of authors have made use of 3D city models to enhance accuracy, obtaining good results, but to date the influence of the quality of the 3D city model on these results has not been tested. This paper addresses the following question: how does the quality, and in particular the variation in height, level of generalization and completeness and currency of a 3D dataset, impact the results obtained for the preliminary calculations in a process known as Shadow Matching, which takes into account not only where satellite signals are visible on the street but also where they are predicted to be absent. We describe initial simulations to address this issue, examining the variation in elevation angle – i.e. the angle above which the satellite is visible, for three 3D city models in a test area in London, and note that even within one dataset using different available height values could cause a difference in elevation angle of up to 29°. Missing or extra buildings result in an elevation variation of around 85°. Variations such as these can significantly influence the predicted satellite visibility which will then not correspond to that experienced on the ground, reducing the accuracy of the resulting Shadow Matching process.
Interest Rate Pass-through in Sri Lanka

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has increasingly been relying on interest rates as the instrument for conducting monetary policy. Changes to the key monetary policy variables, the Repo and the Reverse Repo rates, are initially expected to be reflected in the OMO rates and the call money market rates, before being passedthrough to commercial bank retail interest rates. It is important to obtain a good understanding of the speed and magnitude of the interest rate pass-through to make timely monetary policy decisions in order to meet the objective of economic and price stability. This paper examines the size and speed of the pass-through from policy interest rates to call money market rates and from call money market rates to commercial bank retail interest rates. The paper concludes that the CBSL policy decisions are efficiently transmitted to the short end of the money market within a matter of days. Also, the pass-through from policy interest rates to the call money market rate is almost complete. However, the pass-through from call money market rates to both lending rates and deposit interest rates of commercial banks is sluggish and incomplete. The only exception is, perhaps, the rates on lending to prime customers, which show a faster and a fuller pass-through. Also, there is no evidence of an asymmetry of pass-through over different phases of the interest rate cycle. (JEL E43, E52) DOI: 10.4038/ss.v35i1. 1232 Staff Studies Volume 35 Numbers 1& 2 2005 p.1-32
Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology How Much Gold Will You Put On Your Daughter ? A Behavioral Ecology Perspective on Dowry Marriage

This paper presents and evaluates a model of South Asian marriage costs based on the logic of Embodied Capital theory. The model links both cross-sectional and temporal trends in marriage expenditures to an increase in per-child investment related to increasing participation in a wage-labor economy. The model predicts that expected relationships will differ based on the functions of different aspects of marriage costs as either property transfers or displays of wealth, and on the gender of the child that marriage costs are paid for. Trends in three types of marriage costs are examined, including costs of gold, costs of wedding functions, and total marriage costs. Five specific predictions are tested using retrospective data collected as part of my dissertation research in the city of Bangalore, India, which includes over 1,100 marriages that span the time period from 1940-2002. I find that dowry marriages are more common among wealthier and better educated families and more recently in time, while bride-price marriages are restricted to poorer and less educated families earlier in time. Furthermore, I find that educational characteristics are better predictors of transfer elements of marriage costs while wealth characteristics are better predictors of display elements of marriage costs across several types of analyses. Additionally, I find that only transfer elements of marriage costs show evidence of inflation over time while display elements show no change or even mild deflation. Finally, I briefly compare my predictions and findings to those of other authors relating to the topic of dowry inflation. 1 Kaplan, Hillard. 1996. A theory of fertility and parental investment in traditional and modern human societies. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 39:91—135. 2 This research was funded by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, Award ID Number BCS-0001523.