Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Building community resilience: Learning from the 2011 floods in Southeast Queensland, Australia

The year 2010 was the wettest year on record for Queensland, Australia and the wettest year since 1974 for Southeast Queensland. The extremely heavy rain in early January 2011 fell on the catchments of heavily saturated Brisbane and Stanley Rivers systems resulting in significant runoff which rapidly produced a widespread and devastating flood event. The area of inundation was equivalent to the total land area of France and Germany combined. Over 200,000 people were affected leaving 35 people dead and 9 missing. The damage bill was estimated at over $1B and cost to the economy at over $10B with over 30,000 homes and 6,000 business flooded and 86 towns and regional centres affected. The need to disburse disaster funding in a prompt manner to the affected population was paramount to facilitate individuals getting their lives back to some normality. However, the payout of insurance claims has proved to be a major area of community anger. The ongoing impasse in payment of insurance compensation is attributed to the nature and number of claims, confusing definition of flooding and the lack or accuracy of information needed to determine individually the properties affected and legitimacy of claims. Information was not readily available at the micro-level including, extent and type of inundation, flood heights at property level and cause of damage. Events during the aftermath highlighted widespread community misconceptions concerning the technical factors associated with the flood event and the impact of such on access to legitimate compensation and assistance. Individual and community wide concerns and frustration, anger and depression, have arisen resulting from delays in the timely settlement of insurance claims. Lessons learnt during the aftermath are presented in the context of their importance as a basis for inculcating communities impacted by the flood event with resilience for the future.
Remote plasma sputtering for silicon solar cells

The global energy market is continuously changing due to changes in demand and fuel availability. Amongst the technologies considered as capable of fulfilling these future energy requirements, Photovoltaics (PV) are one of the most promising. Currently the majority of the PV market is fulfilled by crystalline Silicon (c-Si) solar cell technology, the so called 1st generation PV. Although c-Si technology is well established there is still a lot to be done to fully exploit its potential. The cost of the devices, and their efficiencies, must be improved to allow PV to become the energy source of the future. The surface of the c-Si device is one of the most important parts of the solar cell as the surface defines the electrical and the optical properties of the device. The surface is responsible for light reflection and charge carrier recombination. The standard surface finish is a thin film layer of silicon nitride deposited by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD). In this thesis an alternative technique of coating preparation is presented. The HiTUS sputtering tool, utilising a remote plasma source, was used to deposit the surface coating. The remote plasma source is unique for solar cells application. Sputtering is a versatile process allowing growth of different films by simply changing the target and/or the deposition atmosphere. Apart from silicon nitride, alternative materials to it were also investigated including: aluminium nitride (this was the first use of the material in solar cells) silicon carbide, and silicon carbonitride. All the materials were successfully used to prepare solar cells apart from the silicon carbide, which was not used due to too high a refractive index. Screen printed solar cells with a silicon nitride coating deposited in HiTUS were prepared with an efficiency of 15.14%. The coating was deposited without the use of silane, a hazardous precursor used in the PECVD process, and without substrate heating. The elimination of both offers potential processing advantages. By applying substrate heating it was found possible to improve the surface passivation and thus improve the spectral response of the solar cell for short wavelengths. These results show that HiTUS can deposit good quality ARC for silicon solar cells. It offers optical improvement of the ARC s properties, compared to an industrial standard, by using the DL-ARC high/low refractive index coating. This coating, unlike the silicon nitride silica stack, is applicable to encapsulated cells. The surface passivation levels obtained allowed a good blue current response.
An empirical evaluation of a simple energy aware scheduler for mobile grids

Nowadays mobile devices are multi-core computers with considerable unused capabilities. Therefore, several researchers have considered harnessing the power of these battery-powered devices for distributed computing. Although their evergrowing capabilities, the fact that mobile devices run on battery poses a major challenge for applying traditional distributed computing techniques. Particularly, researchers aimed at using mobile devices as resources for executing computationally intensive task. Different job scheduling algorithms were proposed with this aim, but many of them require information that is unavailable or difficult to obtain in real-life environments, such as how much energy would require a job to be finished. In this context, Simple Energy Aware Scheduler (SEAS) is a scheduling technique for computational intensive Mobile Grids that only require easily accessible information. It was proposed in 2010 and it has been the base for a range of research work. Despite being described as easily implementable in real-life scenarios, SEAS and other SEAS-improvements works have always been evaluated using simulations. In this work, we present a distributed computing platform for mobile devices that support SEAS and empirical evaluation of the SEAS scheduler. The obtained result supports previous simulation results and by extension further validating other SEAS-based results.
Mechanisms of subliminal response priming

Subliminal response priming has been considered to operate on several stages, e.g. perceptual, central or motor stages might be affected. While primes’ impact on target perception has been clearly demonstrated, semantic response priming recently has been thrown into doubt (e.g. Klinger, Burton, & Pitts, 2000). Finally, LRP studies have revealed that subliminal primes evoke motor processes. Yet, the premises for such prime-evoked motor activation are not settled. A transfer of priming to stimuli that have never been presented as targets appears particularly interesting because it suggests a level of processing that goes beyond a reactivation of previously acquired S-R links. Yet, such transfer has not always withstood empirical testing. To account for these contradictory results, we proposed a two-process model (Kunde, Kiesel, & Hoffmann, 2003): First, participants build up expectations regarding imperative stimuli for the required responses according to experience and/or instructions. Second, stimuli that match these “action triggers” directly activate the corresponding motor responses irrespective of their conscious identification. In line with these assumptions, recent studies revealed that non-target primes induce priming when they fit the current task intentions and when they are expected in the experimental setting.
Development of Children's Verbal Interpretative Responses to Music Listening

The central purpose of this research was to determine the nature of children 's verbal responses to repeated hearings of a brief music excerpt when asked systematically-designed questions that encouraged interpretative responses. Three specific research questions served as the basis for the investigation: (a) Is there consistent agreement about the basic form and content of the responses as the result of independent analyses by expert judges? (b) If so, is the subsequent assignment of categories to responses systematically related to age? (c) If so, is this relationship similar to research findings in other developmental literature? Thirty-three kindergarten through fifth-grade children from a Midwestern public elementary school were interviewed individually. Their responses were recorded, transcribed to written text, and submitted to three judges who were directed to (a) devise a categorization system that they felt encompassed the range and character of responses; (b) assign the devised categories to the individual responses. The data were analyzed for patterns that suggested a developmental sequence, either unique to music listening or related to other developmental studies. Results indicate: (a) judge consensus over the form and content of the responses; (b) age tendencies in responses to three of the four questions asked; (c) similarities between the development of verbal responses to music and visual art; (d) general agreement with descriptions of the artistic growth of elementary school-aged children.
Handbook of contemporary learning theories

Contents: Preface. R.R. Mowrer, S.B. Klein, The Transitive Nature of Contemporary Learning Theory. A.R. Wagner, S.E. Brandon, A Componential Theory of Pavlovian Conditioning. J.C. Denniston, H.I. Savastano, R.R. Miller, The Extended Comparator Hypothesis: Learning by Contiguity, Responding by Relative Strength. R.A. Rescorla, Experimental Extinction. W. Timberlake, Motivational Modes in Behavior Systems. R.M. Church, K. Kirkpatrick, Theories of Conditioning and Timing. A.G. Baker, R.A. Murphy, F. Vallee-Tourangeau, R. Mehta, Contingency Learning and Causal Reasoning. B.W. Balleine, Incentive Processes in Instrumental Conditioning. G. Hall, Perceptual Learning: Association and Differentiation. A. Tomie, Autoshaping and Drug-Taking. N. DeSousa, F. Vaccarino, Neurobiology of Reinforcement: Interaction Between Dopamine and Cholecystokinin Systems. V.M. LoLordo, T.L. Taylor, Effects of Uncontrollable Aversive Events: Some Unsolved Puzzles. A.L. Riley, G.R. Simpson, The Attenuating Effects of Drug Preexposure on Taste Aversion Conditioning: Generality, Experimental Parameters, Underlying Mechanisms, and Implications for Drug Use and Abuse. D.J. Levis, K.E. Brewer, The Neurotic Paradox: Attempts by Two-Factor Fear Theory and Alternative Avoidance Models to Resolve the Issues Associated With Sustained Avoidance Responding in Extinction.
Using Summary Data from the Danish National Registers to Estimate Heritabilities for Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder

Estimates of heritability of psychiatric disorders quantify the genetic contribution to their etiology. Estimation of these parameters requires affected status on probands and their family members. Traditionally, heritabilities have been estimated from families ascertained from specific hospital registers, but accumulating sufficient numbers of families can be difficult. Larger sample sizes are achievable from national registries, but calculation of heritability from individual level data from these data sets is accompanied by other problems. Here, we use published summary data from a national population-based cohort of >2.6 million persons in Denmark to estimate heritabilities of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder (MDD). The summary data comprised cumulative incidences up to 52 years of age for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and up to 51 years for MDD in offspring where either one or both parents were diagnosed with one of these disorders. Estimates of the heritabilities of the liability to developing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and MDD are 0.67 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.64–0.71), 0.62 (95% CI 0.58–0.65), and 0.32 (95% CI 0.30–0.34) respectively. The estimates may be inflated by common environmental effects, but despite this, they are somewhat lower for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder than those estimated from contemporary twin samples. The lower estimates may reflect the diverse environments (including diagnostic interpretation) that contribute to national data, compared to twin/family studies. Our estimates are similar to those estimated previously from national data of Sweden, and they may be more representative of the international samples brought together for large-scale genome-wide association studies. We investigated the estimation of genetic correlations from these data. We used simulation to conclude that estimates may not be interpretable and so report them only in the Section “Appendix. ”
On Bayesian models and event spaces in information retrieval

There have been several attempts recently to reconcile, or at least to understand the relationship between, traditional probabilistic models of information retrieval and the newer language models. Since both treat the retrieval problem probabilistically, it might be expected that they can be formulated in comparable terms. However, this has proved diAEcult. One question concerns the role of relevance, which takes a central position in some traditional models (such as Robertson and Sparck Jones [1976], referred to as RSJ), but does not appear explicitly in at least the early language models (e.g. Ponte and Croft [1998]. The present author and others [Sparck Jones et al. 2002] have recently claimed that the early language models assume that there is only one relevant document per query. This claim is based on the observation that language models ask the question of each document: What is the probability that this document, or rather the model which generated this document, also generated the query? Since each document is taken to have its own language model, if it turns out that a particular document is relevant (that is, its model did indeed generate the query), it would seem that no other model could have done. La erty and Zhai [2002], on the other hand, in a recent paper, develop a basic probabilistic model from which they derive both the RSJ model and the simple language model. They claim in conclusion that (a) RSJ and the simple language model are equivalent; and (b) that the language model requires no such assumption as that there is only one relevant document per query. The present paper discusses an issue underlying all probabilistic models, that of the event space assumed, and draws in part from a pair of old papers [Robertson et al. 1982; Robertson et al. 1983]. I discuss possible views of the event space in case of documents, queries and relevance judgements, and come to some di erent conclusions about the relationship between RSJ and the simple language models. However, in order to illustrate the event space issues, the paper rst introduces a rather di erent example from the IR one, with di erent structural characteristics.
Adolescent perceptions of singing: exploring gendered differences in musical confidence, identity and ambition

ABSTRACT Previous research on adolescents and singing has focused on understanding the physiological changes in the voice during the age range 11–16 [Cooksey, J. M. , and G. F. Welch. 2008. ‘Adolescence, singing development and national curricula design. ’ British Journal of Music Education 15 (1): 99–119], and addressing the lack of male participation in singing [Ashley, M. R. 2013. ‘Broken voices or a broken curriculum? The impact of research on UK school choral practice with boys. ’ British Journal of Music Education 30 (3): 311–327; Hall, C. 1999. ‘Gender and boys” singing in early childhood. ’ British Journal of Music Education 22 (1): 5–20]. This study makes a new contribution by exploring adolescent girls’ perceptions of singing as compared with those of boys. Through an inductive, two-phase research design, the language of the students themselves is used to describe their perceptions of singing. The roles of motivation, confidence, self-efficacy and autonomy come through as strong influences on the students’ enjoyment of singing. Boys have a tendency to exhibit static ability evaluations in this age group, and demonstrate a lack of cognitive understanding of their changing voices. Girls, however, recognise that effort, ability and confidence interact in different ways depending on the social context for their singing. Recommendations for teachers are made, that could challenge boys’ fixed views of their vocal abilities, and strengthen the appeal of group singing for all adolescents.
Nearest neighbor and reverse nearest neighbor queries for moving objects

With the proliferation of wireless communications and the rapid advances in technologies for tracking the positions of continuously moving objects, algorithms for efficiently answering queries about large numbers of moving objects increasingly are needed. One such query is the reverse nearest neighbor (RNN) query that returns the objects that have a query object as their closest object. While algorithms have been proposed that compute RNN queries for non-moving objects, there have been no proposals for answering RNN queries for continuously moving objects. Another such query is the nearest neighbor (NN) query, which has been studied extensively and in many contexts. Like the RNN query, the NN query has not been explored for moving query and data points. This paper proposes an algorithm for answering RNN queries for continuously moving points in the plane. As a part of the solution to this problem and as a separate contribution, an algorithm for answering NN queries for continuously moving points is also proposed. The results of performance experiments are reported.
Well-posedness in Sobolev spaces of the full water wave problem in 3-D

We consider the motion of the interface separating an inviscid, incompressible, irrotational fluid from a region of zero density in three-dimensional space; we assume that the fluid region is below the vacuum, the fluid is under the influence of gravity and the surface tension is zero. Assume that the density of mass of the fluid is one, the gravitational field is (0, 0,−1), the free interface is Σ(t) at time t ≥ 0, and the fluid occupies the region Ω(t). The motion of the fluid is described by vt + v · ∇v = −(0, 0, 1)−∇p on Ω(t), t ≥ 0 (Euler’s equation), (1.1) div v = 0 on Ω(t), t ≥ 0 (incompressible), (1.2) curl v = 0, on Ω(t), t ≥ 0 (irrotational), (1.3) where v = (v1, v2, v3) is the fluid velocity, p is the fluid pressure. Since we neglect the surface tension, the pressure is zero on the interface. So on the interface: p = 0, on Σ(t), (1.4) (1, v) is tangent to the free surface (t, Σ(t)). (1.5) We want to find solutions of system (1.1)-(1.5), taking prescribed initial data, such that for every fixed t ≥ 0, Σ(t) approaches the xy-plane at infinity, and |v(x, y, z; t)| → 0, |vt(x, y, z; t)| → 0, as |(x, y, z)| → ∞. Since the fluid is assumed irrotational, incompressible, we can reduce the study of the entire motion to the motion of the free surface. The above model is a 3-D water wave model. It is generally known that when surface tension is neglected, the motion of the interface between an inviscid fluid and vacuum under the influence of gravity can be subject to Taylor instability [8], [22]. In a previous work [24], we studied the 2-dimensional water wave model; we showed that for a 2-D water wave, the sign condition relating to Taylor instability always holds for nonself-intersecting interface, that is, the motion of the interface is not subject to Taylor instability. We showed further that the 2-D full nonlinear water wave problem is uniquely solvable in Sobolev spaces, locally in time, for any initially nonself-intersecting interface. Earlier works on the well-posedness in Sobolev spaces of the 2-D water wave problem include Nalimov [18], Yosihara [25], and Walter Craig [6], where the main results concern the well-posedness of the
Escapism Among Players of MMORPGs - Conceptual Clarification, Its Relation to Mental Health Factors, and Development of a New Measure

Previous studies show that the concept of escapism needs to be clarified and that its relation to problematic online gaming and other factors needs further examination. This study uses well-established, basic learning theory to clarify the concept of escapism, and examines its relation to problematic gaming, psychological distress, and satisfaction with life among players of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). MMORPG players (n=201) answered an online questionnaire where these factors were measured and correlated with a previously developed scale on motivation to play (MTPI), including extra items to cover positive and negative aspects of escapism. Factor analysis and construct validation show that positive aspects of escapism are theoretically and empirically unstable and that escapism is best clarified as purely "negative escapism," corresponding to playing being negatively reinforced as a way of avoiding everyday hassles and distress. Negative escapism had a stronger relationship to symptoms of Internet addiction, psychological distress, and life satisfaction than other variables and other more positive motivations to play. Future studies should use the revised subscale for escapism (in the MTPI-R) presented in the present study, for example when screening for Internet addiction.
Expander graphs

In this thesis, we investigate the expansion properties of regular graphs. By definition, an $(\alpha,\beta,k,n)$-expander is a k-regular graph where any subset of size at most $\alpha n$ is adjacent to at least $\beta n$ vertices. We improve the lower bound on the expansion of Ramanujan graphs to approximately k/2. Moreover, we construct a family of k-regular graphs with asymptotically optimal second eigenvalue and linear expansion equal to k/2. The bound k/2 coincides with an important combinatorial property: if a subset has expansion greater than k/2, a constant fraction of its nodes have unique neighbors. We also show that the provable expansion (in polynomial time) of random k-regular graphs is at least $k/2 - O(k\sp{3/4}$log$\sp{1/2}k). $ We also analyze the relation between the second eigenvalue and other combinatorial properties, such as average degree of induced subgraphs and diameter. In the first case, we show an upper bound of roughly $1 + \sqrt{k-1}$ on the average degree of linear-sized induced subgraphs of Ramanujan graphs. In the second case, we show that the classical bound 2log$\sb{k-1}\ n$ cannot be improved using the spectral method. We also study the relation between the diameter, girth, and subsequent eigenvalues of a graph. As a byproduct of our techniques, we establish improved bounds on random walks on expanders. We also obtain explicit constructions of selection networks of asymptotic size 3n log$\sb2\ n. $ This compares positively with the previous bound 6n log$\sb2\ n. $ We show that Ramanujan graphs of degree at least 7 are extrovert graphs. This improves the previously known bound 15. From any family of k-regular graphs, we show how to construct a family of $k(k - 1)$-regular non-Ramanujan graphs with linear expansion at least $k(k - 1)/2. $ We also give bounds on the chromatic polynomial and the number of acyclic orientations of a graph. The number of acyclic orientations arises in various decision and sorting problems, and is equal to the absolute value of the chromatic polynomial evaluated at $-$1. We show that the number of acyclic orientations of graphs with girth at least 5 is larger than what was previously known. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)