Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Digital Game-Based Learning

This special issue of Computers in the Schools focuses on digital game-based learning. Gaming has grown in popularity and become a deﬁning characteristic of young learners. Digital games, initially designed for the mass market with few educational connections, have gained increasing interests from educators and researchers. The articles featured in this issue will add to the body of knowledge that argues that digital games, when used effectively in instruction, can improve student learning through increased motivation and engagement. The articles in this issue also explore elements of game design that can increase effectiveness of games in the classroom. This special issue addresses using gaming as part of instruction with a variety of learners and within various learning contexts, including both K–12 education and higher education. This special issue consists of six outstanding articles, which provide readers with examples of game-based learning in practice, as well as discussion of game features that optimize learning opportunities. Selen Turkay and colleagues provide a teacher-oriented literature review addressing theoretical perspectives and game-design issues for educators to consider. Michael Martin and Yuzhong Shen share the results of their study regarding the effects of particular aspects of game design on learning outcomes. Judy Perry and Eric Klopfer’s study explores ubiquitous and causal learning games that help inform us of the educational effectiveness of speciﬁc game elements. Min Lun Wu, Kari Richards, and Guan Kung Saw’s investigation uses a massive multiplayer role-playing game to support second-language learning that yielded interesting ﬁndings on the interaction between motivation and game-based learning. Min Liu and colleagues further explore this interaction by explaining student motivation as a function of the engaging, interactive environment that is experienced through digital-learning games. In keeping
ACUSTICUM 2011 / 366 Spatial Aspects of Contextual Plasticity in Sound Localization

A previous study examining the effect of a preceding distractor on sound localization (Kopco et al., JASA, 121, 420432, 2007) found that responses were biased even in control trials on which no distractor was presented. These shifts in baseline responses are referred to as contextual plasticity. In current study we examine the spatial aspects of the contextual effect by varying the spatial arrangement of the context. Subjects' task in the experiment was to localize a 2-ms noise burst presented from one of the seven target locations spaced symmetrically relative to medial plane or interaural axis. Target was in 75% of trials preceded by an identical distractor presented from the center of the target locations range 25 ms before the target. Trials with distractor were restricted to be presented in one of the three spatial con gurations xed within a block of trials (either in the left or right half of the positions range, or using the full range). To estimate the effect of the context, the responses were compared to a baseline block consisting of no-distractor trials only. Contextual biases away from the distractor were found for both distractor locations. The biases depended on con guration of distractor trials. The halfrange con gurations elicited biases in the corresponding part of the range while no biases were observed for the other half. These results suggest that the representations of auditory space can be altered by the spatial speci cs of the context in which a task is performed. [Supported by NIH and KEGA #3/7300/09]
Bevacizumab-treated pregnant rats may constitute an experimental model for studying preeclampsia.

GIRIŞ ve AMAC: Bir anjiogenez inhibitoru olan bevacizumab uygulayarak sicanlarda preeklampsi modeli olusturmak. YONTEM ve GERECLER: Toplam 16 gebe sicana intraperitoneal 10 mg/kg bevacizumab ya da 0.1 cc serum fizyolojik 4 ve 8. gunlerde uygulandi. Sicanlarin kan basinclari, agirliklari ve proteinuri miktarlari 0 ve 20. gunlerde degerlendirildi. 20. gunde sicanlardan kan ornekleri alinarak vaskuler endotelyal buyume faktoru (VEGF) ve cozulebilir Fms benzeri protein kinaz (SFlt-1) seviyeleri olculdu. Ayni gun otenazi uygulanilarak plasenta ve yavrularin agirliklari degerlendirildi. Immunohistokimyasal olarak anjiogenez belirtecleri ve mikro damar yogunlugu incelendi. BULGULAR: Bevacizumab uygulanan grupta daha dusuk VEGF (p = 0.038) ve daha yuksek SFlt-1 (p = 0.015) seviyeleri saptandi. Benzer sekilde bevacizumab uygulanan sicanlarin sistolik (p=0.050) ve diastolik (p=0.046) kan basinclari daha yuksek bulundu. Bevacizumab uygulanan sicanlarda 20. gunde proteinuri miktarlari 0. gune gore belirgin olarak daha yuksekti (p=0.026). Her ne kadar daha yuksek AST, ALT, BUN, kreatinin, bobrek glomeruler endotelyosis skorlari ile daha dusuk plasental VEGF ve mikro damar yogunlugu gozlenmis olsa da, istatistiksel olarak anlamli fark saptanmadi (p>0.05). TARTIŞMA ve SONUC: Calismamizda gebe sicanlara bevacizumab uygulayarak preeklampsi modeli olusturulabilecegine dair olumlu sonuclar elde edilmistir.
Design of Efficient DC-DC Converter for Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles

In recent years, fuel cells are becoming an attractive power source in automotive applications with dc/dc converter topology. Multiphase converter topologies are used in high performance applications and have received an increasing interest in recent years. This paper proposes the design of dc-dc converter for interfacing with hybrid electric vehicles. The module is designed with two capacitors and one coupled inductor with reduced number of switches to achieve a high step up voltage gain. The proposed dc/dc converter is compared with Multi Device Interleaved Boost Converter (MDIBC) to verify its performance. The dc/dc converter topologies and their controllers are designed using MATLAB/Simulink. The simulation results proved that the proposed converter is more efficient than other dc/dc converter topologies in achieving high performance and reliability for high-power dc/dc converters.
A Method for Automated Cavitation Detection with Adaptive Thresholds

Hydroturbine operators who wish to collect cavitation intensity data to estimate cavitation erosion rates and calculate remaining useful life (RUL) of the turbine runner face several practical challenges related to long term cavitation detection. This paper presents a novel method that addresses these challenges including: a method to create an adaptive cavitation threshold, and automation of the cavitation detection process. These two strategies result in collecting consistent cavitation intensity data. While domain knowledge and manual interpretation are used to choose an appropriate cavitation sensitivity parameter (CSP), the remainder of the process is automated using both supervised and unsupervised learning methods. A case study based on ramp-down data, taken from a production hydroturbine, is presented and validated using independently gathered survey data from the same hydroturbine. Results indicate that this fully automated process for selecting cavitation thresholds and classifying cavitation performs well when compared to manually selected thresholds. This approach provides hydroturbine operators and researchers with a clear and effective way to perform automated, long term, cavitation detection, and assessment.
Changes in Microbial Communities along a Water Column in an Amazonian Flooded Area

The Amazon region has several hydroelectric power reservoirs and, among these, is the Tucurui reservoir, which has the fourth highest power in the world. This reservoir flooded a huge area of native forest, whose organic matter has been decomposed in the water column since then. This microbial process is carried out by several prokaryotic species, which present a great metabolic diversity, including among them methanotrophic bacteria and methanogens. In this study we sought to evaluate the community structure, composition and diversity along a water column of the Tucurui reservoir located upstream of the dam by using denaturing high performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) and 16S rDNA gene sequencing. Water samples were taken at intervals of 5 m from the surface down to a depth of 55 m along the water column. Our results show that the structures of communities of both Archaea and Bacteria remained constant down to a depth of 35 m indicating the existence of a stable environment until this depth. Changes in the abundance of some groups could be observed at the 40 m depth and the composition of the communities changed significantly at the depths of 45, 50 and 55 m. The deepest layer (55 m) presented the highest Archaeal diversity, while the highest Bacterial diversity was observed at the 0-40 m layers. Crenarchaeota were predominant in the upper layers, while Euryarchaeota , including methanogenic Archaea, were predominant in the 40 and 50 m layers, indicating the existence of an anoxic zone below 40 m. Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria sequences were recovered from the superficial layers, as well as sequences not assigned to any phylum. Several sequences from the 55 m layer were assigned to Dechloromonas , known for the ability to degrade benzene and other aromatic compounds. We conclude that the structure and diversity of prokaryotic communities in the Tucurui power reservoir is stable until the 35 m depth, changing in deeper layers.
Lactate Dehydrogenase in Hypertensive Disorders in Pregnancy: Severity or Diagnosis Marker?

Background: Lactate dehydrogenase has had an exciting journey as a utility marker in different illnesses, but currently, its clinical utility has been relegated to confirm hemolysis, as a tumor marker, and as a diagnostic biomarker of preeclampsia. The findings of lactate dehydrogenase concentrations taking reference values to healthy persons are not consistent when these are related to hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, mainly to begin symptoms or little severity presentation. The goal in this work was to evaluate the maternal serum concentration of lactate dehydrogenase and its utility as a severity or diagnosis marker for hypertensive disorders in pregnancy. Methods: In this retrospective study, we included 5,558 cases of HDP and 800 healthy pregnancies. HDP classification and LD values were collected from the medical records in the paper chart. Results: The prevalence of HDP in our hospital was approximately 6.4 ± 0.1%. We found a tendency toward increases in median LD concentrations with the increasing severity of HDP and found a positive correlation (p = 0.037) or error probability of 0.037% between LD concentrations and severity of HDP in Mexican pregnant women. Conclusion: Serum LD concentration in HDP is a marker of severity, diagnosis and adverse maternal outcomes.
Lexicon for Algerian Arabic Dialect Treatment in Social Media

During the last ten years, the interest of Arabic dialects treatment has greatly increased. This increase is mainly attributed to the large use of these dialects in social media. The works on Arabic dialects can be classified into four categories: basic analysis, resource construction, identification of Arabic dialects and semantic analysis on Arabic dialects. In this paper, we address the problem of Arabic lexicon construction. More specifically, we focus on Algerian dialect which is spoken by more than 40 million people. Our approach consists of three distinct steps: 1) Constructing a dialect lexicon and extracting the most intense words from a sentiment lexicon; 2) Merging two lexicons (a dialect and a sentiment lexicon) and replacing some letters with the most used letters in social media; 3) Enriching a lexicon that takes into account spelling variations of words specific to a social media domain. As a result, we ended up expanding the original lexicon of 1144 words to a new lexicon 25086 words.
A Novel Paradigm in Authentication System Using Swifi Encryption /Decryption Approach

Maintaining the security of your computer, network and private/sensitive data against unauthorized access and a wide variety of security threats can be challenging. Verifying data integrity and authentication are essential security services in order to secure data transmission process. In this paper we propose a novel security technique which uses new encryption and decryption algorithms to achieve authenticated communication and enhanced data integrity. The proposed technique is very complex for attackers to decode, and it is applicable to client-server architecture.
Haar Functions in Genetic Algorithms

Theoretical analysis of fitness functions in genetic algorithms has included the use of Walsh functions [14]. They form a convenient basis for the expansion of fitness functions [3]. These orthogonal, rectangular functions have also been used to compute the average fitness values of schemata [5]. This work explores the use of Haar functions [7] for the same purposes. While 2` non-zero terms are required for the expansion of a given function as a linear combination of Walsh functions, at most `+ 1 non-zero terms are required with the Haar expansion, where ` is the size of each binary string in the solution space. Similarly, Haar coefficients require less computation than their Walsh counterparts. The total number of terms required for the expansion of the fitness function at a given point using Haar is of order 2`, substantially less than Walsh’s 22`. A comparison of Haar functions and Walsh functions with respect to fitness averages shows that the use of Haar functions will reduce computation time. Furthermore, the advantage of Haar over Walsh functions remains large (of order ` 2`) when fast transforms are used.
SYMMETRIZED SEMI-SMOOTH NEWTON METHOD FOR SOLVING 3D CONTACT PROBLEMS

The semi-smooth Newton method for solving discretized contact problems with Tresca friction in three space dimensions is analyzed. The slanting function is approximated to get symmetric inner linear systems. The primal-dual algorithm is transformed into the dual one so that the conjugate gradient method can be used. The R-linear convergence rate is proved for an inexact globally convergent variant of the method. Numerical experiments conclude the paper. The contact problems are important in many practical applications, e.g., biological processes, design of machines, transportation systems, metal forming, or medicine (bone replacements).
A study on commercial facility location problem by ant colony optimization (consideration of a customer characteristic and classifying by stratum of a customer)

CVS (Convenience Store) is increasing. And the number of the closing shops is increasing. Therefore I have to decide a better geographical convenience point to open a store newly. In a conventional research, It didn't treat all the customers. In this research, I treat all of customer, regular customer, general flow customer, a special flow customer. I consider that a general flow customer is affected by other customers. Therefore I use improved ACO. ACO is effective in TSP etc. Furthermore, I improve ACO to take the action that matched a customer characteristic (=the charm degree that conventional ACO didn't treat). In this research, I suggest technique about a new branch of CVS with consideration of not only a regular customer but also two kinds of flow visitors and take in influence between customers and charm degree in ACO.
Using Connectionist Models to Explore Complex Musical Patterns

Music teachers often ask their classes to take musical dictation. The teacher commonly plays a short excerpt, perhaps a phrase from a Bach chorale, and then the students attempt to translate the various pitches and durations into the symbols of standard musical notation. Each resulting symbol can be judged true or false, right or wrong. Music teachers also ask their classes to analyze the musical syntax of phrases from Bach chorales. The resulting answers will likely have varying shades of truth or falsity. Students can have legitimate differences of opinion about how to interpret ambiguous musical events or events that have one meaning in prospect and a second in retrospect. And not only students differ in their assessments of complex musical patterns. Acknowledged experts in eighteenth-century music are known to disagree about how, in a given phrase, the chords, rhythms, contours, melodies, textures, timbres, and counterpoint all interact. Connectionist models offer elegant ways of dealing with multidimensional complexity of the type found in polyphonic, harmonically oriented music. One can, for example, define a musical event as an input pattern of activation that is then transformed by a network of interconnected processing units into an output pattern of activation representing an interpretation of the event. Models that allow for learning often require an explicit teacher prepared to state unambiguously whether, and to what degree, the output pattern is in error (Rumelhart, Hinton, and Williams 1986; Werbos 1988). For relatively low-level musical tasks, like the transcription problem described above, this requirement poses no serious obstacle; but for higher-level tasks, the notion of an explicit teacher becomes problematical. One wonders, for example, if anyone would be comfortable in claiming that one interpretation of a musical phrase is only 69 percent as true as another? An alternative class of connectionist models
Real Analysis Exchange

For families F of flats (i.e., affine subspaces) of R, we investigate the classes of F-continuous functions f : R → R, whose restrictions f F are continuous for every F ∈ F . If Fk is the class of all k-dimensional flats, then F1-continuity is known as linear continuity; if F k stands for all F ∈ Fk parallel to vector subspaces spanned by coordinate vectors, then F 1 -continuous maps are the separately continuous functions, that is, those which are continuous in each variable separately. For the classes F = F k , we give a full characterization of the collections D(F) of the sets of points of discontinuity of F-continuous functions. We provide the structural results on the families D(Fk) and give a full characterization of the collections D(Fk) in the case when k ≥ n/2. In particular, our characterization of the class D(F1) for R solves a 60 year old problem of Kronrod.
CoreGRID TR-0072 2 A Scalable Multi-Agent Architecture for Remote Failure Detection in WebSites

Despite the huge efforts in developing failure detection tools for web-sites, there are still some particular failures that still become user-visible. These are namely application-level failures that escape detectors implemented by common internal system-level monitors. To successfully detect these failures, several mechanisms have been developed, namely remote failure detectors. In this paper we present GOA-Net: A scalable multi-agent architecture for remote failure detection in web-sites. Its agents implement detection mechanisms that are capable of perceiving, not only web-site availability, but also validate its content. It is capable of performance degradation forecasting which make it unique among similar tools. In this paper we describe all the detection mechanisms, distributed algorithms and design options that constitute this network. * This research work is carried out under the FP6 Network of Excellence CoreGRID funded by the European Commission (Contract IST-2002-004265).
A Novel Technique for the Expression and Purification of HIV-1 VIF Co-factor APOBEC 3 G

Pg. 2 Acknowledgements. Pg. 4 Background. Pgs. 5 20 Project Purpose. Pg. 21 Materials and Methods. Pgs. 22 26 Results. Pgs. 27 35 Discussion. Pgs. 36 37 Works Cited. Pgs. 38 40
Investigation of the influences of La substitution and sintering temperature on the structural and complex permeability of Ni-Mg-Cu-Zn ferrites

Polycrystalline Ni0.12Mg0. 18Cu0.20Zn0. 50Fe2-xLaxO4 (with x = 0.00, 0.025, 0.050 and 0.075) were prepared by conventional solid state reaction technique. Pellet and toroid shaped samples were prepared from each composition and were sintered at various temperatures (Ts) in air for 5 hours. Xray diffraction patterns of the samples show the formation of cubic spinel structure. Lattice parameter increases with increasing La substitution. Theoretical density (ρth) and bulk density (ρB) both increase with increasing La content. The ρB increases with increasing Ts up to 1200°C then decreases for a further increase of Ts up to 1250°C. On the other hand porosity has the opposite trend. It is also observed that / i  increases with increasing Ts for all ferrites up to 1200°C then decreases for sample sintered at 1250°C. It is expected that there might have a correlation between ρB and permeability. The / i  remains fairly constant in the frequency range up to 10 kHz or greater for parent composition and 1 MHz or greater for La doped compositions. The imaginary part of initial permeability starts raising beyond this frequency which is an indication of dispersion or resonance. At high frequency, the loss factor of all La doped compositions is lower than parent composition and decreases with increasing La substitution. The relative quality factor is found to be maximum in Ni0.12Mg0. 18Cu0.20Zn0. 50Fe1.925La0.075O4 sintered at 1250°C among the studied samples. Keyword: La substituted Ni-Mg-Cu-Zn ferrite, Complex permeability, Loss factor, Relative quality factor.
Performance Optimization by Placement Constraints for FPGA-based Asynchronous Processors

In this paper, we propose a performance optimization method for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based asynchronous processors using placement constraints. The proposed method consists of two-step placement constraint generation. First is based on floorplanning to reduce path delays among resources. Second is to reduce control-path delays inside control modules and delay elements considering the structure of FPGA. The use of generated placement constraints results in not only performance optimization but also reduction of delay adjustments by stabilizing delay variation. In the experiment, we design asynchronous MIPS processors using the proposed method. The experimental result shows that the performance is optimized with fewer delay adjustments by the proposed method.
Restructuring of the Dutch banking sector : implications for banks and the economy

In the past 10 years, the Dutch banking landscape has changed dramatically. Large-scale mergers, such as the creation of ABN Amro and NMB-Postbank (currently ING Bank), and closer cooperation between savings banks have resulted in a relatively concentrated market for banking services. Crossborder expansion has intensified as well, illustrated in recent years by rather sizeable acquisitions by Dutch banks in Belgium, Brazil and the United States.
Assessing the Reproducibility of Dynamic States of Individual Brain Functional Parcels

The complex spatiotemporal organization of the brain can be summarized using brain parcels, based on several minutes of fMRI signal. However, the brain has been observed to slowly reconfigure over seconds (Salehi et al., 2018). Thus, we hypothesize the existence of several discrete modes of functional parcellations at finer time scale. Here, we suggest a new approach to capture these dynamic states of brain parcellations.
Canadian Water Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Aquatic Life Table 1

Chlorpyrifos was introduced in 1965 by Dow Chemical Company. It is currently produced by Dow Chemical Company, India Medical Corp., Makhteshim-Agan (Israel), and Planter Products, Inc. Chlorpyrifos is registered for use in over 30 products sold under trade/product names such as Dursban, Lorsban, Brodan, Detmol UA, Dowco 179, and Empire (Eisler 2000; EXTOXNET 1996). It is formulated as an emulsifiable concentrate, wettable powder, granule, and microencapsulated formulations.