Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seeing the Forest for the Tree: Using hLDA Models to Evaluate Communication in Banco Central do Brasil

Central Bank communication is a key tool in managing inﬂation expectations. This paper estimates a hierarchical Latent Dirichlet Allocation (hLDA) model to allow for an endogenous selection of topic structure associated with documents published by Banco Central do Brasil’s Monetary Policy Committee (Copom). These techniques from computational linguistics allow for building measures about the content and tone of Copom’s minutes and statements. The eﬀects of the tone are measured in diﬀerent dimensions, like inﬂation, inﬂation expectations, economic activity and economic uncertainty. Beyond the impact on the economy, the hLDA model is used to evaluate the coherence between the statements and the minutes of Copom’s meetings.
BrightMarker: 3D Printed Fluorescent Markers for Object Tracking

Existing invisible object tagging methods are prone to low resolution, which impedes tracking performance. We present BrightMarker, a fabrication method that uses fluorescent filaments to embed easily trackable markers in 3D printed color objects. By using an infrared-fluorescent filament that "shifts" the wavelength of the incident light, our optical detection setup filters out all the noise to only have the markers present in the infrared camera image. The high contrast of the markers allows us to track them robustly regardless of the moving objects’ surface color. We built a software interface for automatically embedding these markers for the input object geometry, and hardware modules that can be attached to existing mobile devices and AR/VR headsets. Our image processing pipeline robustly localizes the markers in real time from the captured images. BrightMarker can be used in a variety of applications, such as custom fabricated wearables for motion capture, tangible interfaces for AR/VR, rapid product tracking, and privacy-preserving night vision. BrightMarker exceeds the detection rate of state-of-the-art invisible marking, and even small markers (1"x1") can be tracked at distances exceeding 2m.
Interface of Grounded Theory and Ethnomethodology for Exposure-poor ESL Learning Contexts

Of the many challenges faced in instructed second language learning, the most important ones are: (i) the teacher’s lack of communicative competence, (ii) the little exposure that learners get to the target language and (iii) rules of ‘usage’ occupying the space left vacant or unoccupied by language ‘use’. Since all these are not only related to one another, but inseparably intertwined, any remedial measure should be planned at a holistic level, addressing all the three outlined above, plus those immediately related to any of them, such as the teacher’s pedagogic competence. This article, after studying the Indian ESL classroom instruction in some detail, offers a partial but practical remedy by de-structuring instructional programmes, and de-locating tutors.
Uniformidade de mistura das rações e seu efeito no desempenho de frangos de corte

Objetivou-se comparar diferentes indicadores utilizados no controle de qualidade para a determinacao da eficiencia de mistura de racoes, e realizaram-se analises de correlacoes entre os metodos analiticos utilizados na mensuracao dos indicadores empregados. Em etapa complementar, avaliou-se o efeito da falta de homogeneidade de mistura das racoes sobre o desempenho de frangos de corte. Na primeira etapa, apos analise da eficiencia do equipamento de mistura foram comparados nove indicadores de eficiencia de mistura seca e dois de mistura umida. Nos testes de eficiencia de mistura constataram-se valores inconstantes do coeficiente de variacao (CV) apos o tempo necessario para atingir CV inferior a 5%. Na comparacao de indicadores de mistura seca, cinco destes apresentaram coeficientes de variacao (CVs) medios menores do que 5% e no teste comparacao de indicadores de mistura umida, com um dos indicadores obteve-se este resultado. Nas analises de correlacoes nao se observaram valores expressivos que justifiquem o emprego de metodos alternativos de analises dos indicadores. Na segunda etapa, frangos de corte foram criados em quatro fases produtivas, com racoes com CVs entre 5,35 e 49,48%, e foram avaliados o desempenho zootecnico e a uniformidade dos pesos destes animais. Os resultados obtidos indicaram que racoes com CVs ate 22,63%, nao causam efeitos sobre o desempenho zootecnico dos frangos de corte com idade superior a 12 dias. A falta de uniformidade das racoes, com CV ate 49,48%, nao afeta a uniformidade dos pesos dos frangos de corte durante o crescimento e no momento do abate. Concluindo o estudo, foi desenvolvido um sistema computacional orientativo para avaliacoes de eficiencia de mistura em equipamentos industriais de producao de racoes.
Host Phenology Can Select for Multiple Stable Parasite Virulence Strategies in Obligate Killer Parasites

The timing of seasonal host activity, or host phenology, is an important driver of parasite transmission dynamics and evolution. Despite the vast diversity of parasites in seasonal environments, the impact of phenology on parasite diversity remains relatively understudied. For example, little is known about the selective pressures and environmental conditions that favor a monocyclic strategy (complete a single cycle of infection per season) or a polycyclic strategy (complete multiple cycles). Here, we present a mathematical model that demonstrates that seasonal host activity patterns can generate evolutionary bistability in which two evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) are possible. The ESS that a particular system reaches is a function of the virulence strategy initially introduced into the system. The results demonstrate that host phenology can, in theory, maintain diverse parasite strategies among isolated geographic locations.
Observations of Tornadogenesis using a mobile, phased-array, doppler radar

Tornadoes and many severe convective storms evolve on very short time scales (~ 10 s), owing to very high horizontal wind speeds and vertical velocities. This paper documents the formation of a tornado in the U. S. using a mobile, rapidly scanning, Doppler radar. This radar, the MWR-05XP (Meteorological Weather Radar, 2005, X-band, Phased Array), electronically scans in elevation and azimuth over limited sectors, and mechanically in azimuth at high speed. While the radar scans electronically in elevation, the attitude of its beam is held nearly fixed in space because it electronically back scans in azimuth at the same rate as it mechanically scans. Back scanning in azimuth is accomplished by frequency hopping, while scanning in elevation is accomplished by changing the phase delay.
Stereopsis-guided brain shift compensation

Brain deformation models have proven to be a powerful tool in compensating for soft tissue deformation during image-guided neurosurgery. The accuracy of these models can be improved by incorporating intraoperative measurements of brain motion. We have designed and implemented a passive intraoperative stereo vision system capable of estimating the three-dimensional shape of the surgical scene in near real-time. This intraoperative shape is compared with the cortical surface in the co-registered preoperative magnetic resonance (MR) volume for the estimation of the cortical motion resulting from the open cranial surgery. The estimated cortical motion is then used to guide a full brain model, which updates a preoperative MR volume. We have found that the stereo vision system is accurate to within approximately 1 mm. Based on data from two representative clinical cases, we show that stereopsis guidance improves the accuracy of brain shift compensation both at and below the cortical surface.
Instruction-Level Modeling and Evaluation of a Cache-Less Grid of Processing Cells

While processor speeds continue to show performance increases, memory access speeds remain significantly slower. One solution is to develop novel computer architectures, specifically designed to address the memory wall such as the cache-less Grid of Processing Cells (GPC). In this work, we model the GPC architecture using SystemC TLM-2.0 at the instruction-level with high accuracy, while retaining the characteristic high simulation speeds of transaction-level modeling. To compare the performance of our modeled GPC with existing architectures, we also model a single core and an 8-core SMP with optimized caches and run a bare-metal Canny application on the three architectures. We show promising performance evaluation results in architectures without caches.
Predicting Insulin Pump Therapy Settings Predicting Insulin Pump Therapy Settings

Millions of people live with diabetes worldwide [7]. To mitigate some of the many symptoms associated with diabetes, an estimated 350,000 people in the United States rely on insulin pumps [17]. For many of these people, how effectively their insulin pump performs is the difference between sleeping through the night and a life threatening emergency treatment at a hospital. Three programmed insulin pump therapy settings governing effective insulin pump function are: Basal Rate (BR), Insulin Sensitivity Factor (ISF), and Carbohydrate Ratio (ICR). For many people using insulin pumps, these therapy settings are often not correct, given their physiological needs. While existing reinforcement learning models can predict actual physiological values for these settings, they require iteration and can be slow. The primary contribution of this research is to present a pipeline capable of providing instant predictions of close to actual patient physiological ISF, ICR, and BR from 30 days worth of data. In theory, this reduces patient waiting periods from roughly 6-8 weeks for existing reinforcement learning models to 30 days. This can serve as an aid in recommending pump therapy settings. Data used in this study include 1,000 simulated multivariate insulin pump time series. These time series were generated by a proprietary simulator developed by Tandem Diabetes Care. This multivariate time series data also integrates simulated continuous glucose monitor (CGM) data. This research proposes a pipeline for predicting actual patient BR, ISF, and ICR. Feature engineering, a component of this pipeline, included contextual consensus time series motif analysis. Models in the pipeline include time series native techniques such as Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DNN) with a Long Short Term Memory input layers (LSTM) and aggregation based models such as Ridge regression and Lasso. Aggregation based ridge regression showed the most promising results, outperforming a naive model and a DNN model. For the data evaluated and with a 20% holdout test set, aggregate based ridge regression predicted
Migrating Counterpublics: German Far-Right Online Groups on Russian Social Media

Due to censorship and deplatforming policies on big social media platforms, far-right users have been forced to migrate to other online platforms that provide them with safer spaces for communication. One of these platforms is the Russian social networking site VK. This research investigates the German political environment on VK, which predominantly comprises online groups supporting far-right views. The analysis of users’ activity in the online groups showed that VK functions as an alternative platform and is not used for outward-oriented goals. Looking at the activities on VK in terms of the theory of sustainability practices, we claim that one of the most critical functions of VK is archiving content. This practice ensures the preservation of accumulated narratives in the case of complete deplatforming on a mainstream platform. We found that people who use VK for communication form two different thematic clusters: The first focuses on German domestic issues, and the second focuses on transnational conspiracy theories.
Machine learning of Antarctic ﬁrn density by combining radiometer and scatterometer remote sensing data

Firn density plays a crucial role in assessing the surface mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. However, our understanding of the spatial and temporal variations in ﬁrn density is limited due to i) spatial and temporal limitations of in situ measurements, ii) potential modelling uncertainties, and iii) lack of ﬁrn density products driven by satellite remote sensing data. To address this gap, this paper explores the potential of satellite microwave radiometer (SMISS) and scatterometer (AS-CAT) observations for assessing spatial and temporal dynamics of dry ﬁrn density over the Antarctic ice sheet. Our analysis 5 demonstrates a clear relation between density anomalies at a depth of 4 cm and ﬂuctuations in satellite observations. However, a linear relationship with individual satellite observations is insufﬁcient to explain the spatial and temporal variation of snow density. Hence, we investigate the potential of a non-linear Random Forest (RF) machine learning approach trained on radiometer and scatterometer data to derive the spatial and temporal variations in dry ﬁrn density. In the estimation process, ten years of SSMIS observations (brightness temperature), ASCAT observations (backscatter intensity), and polarisation and 10 frequency ratios derived from SSMIS observations are used as input features to a random forest (RF) regressor. The regressor is ﬁrst trained on time series of modelled density and satellite observations at randomly sampled pixels, and then applied to estimate densities in dry ﬁrn areas across Antarctica. The RF results reveal a strong agreement between the spatial patterns estimated by the RF regressor and the modelled densities. The estimated densities exhibit an error of ± 10 kg m − 3 in the interior of the ice sheet and ± 20 kg m − 3 towards the ocean.However, the temporal patterns show some discrepancies, as the 15 RF regressor tends to overestimate summer densities, except for high-elevation regions in East Antarctica and speciﬁc areas in West Antarctica. These errors may be attributed to underestimations of short-term (or seasonal) variations in the modelled density and the limitation of RF in extrapolating values outside the training data. Overall, our study presents a potential method for estimating unknown Antarctic ﬁrn densities using known densities and satellite parameters.
First Place : Cloud-Based Visual Analysis of Motor-Vehicle Collisions in New York City in the Period 2012-2017

The 17th Conference on Database Systems for Business, Technology, and Web (BTW2017) of the German Informatics Society (GI) took place in March 2017 at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. A Data Science Challenge was organized for the first time at a BTW conference by the University of Stuttgart and Sponsor IBM. We challenged the participants to solve a data analysis task within one month and present their results at the BTW. In this article, we give an overview of the organizational process surrounding the Challenge, and introduce the task that the participants had to solve. In the subsequent sections, the final four competitor groups describe their approaches and results.
KARBAPENEM DİRENÇLİ KLEBSIELLA PNEUMONIAE SUŞLARINDA OXA-48 VE KPC VARLIĞININ ARAŞTIRILMASI

Son 10 yılda tüm dünyada karbapenem dirençli Enterobacteriaceae izolatlarında artış bildirilmektedir. Çalışmamızda Ocak 2011 ve Temmuz 2012 tarihleri arasında Sakarya Üniversitesi Hastanesi’nde saptanan karbapenem dirençli Klebsiella pneumoniae suşlarında OXA-48 ve KPC gen bölgelerinin araştırılması amaçlanmıştır. Çalışmaya toplam 273 K.pneumoniae izolatı dahil edilmiştir. Tanımlama ve antibiyotik duyarlılık testleri konvansiyonel ve Vitek 2 otomatize sistemi ile gerçekleştirilmiştir. Karbapeneme dirençli saptanan iki izolat üç farklı primer seti ile 23S rRNA, OXA 48 ve KPC gen bölgeleri için araştırılmıştır. Laboratuvarımızda izole edilen karbapenem dirençli K.pneumoniae suşlarının küçük M tipi koloni morfolojileri, EMB agarda zayıf laktoz pozitiflikleri ve üreyi geç hidrolize etmeleri ile konvansiyonel çalışmalarda farklı algılara neden olabileceği gözlenmiştir. Otomatize sistemle K.pneumoniae olarak bildirilen izolatların tanımlaması 23S rRNA gen bölgelerinin gösterilmesiyle moleküler olarak doğrulanmıştır. Karbapenem direnciyle ilişkili olarak her iki suşunda OXA-48 gen bölgesine sahip olduğu gözlenmiştir. KPC gen bölgesiyle ilişkili pozitiflik saptanamamıştır. Sonuç olarak; mevcut veriler K.pneumoniae suşları arasında karbapenem direncinin sınırlı olduğunu göstermektedir. Ancak karbapeneme dirençli K.pneumoniae klinik önemi bütün dünyada artan bir konudur. Sonuçlarımız K.pneumoniae suşlarında direnç düzeyi ve mekanizmalarının izlenmesi ihtiyacına işaret etmektedir.
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom as a Text in the English Language Classroom

In the era of technological dominance, the twenty-first century teacher is expected to have sound digital skills and make appropriate use of multimedia tools for classroom purposes. The teaching learning scenario has moved far beyond conventional teaching methods and learning in order to adapt newer strategies. India’s New Education Policy 2020 also emphasizes on using innovative and best teaching-learning practices for a better learning environment. In this context, adapting films and other multimedia come as an effective teaching strategy. Films serve as a significant tool in teaching. As a visual medium, it fosters better acquisition of knowledge and understanding. This article therefore explores the role of films in language learning environment, particularly in an English language classroom. As a practical approach, the article looks into adapting the Bhutanese film, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) as a text for classroom discourse. Further, it examines the different ways of using this visual text for enhancing language skills.
Comparison of Some Hematological Parameters in Unipolar and Bipolar Depressive Disorder Unipolar ve Bi polar Depresif Bozuklukta Bazı Hematolojik Parametrelerin Karşılaştırılması

Background: Major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder, which are the most severe types of mood disorders, are among the diseases that cause the most disability worldwide. One of the biggest challenges in providing early and effective treatment in mood disorders is the inability to make an early differential diagnosis between UD and BD. Many studies have suggested that neuroinflammation may play a role in the pathophysiology of mood disorders. The neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and monocyte/lymphocyte ratio (MLR), as well as the systemic im-mune-inflammation index (SII), c-reactive protein (CRP), and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), are all inexpensive and easily accessible markers that are recommended for measuring the level of inflammation. In this study, NLR, PLR, MLR, SII, CRP, and ESR were analyzed to investigate the potential role of these inflammatory markers in the differential diagnosis of UD and BD. Materials and Methods: Our study group consisted of 54 patients (UD: 31 individuals, BD: 23 individuals) and 40 healthy controls (HC). NLR, PLO, MLO, SII, CRP, and ESR markers were compared among the UD, BD, and SC groups. Results: Significant differences were found among the groups in terms of monocyte, NLR, SII, CRP, and ESR levels in this study (respectively: p=0.011, p=0.011, p=0.020, p=0.010, p=0.017). Considering the source of the difference; the NLR, SII, CRP, and ESR were higher in the UD group compared to the HC group (respectively: p=0.009, p=0.015, p=0.012, p=0.012). however, there was no significant difference between the BP and HC groups in terms of these parameters (p > 0.05, for all). In terms of monoist level, there was a significant difference between UD and BP groups (p = 0.024). Meanwhile, there was a significant difference between the UD and BP groups in terms of monoist level (p = 0.024). Conclusions: In our study, it was determined that there were significant differences among groups in terms of monocyte, NLR, SII, CRP, and ESR values. Therefore, the elevation of these markers may be beneficial in predicting disease and differential diagnosis of UD. Large-scale, prospective studies, including post-treatment values, are required to evaluate it as a disease-specific marker.
Platelet-Rich Plasma in Acne Scar: A Comprehensive Review

Background: Acne scars can have a significant impact on a patient's quality of life, leading to a search for effective treatment modalities. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has emerged as a potential therapeutic option in dermatology due to its regenerative and wound healing properties. Objectives: This review aims to provide an overview of the current literature on the use of PRP in acne scar treatment. It explores the mechanisms of action, efficacy, safety, and comparative analysis of PRP with other commonly used treatments. Conclusions: Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) shows promising potential as a therapeutic option in the treatment of acne scars. The regenerative and wound healing properties of PRP have been demonstrated to stimulate tissue regeneration, collagen synthesis, and overall improvement in scar texture. Comparative analysis suggests that PRP offers unique advantages in terms of its regenerative properties, patient suitability, and potential long-term results compared to other commonly used treatments in acne scars.
Influence of the Wheat and Corn Flour Types on the Biological Parameters on the Red Flour Beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst)

The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum , is an important pest in wheat and maize mills. The goal of this study to determine the level of risk via examining the survival rate, oviposition, and development phases of this pest. The shortest development durations were recorded when the larvae reared on the whole wheat flour followed by wheat flour without bran (22.8±0.31 and 24.7±0.32 days, respectively). The longest development durations were recorded when larvae reared on corn flour without bran followed by bran only (31.1±0.28 and 31.5±0.34 days, respectively). The highest larval survival rate was 95% when larvae reared on whole wheat flour, whereas the lowest one was 94% when larval reared on both of flour without bran and bran only. Meanwhile the lowest survival rates were 84% and 83% when larvae reared on corn flour without bran and bran only, respectively. The longest oviposition period was recorded on wheat flour without bran (280.5±5.70 days). The adult longevity was the longest on wheat flour without bran. The number of progeny produced by the first generation was higher on whole flour than flour without bran. The large differences between the various flour types suggest varying levels of risk by insect infestation. Understanding What insect diets successfully used is essential for creating management measures as customer interest in these alternative flours grows and they become more common in food facilities.