Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analytic Performance Model of a Main-Memory Index Structure

Efficient evaluation of multi-dimensional range queries in a main-memory database is an important, but difficult task. State-of-the-art techniques rely on optimised sequential scans or tree-based structures. For range queries with small result sets, sequential scans exhibit poor asymptotic performance. Also, as the dimensionality of the data set increases, the performance of tree-based structures degenerates due to the curse of dimensionality. Recent literature proposed the Elf, a main-memory structure that is optimised for the case of such multi-dimensional low-selectivity queries. The Elf outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in manually tuned scenarios. However, choosing an optimal parameter configuration for the Elf is vital, since for poor configurations, the search performance degrades rapidly. Consequently, further knowledge about the behaviour of the Elf in different configurations is required to achieve robust performance. In this thesis, we therefore propose a numerical cost model for the Elf. Like all main-memory index structures, the Elf response time is not dominated by disk accesses, refusing a straightforward analysis. Our model predicts the size and shape of the Elf region that is examined during search. We propose that the response time of a search is linear to the size of this region. Furthermore, we study the impact of skewed data distributions and correlations on the shape of the Elf. We find that they lead to behaviour that is accurately describable through simple reductions in attribute cardinality. Our experimental results indicate that for data sets of up to 15 dimensions, our cost model predicts the size of the examined Elf region with relative errors below 5%. Furthermore, we find that the size of the Elf region examined during search predicts the response time with an accuracy of 80%.
Language Fluency and Study Abroad Adaptation.

Many study abroad programs require language proficiency, emphasize language learning, or otherwise support the development of language skills for their students. A general assumption underlying this attention to foreign language acquisition is that access to the host culture is increased as students are able to converse with host nationals using that foreign language (Edelstein, 2009). Likewise, some theorists have promoted the idea that being able to converse and think in a foreign language gives the speaker special access to the manner in which native speakers might conceptualize and construe their reality (Hill & Mannheim, 1992). Yet there is some debate about the centrality of language learning in the process of developing intercultural competence. Bennett (2008) for example, says that a fluent foreign language speaker without intercultural competence may be a “fluent fool” who knows how to unknowingly insult host nationals using perfect vocabulary and grammar (p. 17). The current study examines the relationship of language fluency to a variety of outcomes of study abroad. The general question posed is “Does the requirement for foreign language fluency lead to better study abroad outcomes? ” The outcomes examined roughly follow Ward’s ABC model of acculturation (Ward, 2001, Ward, Bocher , & Furnham, 2000). This model suggests that study abroad outcomes fall into three categories: affect, behavior, and cognition. Affect (A) is mostly measured by psychological constructs related to the mental and emotional well-being of study abroad students. The behavioral aspect (B) is measured by attending to the ease and completeness with which a student “fits in” with the host culture. Cognition (C) is measured by examining aspects of the students’ social identification. All three outcomes
Global Change Student Research Grant Competition Heats Up

(Continued on p. 2) Many at UAF recognize Christa Mulder as a faculty member in the Department of Biology and Wildlife. But few know that back in 1993, while working on her Ph.D. at UAF, Christa successfully applied for one of the very first Global Change Student Research Grant awards for her project “Plant–Herbivore Dynamics on the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta: The Effect of Goose Herbivory on Arrowgrass. ” She went on to complete her Ph.D. in 1996 and then spent two years in a postdoctoral position in Sweden, working on an exciting international European project called BIODEPTH in which the research team performed the same diversity– ecosystem function experiment in eight different countries. This was followed by three years as a “lecturer” (assistant professor) at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Christa returned to UAF in January of 2001 and is now an associate professor. A plant ecologist, Christa is currently working on three diverse groups of projects. The common denominator is a focus on plant–animal (or plant–pathogen) interactions, particularly the various direct and indirect mechanisms through which animals affect plant communities. The first of these research areas involves seabird islands off the coast of New Zealand and looks at the impacts of Thanks to new investments in 2009 by University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton and UAA Chancellor Fran Ulmer, the Global Change Student Research Grant Competition, a program designed to give students experience with proposal writing and the peer review system as practiced by funding agencies, has been expanded. Now in its 17 year, the competition, which provides support for global change research with an interdisciplinary context, is open to students from both UAA and UAF. Maximum award amounts have been increased, and there is a renewed emphasis on undergraduate as well as graduate student submissions. Undergraduate applicants are encouraged to submit pre-proposals in order to receive feedback before submitting their final proposals; these pre-proposals are due Monday, February 16. Full proposals from all applicants are due Friday, March 6. Undergraduate and graduate proposals will be evaluated separately. Students and their faculty advisors or sponsors should carefully read and follow all guidelines as described in the funding announcement, as many of the proposal content and formatting requirements have changed significantly. See http://www.cgc. uaf.edu for more information and to download the 2009 announcement. Paper copies can be picked up from the Center for Global Change, 306 Akasofu Building (IARC) or from the Graduate School, Room 202 Eielson Building. Highlights are summarized on page 11 of this newsletter. ❖
Truth-Telling Mechanism for Two-Way Relay Selection for Secrecy Communications With Energy-Harvesting Revenue

This paper brings the novel idea of paying the utility to the winning agents in terms of some physical entity in cooperative communications. Our setting is a secret two-way communication channel where two transmitters exchange information in the presence of an eavesdropper. The relays are selected from a set of interested parties, such that the secrecy sum rate is maximized. In return, the selected relay nodes’ energy harvesting requirements will be fulfilled up to a certain threshold through their own payoff so that they have the natural incentive to be selected and involved in the communication. However, relays may exaggerate their private information in order to improve their chance to be selected. Our objective is to develop a mechanism for relay selection that enforces them to reveal the truth since otherwise they may be penalized. We also propose a joint cooperative relay beamforming and transmit power optimization scheme based on an alternating optimization approach. Note that the problem is highly non-convex, since the objective function appears as a product of three correlated Rayleigh quotients. While a common practice in the existing literature is to optimize the relay beamforming vector for given transmit power via rank relaxation, we propose a second-order cone programming-based approach in this paper, which requires a significantly lower computational task. The performance of the incentive control mechanism and the optimization algorithm has been evaluated through numerical simulations.
Adverse Childhood Experiences: What Speech-Language Pathologists Need to Know

Life cannot be stress free. Learning how to cope with adversity is an important part of healthy development. When we are threatened, our heart rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones increase. When a young child’s stress response systems are activated within an environment of supportive relationships with adults, these physiological effects are buffered. However, if the stress response is extreme and long-lasting, and buffering relationships are unavailable to the child, the result can be damaged neurological systems repercussions affecting all aspects of child development and health. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have serious, long-term impacts on a child’s health and well-being by contributing to high levels of toxic stress that derail healthy physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development. The original ACEs study (Felitti et al., 1998) considered 10 ACEs: five ACEs were personal to the child: emotional, physical abuse, and sexual abuse; and emotional and physical neglect; and five ACEs were related to other family members: witnessing domestic violence, living with someone who abused substances, was mentally ill, was imprisoned, or absence of parent through death, divorce, or abandonment. The study was continued in later years, sometimes adding additional ACEs such as urban ACE indicators (racism, witnessing violence; living in an unsafe neighborhood, living in foster care, experiencing bullying), caregiver leaving for military deployment, or experiencing natural disasters or war. Data show that 33% of children with two or more ACEs have a chronic health condition involving a special health care need, compared with 13.6% of children without ACEs (Felitti & Anda, 2010). Nationally, more than 46% of U.S. youth have had at least one ACE and more than 20% have had at least two. Children ages 3 to 5 years who have had two or more ACEs are over 4 times more likely to have trouble calming themselves down, be easily distracted, and have a hard time making and keeping friends. More than three out of four children ages 3 to 5 years who have been expelled from A newsletter dedicated to speech & language in school-age children
Convolutional Neural Network for Stereotypical Motor Movement Detection in Autism

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are often associated with specific atypical postural or motor behaviors, of which Stereotypical Motor Movements (SMMs) have a specific visibility. While the identification and the quantification of SMM patterns remain complex, its automation would provide support to accurate tuning of the intervention in the therapy of autism. Therefore, it is essential to develop automatic SMM detection systems in a real world setting, taking care of strong inter-subject and intra-subject variability. Wireless accelerometer sensing technology can provide a valid infrastructure for real-time SMM detection, however such variability remains a problem also for machine learning methods, in particular whenever handcrafted features extracted from accelerometer signal are considered. Here, we propose to employ the deep learning paradigm in order to learn discriminating features from multi-sensor accelerometer signals. Our results provide preliminary evidence that feature learning and transfer learning embedded in the deep architecture achieve higher accurate SMM detectors in longitudinal scenarios.
The Cognitive Mechanisms of the SNARC Effect: An Individual Differences Approach

Access to mental representations of smaller vs. larger number symbols is associated with leftward vs. rightward spatial locations, as represented on a number line. The well-replicated SNARC effect (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) reveals that simple decisions about small numbers are facilitated when stimuli are presented on the left, and large numbers facilitated when on the right. We present novel evidence that the size of the SNARC effect is relatively stable within individuals over time. This enables us to take an individual differences approach to investigate how the SNARC effect is modulated by spatial and numerical cognition. Are number-space associations linked to spatial operations, such that those who have greater facility in spatial computations show the stronger SNARC effects, or are they linked to number semantics, such that those showing stronger influence of magnitude associations on number symbol decisions show stronger SNARC effects? Our results indicate a significant correlation between the SNARC effect and a 2D mental rotation task, suggesting that spatial operations are at play in the expression of this effect. We also uncover a significant correlation between the SNARC effect and the distance effect, suggesting that the SNARC is also related to access to number semantics. A multiple regression analysis reveals that the relative contributions of spatial cognition and distance effects represent significant, yet distinct, contributions in explaining variation in the size of the SNARC effect from one individual to the next. Overall, these results shed new light on how the spatial-numerical associations of response codes are influenced by both number semantics and spatial operations.
How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida

Abstract : All terrorist groups eventually end. But how do they end? Answers to this question have enormous implications for counterterrorism efforts. The evidence since 1968 indicates that most groups have ended because they joined the political process, or local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members. Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory. This has significant implications for dealing with al Qa'ida and suggests fundamentally rethinking post September 11 U.S. counterterrorism strategy. The ending of most terrorist groups requires a range of policy instruments, such as careful police and intelligence work, military force, political negotiations, and economic sanctions. Yet policy makers need to understand where to prioritize their efforts with limited resources and attention. Following an examination of 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that a transition to the political process is the most common way in which terrorist groups ended (43 percent). The possibility of a political solution is inversely linked to the breadth of terrorist goals. Most terrorist groups that end because of politics seek narrow policy goals. The narrower the goals of a terrorist organization, the more likely it can achieve them without violent action and the more likely the government and terrorist group may be able to reach a negotiated settlement. Against terrorist groups that cannot or will not make a transition to nonviolence, policing is likely to be the most effective strategy (40 percent). Police and intelligence services have better training and information to penetrate and disrupt terrorist organizations than do such institutions as the military. In 10 percent of the cases, terrorist groups ended because their goals were achieved, and military force led to the end of terrorist groups in 7 percent of the cases.
Pushing lenders to over-comply with environmental regulations: A developing country perspective

In the past few years, the number of lenders adopting voluntary environmental codes, such as the Equator Principles, is increasing. The main reasons for this form of over-compliance include warm glow preferences of agents, credit risk and incentives arising from regulation. Empirical evidence suggests that lenders that over-comply are generally bigger than those that don't. In particular, they are likely to be MNCs. In addition, the behaviour of over-complying lenders differs from other lenders, for instance they are more likely to incorporate environmental risks in their lending practices. In the context of developing countries, incentives that promote over-compliance exist to much lesser degree. Analysing the regulatory environment in developing countries, we find no compelling reason for regulators to encourage voluntary initiatives such as the Equator Principles. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Multi‐criteria decision making support tool for freight integrators: Selecting the most sustainable alternative

Sustainable development has turned into a daily concept by now. Similarly, sustainable transport also appears increasingly oft en, primarily in transport policy and strategic plans. However, it would be equally important if we could apply this aspect for certain activities such as haulage and forwarding that are a part of transport. Today, forwarders select an optimal alternative concerning only the criteria related to the economic effectiveness of the transport task. In many cases, shippers are not aware neither of the concept of sustainable transport nor of harmful effects they generate. Hence, although there is a concept of ‘freight integrator’, only very few are able to meet the requirements laid down for it. No widespread method has been developed yet to compare transportation options. A similar situation can be faced discussing a traditional, purely economic approach and a theoretical modern aspect that would be in accordance with the principles of sustainable transport. The model that was developed at the Department of Aircraft and Ships of Budapest University of Technology and Economics was designed specifically to compare various options in terms of sustainability. The indicators as the elements of decision-making criteria applied in the model were derived from the indicators used for assessing the transport sector but modified according to the requirements of the decisionmaking task for a freight integrator. Finally, such sustainable performance index of certain alternatives is determined by two fundamentally different aggregation methods as ‘fineness index’. This article presents the model structure and application using a concrete example.
Are Britain's Workplace Skills Becoming More Unequal?

It has been argued that workplace skills are becoming more polarised in Britain. This tendency is sometimes considered to be a factor contributing to the process of social exclusion and growing wage inequality. Skill polarisation has therefore been the focus of renewed academic and--since the election of the Labour government--political interest. In some respects, previous survey evidence for the 1980s can be used to support the skill polarisation thesis. This paper investigates whether the process has continued into the 1990s among those in work. Our main finding is that there has been no overriding process of skill polarisation between 1992 and 1997. However, the picture is complex, with losers as well as winners. Among the winners are full-timers, employees and those employed by "modern" organisations. The losers, on the other hand, include those in part-time work, the self-employed and those employed in organisations with less progressive management practices. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.
A double layer crossed over Substrate Integrated Waveguide wide band directional coupler

Directional couplers are widely used in microwave or millimeter wave power splitters or antenna feeding circuits for generating desired power division ratio at a specified bandwidth. The bandwidth and size are the two key parameters in the specifications of couplers. A compact coupler could save space and reduce the metal loss, and also the wide band properties will bring a generalized usage of couplers. Rectangular waveguide directional couplers have been seriously investigated for a long time [1]-[3] and numbers of circuits or structures have been obtained to achieve high performance flat coupling properties. However, manufacturing such a coupler requires high accurate machining and thus results in high cost. Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) is a dielectric filled waveguide structure that has the similar propagating modes as rectangular waveguide, but manufacturing of such a waveguide structure requires only the normal Print Circuit Board (PCB) process and results in the merit of low cost and mass production ability. SIW directional couplers also have been successfully designed and fabricated [4]-[5]. But most of the couplers are designed by H-plane wall of two adjacent SIW which is guided wavelength depended and requires large PCB area. Single layer SIW compact size crossed waveguide directional coupler also been mentioned [6], the bandwidth of the coupler is limited. This paper introduced a double layer wide band compact directional coupler with two SIWs crossed over each other. Large range of coupling coefficient and wide band characteristics are achieved. The coupling is realized by the cross slots between upper layer SIW and lower layer SIW. Structures and parameters, simulated and experiment results are presented. Such a coupler could be a good candidate in antenna feeding structure or power divider applications.
Advances in Brief Disruption of p 53 Function Sensitizes Breast Cancer MCF-7 Cells to Cisplatin and Pentoxifylline

The possibility that appropriately designed chemotherapy could act selectively against p53-defective tumor cells was explored in MCF-7 hu man breast cancer cells. These cells were chosen because they have normal p53 function but are representative of a tumor cell type that does not readily undergo p53-dependent apoptosis. Two sublines (MCF-7/E6 and MCF-7/mu-p53) were established in which pS3 function was disrupted by transfection with either the human papillomavirus type-16 E6 gene or a dominant-negative mutant p53 gene. p53 function in MCF-7/E6 and MCF7/mu-p53 cells was defective relative to control cells in that there were no increases in p53 or p21Wafl/Clp*protein levels and no G, arrest following exposure to ionizing radiation. Survival assays showed that p53 disruption sensitized MCF-7 cells to cisplatin (CDDP) but not to several other DNA-damaging agents. CDDP sensitization was not limited to MCF-7 cells since p53 disruption in human colon carcinoma RKO cells also enhanced sensitivity to CDDP. Contrary to the other DNA-damaging agents tested, CDDP-induced DNA lesions are repaired extensively by nucleotide exci sion, and in agreement with a defect in this process, MCF-7/E6 and MCF-7/mu-p53 cells exhibited a reduced ability to repair a CDDP-damaged chloramphenicol acetyltransferase-reporter plasmid transfected into the cells. Therefore, we attributed the increased CDDP sensitivity of MCF-7 cells with disrupted p53 to defects in G, checkpoint control, nucleotide excision repair, or both. The G2 checkpoint inhibitor pentoxifylline exhibited synergism with CDDP in killing MCF-7/E6 cells but did not affect sensitivity of the control cells. Moreover, pentoxifylline inhibited G, checkpoint function to a greater extent in MCF-7/E6 than in the parental cells. These results suggested that, in the absence of p53 function, cancer cells are more vulnerable to G2 checkpoint abrogators. Our results show that a combination of CDDP and pentoxifylline is capable of synergistic and preferential killing of p53-defective tumor cells that do not readily undergo apoptosis.