Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From High School to Higher Degrees: Teaching and Supporting Learning for Students entering Postgraduate Professional Study without Undergraduate Degrees.

Purpose – This paper reports research into motives and concerns of non-graduate students accessing a two-year, part-time, professional, post-graduate programme via recognition of prior learning, and tutor efforts to engage them and support learning and achievement. Design/methodology/approach – Five secondary sources provided data on 72 students. Research instruments were; a background questionnaire, student performance profiles, mock exam participation data, an online survey on the student-centred approach to delivery, and a generic module evaluation survey. Findings - Regardless of prior academic exposure, most students were driven by extrinsic career related motives, most worried about work and family pressures as potential barriers to academic achievement, but few worried about individual ability to meet academic standards. Graduates out performed non-graduates and were more likely to engage in formative assessment. Efforts of tutors to implement student-centred learning were well received and engagement in formative assessment and feedback activity impacted positively on performance. Research limitations – Research relied on secondary data and was limited to students on two cohorts. Therefore there are limits to what might be extrapolated from the data. Practical implications - Tutors should recognise the gap between graduate and non-graduate performance and whilst making active interventions to close the gap, be more explicit with non-graduates about the demands of post-graduate study. Originality/value – Relatively little research is available on the experiences and achievement of non-graduates accessing post-graduate study via RPL. Keywords - Non-graduates; post-graduate study; recognition of prior learning (RPL); student-centred learning (SCL); barriers and enablers to learning. Paper type – working paper.
Strength of the prediction of intended condom use : a comparision of individualist, collectivist and ethnic categories

by LUTHER G. BREWSTER JR. (Under the direction of David DeJoy) ABSTRACT A study was undertaken to determine if Individualism and Collectivism would be a more effective way to categorize cultural groups than ethnicity. Secondly, the study sought to determine if there would be differences in the prediction of behavioral intention (intent to use a condom), between Individualist and Collectivist groups. Categorization of groups was determined by calculating an index, using scores on a scale of self construal. Results indicate that within racial groups there exist subgroups of Individualists and Collectivists persons. Individualists from each ethnic category appeared to place an increased importance on their perceived confidence to have a condom used when they engage in sexual intercourse. Further investigation is needed to determine which behaviors influence where a participant will fall along a continuum of Individualism and Collectivism.
State formation and the rise of elementary education at the periphery of Europe: the cases of Finland and Turkey 1860–1930

ABSTRACT This article addresses the role of the state and state formation in the establishment of national education during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Through a comparative case analysis of two countries at the European periphery (Finland and Turkey), this article shows how national educational systems, in both instances, were driven by periods of intense state building. In the nineteenth century, military defeats sparked educational reforms, and in the early nineteenth century school laws were enacted due to the establishment of the republics of Finland and Turkey. Nevertheless, these examples also show the limits of a state formation perspective. Despite changes in educational policy, neither state reached high enrolment levels in the nineteenth century, and only in Finland schooling for all was realised in the 1930s. Thus, this work encourages further comparative analyses of the social, economic and political circumstances in which these states acted.
NodD1 and NodD2 Are Not Required for the Symbiotic Interaction of Bradyrhizobium ORS285 with Nod-Factor-Independent Aeschynomene Legumes

Photosynthetic Bradyrhizobium strain ORS285 forms nitrogen-fixing nodules on the roots and stems of tropical aquatic legumes of the Aeschynomene genus. Depending on the Aeschynomene species, this symbiotic interaction does or does not rely on the synthesis of Nod-factors (NFs). However, whether during the interaction of Bradyrhizobium ORS285 with NF-independent Aeschynomene species the nod genes are expressed and if the general regulator NodD plays a symbiotic role is unknown. Expression studies showed that in contrast to the interaction with the NF-dependent Aeschynomene species, A. afraspera, the Bradyrhizobium ORS285 nod genes are not induced upon contact with the NF-independent host plant A. indica. Mutational analysis of the two nodD genes present in ORS285, showed that deletion of nodD1 and nodD2 did not affect the symbiotic interaction between Bradyrhizobium ORS285 and A. indica whereas the deletions had an effect on the symbiotic interaction with A. afraspera plants. In addition, when the expression of nod genes was artificially induced by adding naringenin to the plant growth medium, the nodulation of A. indica by Bradyrhizobium ORS285 is delayed and resulted in lower nodule numbers.
Osmium isotope constraints on the proportion of bolide component in Chicxulub impact melt rocks

Abstract— The spatial distribution and amount of material transferred from the bolide involved in the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) event to the target rocks at Chicxulub is still poorly constrained. In this study, Re‐Os isotopic analyses of impact melt breccias and lithic clasts from the Yaxcopoil‐1 (Yax‐1) borehole were used to determine the distribution and proportion of the bolide component in the target rocks. Because of the much greater concentration of Os in chondritic meteorites compared to the target rocks, little addition of the bolide component would be necessary to greatly perturb the Os concentration and isotopic composition of target rocks. Hence, this is a very sensitive means of examining bolide contributions to the target rocks. For the examined suite of samples, the initial 187Os/188Os ratios vary from 0.19 to 2.3. Conservative mixing calculations suggest that the bolide component comprised as much as approximately 0.1%, by mass, of some samples. Most samples, however, have negligible contributions from the bolide. No samples have Os that is dominated by the bolide component, so for this suite of samples, it is impossible to fingerprint the chemical nature of the bolide using relative abundances of siderophile elements. These results suggest that the bolide did not contribute a significant amount of material to the target rocks. This may, in turn, indicate that most of the bolide was vaporized upon impact or otherwise ejected without mixing with the melt from the target.
Automatically Early Detection of Skin Cancer: Study Based on Nueral Netwok Classification

In this paper, an automatically skin cancer classification system is developed and the relationship of skin cancer image across different type of neural network are studied with different types of preprocessing. The collected images are feed into the system, and across different image processing procedure to enhance the image properties. Then the normal skin is removed from the skin affected area and the cancer cell is left in the image. Useful information can be extracted from these images and pass to the classification system for training and testing. Recognition accuracy of the 3-layers back-propagation neural network classifier is 89.9% and auto-associative neural network is 80.8% in the image database that include dermoscopy photo and digital photo
Characteristics of the Norwegian Coastal Current during Years with High Recruitment of Norwegian Spring Spawning Herring (Clupea harengus L.)

Norwegian Spring Spawning herring (NSSH) Clupea harengus L. spawn on coastal banks along the west coast of Norway. The larvae are generally transported northward in the Norwegian Coastal Current (NCC) with many individuals utilizing nursery grounds in the Barents Sea. The recruitment to this stock is highly variable with a few years having exceptionally good recruitment. The principal causes of recruitment variability of this herring population have been elusive. Here we undertake an event analysis using data between 1948 and 2010 to gain insight into the physical conditions in the NCC that coincide with years of high recruitment. In contrast to a typical year when northerly upwelling winds are prominent during spring, the years with high recruitment coincide with predominantly southwesterly winds and weak upwelling in spring and summer, which lead to an enhanced northward coastal current during the larval drift period. Also in most peak recruitment years, low-salinity anomalies are observed to propagate northward during the spring and summer. It is suggested that consistent southwesterly (downwelling) winds and propagating low-salinity anomalies, both leading to an enhanced northward transport of larvae, are important factors for elevated recruitment. At the same time, these conditions stabilize the coastal waters, possibly leading to enhanced production and improved feeding potential along the drift route to Barents Sea. Further studies on the drivers of early life history mortality can now be undertaken with a better understanding of the physical conditions that prevail during years when elevated recruitment occurs in this herring stock.
Common Variants at 9q22.33, 14q13.3, and ATM Loci, and Risk of Differentiated Thyroid Cancer in the French Polynesian Population

Background French Polynesia has one of the highest incidence rates of thyroid cancer worldwide. Relationships with the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests and other environmental, biological, or behavioral factors have already been reported, but genetic susceptibility has yet to be investigated. We assessed the contribution of polymorphisms at the 9q22.33 and 14q13.3 loci identified by GWAS, and within the DNA repair gene ATM, to the risk of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) in 177 cases and 275 matched controls from the native population. Principal Findings For the GWAS SNP rs965513 near FOXE1, an association was found between genotypes G/A and A/A, and risk of DTC. A multiplicative effect of allele A was even noted. An excess risk was also observed in individuals carrying two long alleles of the poly-alanine tract expansion in FOXE1, while no association was observed with rs1867277 falling in the promoter region of the gene. In contrast, the GWAS SNP rs944289 (NKX2-1) did not show any significant association. Although the missense substitution D1853N (rs1801516) in ATM was rare in the population, carriers of the minor allele (A) also showed an excess risk. The relationships between these five polymorphisms and the risk of DTC were not contingent on the body surface area, body mass index, ethnicity or dietary iodine intake. However, an interaction was evidenced between the thyroid radiation dose and rs944289. Significance A clear link could not be established between the high incidence in French Polynesia and the studied polymorphisms, involved in susceptibility to DTC in other populations. Important variation in allele frequencies was observed in the Polynesian population as compared to the European populations. For FOXE1 rs965513, the direction of association and the effect size was similar to that observed in other populations, whereas for ATM rs1801516, the minor allele was associated to an increased risk in the Polynesian population and with a decreased risk in the European population.
Large Panels with Spatial Correlation and Common Factors

This paper considers estimation of slope coe¢ cients in large panel data models where even after conditioning on common observed e¤ects the cross section units might remain dependently distributed. This could arise when the cross section units are subject to unobserved common e¤ects and/or if there are spill over e¤ects due to spatial or other forms of local dependencies. Initially it focuses on a regression model where the idiosyncratic errors are spatially dependent and possibly serially correlated, and derives the asymptotic distributions of the (generalized) xed e¤ects and the mean group estimators under homogeneous and heterogeneous slope coe¢ cients. Semiparametric and non-parametric estimation of the variances of these estimators is considered. The paper then focuses on a panel data model with a multifactor error structure and spatial correlation. It is established that, under this framework, the Common Correlated E¤ects (CCE) estimator, recently advanced by Pesaran (2006), continues to provide estimates of the slope coe¢ cient that are consistent and asymptotically normal. Small sample properties of the CCE estimator under various patterns of cross section dependence, including spatial forms, are investigated by Monte Carlo experiments. Results show that the CCE approach works well in the presence of weak and/or strong cross sectionally correlated errors. Keywords: Panels, Common Correlated E¤ects, Spatial Dependence. JEL Classi cation: C10, C31, C33 We are grateful to the Editor (Cheng Hsiao), two anonymous referees, Badi Baltagi, Alexander Chudik and George Kapetanios for helpful comments and suggestions.
D2D: Delay-Aware Distributed Dynamic Adaptation of Contention Window in Wireless Networks

The IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) protocol follows class-based service differentiation for providing differentiated quality-of-service (QoS). However, its collision avoidance mechanism using backoff algorithm can be inefficient for providing improved performance with respect to throughput and channel access delay, especially in a high network configuration (i.e. number of stations) with imperfect wireless channel. The existing and emerging works have devoted considerable attention on tuning the backoff parameters for achieving optimal throughput only. The prior works do not consider the channel access delay and throughput metrics altogether for performance improvement. Additionally, in most of the cases, the optimal configuration of backoff parameters are performed by a centralized controller. In this paper, we propose a delay-aware distributed dynamic adaptation of contention window scheme, namely D2D, for the cumulative improvement of both the throughput and the channel access delay at runtime. The D2D scheme requires two ad-hoc, distributed, and easy-to-obtain estimates-delay deviation ratio and channel busyness ratio-of the present delay level and channel congestion status of the network, respectively. A key advantage of the D2D scheme is that it is compliant with the IEEE 802.11 standard, and, thus, can be seamlessly integrable with the existing wireless card. We show the integrated model of the medium access control protocol, namely D2D Channel Access (D2DCA), for the IEEE 802.11e networks. We further propose a two-dimensional Markov chain model of the D2DCA protocol for analyzing its theoretical performance in saturated networks with imperfect wireless channel. Theoretical comparison with the benchmark protocols establishes the effectiveness of the D2DCA protocol.
Assessing syntactic sophistication in L2 writing: A usage-based approach

Over the past 45 years, the construct of syntactic sophistication has been assessed in L2 writing using what Bulté and Housen (2012) refer to as absolute complexity (Lu, 2011; Ortega, 2003; Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, & Kim, 1998). However, it has been argued that making inferences about learners based on absolute complexity indices (e.g., mean length of t-unit and mean length of clause) may be difficult, both from practical and theoretical perspectives (Norris & Ortega, 2009). Furthermore, indices of absolute complexity may not align with some prominent theories of language learning such as usage-based theories (e.g., Ellis, 2002a,b). This study introduces a corpus-based approach for measuring syntactic sophistication in L2 writing using a usage-based, frequency-driven perspective. Specifically, novel computational indices related to the frequency of verb argument constructions (VACs) and the strength of association between VACs and the verbs that fill them (i.e., verb–VAC combinations) are developed. These indices are then compared against traditional indices of syntactic complexity (e.g., mean length of T-unit and mean length of clause) with regard to their ability to model one aspect of holistic scores of writing quality in Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) independent essays. Indices related to usage-based theories of syntactic development explained greater variance (R2 = .142) in holistic scores of writing quality than traditional methods of assessing syntactic complexity (R2 = .058). The results have important implications for modeling syntactic sophistication, L2 writing assessment, and AES systems.
Deciphering the Contribution of Biofilm to the Pathogenesis of Peritoneal Dialysis Infections: Characterization and Microbial Behaviour on Dialysis Fluids

Infections are major complications in peritoneal dialysis (PD) with a multifactorial etiology that comprises patient, microbial and dialytic factors. This study aimed at investigating the contribution of microbial biofilms on PD catheters to recalcitrant infections and their interplay with PD related-factors. A prospective observational study was performed on 47 patients attending Centro Hospitalar of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia/Espinho to whom the catheter was removed due to infectious (n = 16) and non-infectious causes (n = 31). Microbial density on the catheter was assessed by culture methods and the isolated microorganisms identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight intact cell mass spectrometry. The effect of conventional and three biocompatible PD solutions on 16 Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CNS) and 10 Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains planktonic growth and biofilm formation was evaluated. Cultures were positive in 87.5% of the catheters removed due infectious and 90.3% removed due to non-infectious causes. However, microbial yields were higher on the cuffs of catheters removed due to infection vs. non-infection. Staphylococci (CNS and Staphylococcus aureus) and P. aeruginosa were the predominant species: 32% and 20% in the infection and 43.3% and 22.7% in the non-infection group, respectively. In general, PD solutions had a detrimental effect on planktonic CNS and P. aeruginosa strains growth. All strains formed biofilms in the presence of PD solutions. The solutions had a more detrimental effect on P. aeruginosa than CNS strains. No major differences were observed between conventional and biocompatible solutions, although in icodextrin solution biofilm biomass was lower than in bicarbonate/lactate solution. Overall, we show that microbial biofilm is universal in PD catheters with the subclinical menace of Staphylococci and P. aeruginosa. Cuffs colonization may significantly contribute to infection. PD solutions differentially impact microbial species. This knowledge is important for the development of infection diagnosis, treatment and preventive strategies.
The roles of subjective vitality, involvement, experience quality, and satisfaction in tourists’ behavioral intentions

This study provides and tests a model that examines the relationship between behavioral intentions and involvement, experience quality, satisfaction, and, as a personal resource, subjective vitality. Specifically, the study focuses on subjective vitality. Analyzing surveyed data from 408 cultural tourists, the results indicate that subjective vitality and involvement are the antecedents of experience quality. Given the results, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Lack of Association between Hyperglycaemia at Arrival and Clinical Outcomes in Acute Stroke Patients Treated with Tissue Plasminogen Activator

Rationale Hyperglycaemia is associated with adverse outcomes in some studies of acute ischaemic stroke. Aims We hypothesised that in thrombolytic-treated stroke patients, hyperglycaemia would be independently associated with haemorrhagic transformation and unfavourable outcome. Design Consecutive rt-PA-treated acute ischaemic stroke patients presenting to four emergency departments were analysed. Associations of initial blood glucose and survival to hospital discharge, symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage, any form of intracerebral haemorrhage, and disability at hospital discharge were determined. Potentially confounding factors of age, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, and smoking were analysed by univariate logistic regression and those with P<0·3 included in the multivariate model. Study Outcome In 268 patients, initial glucose values ranged from 62 to 507mg/dl (mean 131). Elevated glucose at arrival was not significantly associated with any adverse clinical outcomes. A trend towards higher mortality in hyperglycae-mic patients (odds ratio 1·71 per 100mg/dl increase in glucose, 95% confidence interval 0·92–3·13, P = 0·08) was seen, but is of unclear significance, and was not corroborated by effects on discharge disability, symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage or intracerebral haemorrhage. Conclusions Thrombolytic-treated stroke patients with hyperglycaemia at presentation did not have significantly worse outcomes than others in this cohort. These data fail to confirm previously described associations seen in similarly sized studies. Further study of these associations and their magnitude are necessary to better define the relationship between serum glucose and outcome in thrombolytic-treated acute ischaemic stroke.
2 5 Ja n 20 07 Rees cones and monomial rings of matroids

Using linear algebra methods we study certain algebraic properties of monomial rings and matroids. Let I be a monomial ideal in a polynomial ring over an arbitrary field. If the Rees cone of I is quasi-ideal, we express the normalization of the Rees algebra of I in terms of an Ehrhart ring. We introduce the basis Rees cone of a matroid (or a polymatroid) and study their facets. Some applications to Rees algebras are presented. It is shown that the basis monomial ideal of a matroid (or a polymatroid) is normal.
Phenotypes of Allo- and Autoimmune Antibody Responses to FVIII Characterized by Surface Plasmon Resonance

Evidence of antibody isotype/subtype switching may provide prognostic value regarding the state of immune responses to therapeutic proteins, e.g. anti-factor VIII (FVIII) antibodies that develop in many hemophilia A patients, clinically termed “inhibitors”. A sensitive, high- information-content surface plasmon resonance (SPR) assay has been developed to quantify IgG subtype distributions and the domain specificity of anti-drug antibodies. Plasma samples from 22 subjects with an allo- or auto-immune reaction to FVIII were analyzed. Pre-analytical treatment protocols were developed to minimize non-specific binding and specific matrix interference due to von Willebrand factor-FVIII interactions. The dynamic range for IgG quantification was 0.2–5 µg/ml (∼1–33 nM), allowing characterization of inhibitor-positive samples. Subtype-specific monoclonal antibodies were used to quantify the IgG subtype distribution of FVIII-specific antibodies. Most samples obtained from multiply-infused inhibitor subjects contained IgG4 antibodies. Several distinct phenotypes were assigned based on the IgG subtype distribution: IgG1, IgG4, IgG1 & IgG4, and IgG1, IgG2 & IgG4. An IgG1-only response was found in mild/moderate HA subjects during early FVIII infusions, and analysis of serial samples followed antibody class switching as several subjects’ immune responses developed. Competition studies utilizing a recombinant FVIII-C2 domain indicated 40–80% of FVIII-specific antibodies in most samples were directed against this domain.