Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The use of online standardized tests as indicators of English proficiency according to the common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) at the English program of Chonkanyanukoon School, Chon Buri, Thailand

The purposes of the this study were to investigate whether the Cambridge English Placement Test (CEPT)and the Oxford Online Placement Test (OOPT), can provide an accurate indication of Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels, to examine the correlation between the two test score and between the test score and the students’ achievement on English courses, and to explore the stakeholder’ satisfaction towards this testing and their intention on utilizing the test results. The test results and achievement scores collected from 336 student and analyzed using descriptive statistics and the Person Product Moment Correlation coefficient. The qualitative data werecollected from 10 students, three teachers, and an administrator by using semi-structures interviews and analyzed by using coding method. The findings indicated that the CEPT and OOPT did not provide consistent CEFR levels to the test takers; however, there was a positive relationship between the scores from both tests (p=.69 at p<.01). Moreover, the OOPT had a higher correlation with student achievement. The study also found that the students and teachers did not have enough information about the testing and CEFR and there were many factors which affected the scores negatively. Therefore, the Program should consider using other types of measurement to add to the current method and provide more testing related information to the stakeholders.
Prognostic Significance of Lymphovascular Invasion in Radical Cystectomy on Patients with Bladder Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Purpose The objective of the present study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of published literature to appraise the prognostic value of lymphovascular invasion (LVI) in radical cystectomy specimens. Materials and Methods Following the PRISMA statement, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and SCOPUS database were searched from the respective dates of inception until June 2013. Results A total of 21 articles met the eligibility criteria for this systematic review, which included a total of 12,527 patients ranging from 57 to 4,257 per study. LVI was detected in 34.6% in radical cystectomy specimens. LVI was associated with higher pathological T stage and tumor grade, as well as lymph node metastasis. The pooled hazard ratio (HR) was statistically significant for recurrence-free survival (pooled HR, 1.61; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.26–2.06), cancer-specific survival (pooled HR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.38–2.01), and overall survival (pooled HR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.38–2.01), despite the heterogeneity among included studies. On sensitivity analysis, the pooled HRs and 95% CIs were not significantly altered when any one study was omitted. The funnel plot for overall survival demonstrated a certain degree of asymmetry, which showed slight publication bias. Conclusions This meta-analysis indicates that LVI is significantly associated with poor outcome in patients with bladder cancer who underwent radical cystectomy. Adequately designed prospective studies are required to provide the precise prognostic significance of LVI in bladder cancer.
Progression of Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusive Disease and Its Relationship With Further Vascular Events After Stroke

Background— Serial changes of flow velocities of transcranial Doppler ultrasound (TCD) in symptomatic middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusive disease may be related to the occurrence of further vascular events, but prospective data are lacking. Methods— We conducted a prospective study on patients with cerebral ischemia who were hospitalized with symptomatic MCA stenosis or occlusion. We repeated TCD examinations 6 months after the initial examinations and recorded any stroke or coronary events during this period. The changes of MCA flow velocities were categorized as normalized artery, stable artery, and progressed artery, which were determined according to the changes of MCA velocities at 6 months. Results— We studied 143 consecutive patients who had relevant MCA occlusive diseases (107 with stenosis and 36 with occlusion). At 6 months, the velocities in the MCA returned to normal in 42 patients (29%), they were stable in 80 patients (62%), and they progressed in 13 patients (9%). The number of clinical events varied significantly among the 3 groups: there were 2 patients (4.8%) with clinical events in the normal group, 11 patients (12.5%) with clinical events in the stable group, and 5 patients (38.5%) with clinical events in the progressed group (P =0.004). The 18 recurrent events included 10 recurrent strokes, 5 transient ischemic attacks, and 3 acute coronary syndromes. Conclusions— Progression of MCA occlusive diseases is associated with an increased risk of vascular events. Further studies are required to establish the value of serial TCD examinations in predicting future clinical events.
Image quality assessment based on theil inequality coefficient and discrete 2-D wavelet transform

Based on the characteristics of wavelet coefficients of images and theil inequality coefficient, a novel image quality assessment is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the reference image and the distorted images are decomposed into several levels by means of wavelet transform respectively. Secondly, the approximation and detail coefficients of reference image are the reference sequences and the approximation and detail coefficients of the distorted images are the comparative sequences respectively. And the included angle cosine values are calculated between the reference sequences and the comparative sequences respectively. Moreover, image quality assessment matrix of every distorted image can be constructed based on the theil inequality coefficient values and image quality can be assessed. The algorithm makes full use of perfect integral comparison mechanism of theil inequality coefficient and the well matching of discrete wavelet transform with multichannel model of human visual system. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can not only evaluate the integral and detail quality of image fidelity accurately but also bears more consistency with the human visual system than the traditional method PSNR.
Mismatch Repair Deficient Mice Show Susceptibility to Oxidative Stress-Induced Intestinal Carcinogenesis

We have previously established an experimental system for oxidative DNA damage-induced tumorigenesis in the small intestine of mice. To elucidate the roles of mismatch repair genes in the tumor suppression, we performed oxidative DNA damage-induced tumorigenesis experiments using Msh2-deficient mice. Oral administration of 0.2% Potassium Bromate, KBrO3, effectively induced epithelial tumors in the small intestines of Msh2-deficient mice. We observed a 22.5-fold increase in tumor formation in the small intestines of Msh2-deficient mice compared with the wild type mice. These results indicate that mismatch repair is involved in the suppression of oxidative stress-induced intestinal tumorigenesis in mice. A mutation analysis of the Ctnnb1 gene of the tumors revealed predominant occurrences of G:C to A:T transitions. The TUNEL analysis showed a decreased number of TUNEL-positive cells in the crypts of small intestines from the Msh2-deficient mice compared with the wild type mice after treatment of KBrO3. These results suggest that the mismatch repair system may simultaneously function in both avoiding mutagenesis and inducing cell death to suppress the tumorigenesis induced by oxidative stress in the small intestine of mice.
Legendre polynomials in signal reconstruction and compression

In this paper, we present a method for signal reconstruction using orthogonal transform based on discrete Legendre polynomials. Using such a transform provides computational advantages over polynomial basis. We extend the discrete Legendre polynomials to two-dimensional discrete Legendre polynomials for reconstructing and compressing an image. In the applications, we notice that when the order of a polynomial becomes large, the proposed method tends to exhibit numerical instabilities. We bring forward a possible way to avoid such instabilities. Simulation results illustrate that the error resulted from compression is usually low with a satisfactory compression ratio by using the proposed method. An application in system identification is also presented.
Test models for filtering and prediction of moisture‐coupled tropical waves

The filtering/data assimilation and prediction of moisture‐coupled tropical waves is a contemporary topic with significant implications for extended‐range forecasting. The development of efficient algorithms to capture such waves is limited by the unstable multiscale features of tropical convection which can organize large‐scale circulations and the sparse observations of the moisture‐coupled wave in both the horizontal and vertical. The approach proposed here is to address these difficult issues of data assimilation and prediction through a suite of analogue models which, despite their simplicity, capture key features of the observational record and physical processes in moisture‐coupled tropical waves. The analogue models emphasized here involve the multicloud convective parametrization based on three cloud types (congestus, deep, and stratiform) above the boundary layer. Two test examples involving an MJO‐like turbulent travelling wave and the initiation of a convectively coupled wave train are introduced to illustrate the approach. A suite of reduced filters with judicious model errors for data assimilation of sparse observations of tropical waves, based on linear stochastic models in a moisture‐coupled eigenmode basis is developed here and applied to the two test problems. Both the reduced filter and 3D‐Var with a full moist background covariance matrix can recover the unobserved troposphere humidity and precipitation rate; on the other hand, 3D‐Var with a dry background covariance matrix fails to recover these unobserved variables. The skill of the reduced filtering methods in recovering the unobserved precipitation, congestus, and stratiform heating rates as well as the front‐to‐rear tilt of the convectively coupled waves exhibits a subtle dependence on the sparse observation network and the observation time. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society
Discourse, political space and the politics of citizenship

ABSTRACT Political space can be defined as opportunities for and restrictions on citizenship struggles. The purpose of the article is to develop a theory of political space that takes into account the role of discourse and meaning in shaping political space. Starting from how political space is conceptualized as a political opportunity structure in social movement theory, the author argues for employing discourse theory to recast political space as discursive space that shapes the opportunities for and restrictions on citizenship struggles. Her argument is supported by an analysis of strategies used by Chinese labour non-governmental organizations to remake their political space. She finds that political space is constituted through discourses that assign meaning to the actors involved in citizenship struggles, the sites of action, and the issues on which actors mobilize in particular ways, which may either enable or constrain action. Concurrently, political space is dynamic, as actors may remake their political space by rearticulating the discourses on actors, issues, activities and interests that constitute the political space. The author concludes that the metaphorical and literal meanings of political space are mutually constitutive. The opportunities for and restrictions on citizenship struggles cannot be analysed independently from where such action takes place.
meta-evaluation of scientific research proposals : Different ways of omparing rejected to awarded applications

Combining different data sets with information on grant and fellowship applications submitted to two renowned funding agencies, we are able to compare their funding decisions (award and rejection) with scientometric performance indicators across two fields of science (life sciences and social sciences). The data sets involve 671 applications in social sciences and 668 applications in life sciences. In both fields, awarded applicants perform on average better than all rejected applicants. If only the most preeminent rejected applicants are considered in both fields, they score better than the awardees on citation impact. With regard to productivity we find differences between the fields. While the awardees in life sciences outperform on average the most preeminent rejected applicants, the situation is reversed in social sciences. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Synthetic Data for Testing in Databases University of Michigan ( Winter 1997 )

A significant issue in database testing consists in the availability of representative data, and when real data is hard to obtain or when its properties are hard to identify, synthetic data becomes an appealing alternative. Currently, synthetic data is used mainly in testing data-mining algorithms, and current synthetic data generators are thus limited to small toy data-mining domains and are not very flexible. In this paper we consider issues in extending the use of synthetic data for performance analysis and benchmarking different database algorithms and systems. Our approach consists in describing and implementing a synthetic data specification language and data generation tool which is more flexible and allows the generation of more realistic data. We then discuss how complex specifications can be generated from partial ones (which the user is more likely to be able to provide) and how data-mining techniques can be applied to real sample data to extract a partial specification and thus to better reproduce it, analyze it , and augment it. Finally, we discuss how data can be fit to multiple complex rules using a simulated annealing algorithm. These techniques combined together are intended to make the creation of realistic synthetic data of known properties easy for users, and to deal with possible conflicts or complex issues in its creation.
Secretory Carcinoma of Male Breast: Case Report and Review of the Literature

Secretory carcinoma is a rare low-grade breast carcinoma, initially termed “juvenile breast cancer,” but it is now known to occur in adults of both sexes. It is the only epithelial tumor of the breast with a balanced translocation, t(12;15), that creates an ETV6-NTRK3 gene translocation. In this paper, a 19-year-old male patient has had a right breast mass for 9 years which suddenly increased in size with no evidence of palpable axillary lymph nodes. The mass was excised for frozen section and was diagnosed as malignant growth for simple mastectomy. Microscopic examination revealed the classical features of secretory carcinoma. The tumor cells were positive for EMA and S-100 protein and focally positive for cytokeratin and ER but negative for progesterone receptor, CD34, and CEA. Four months later the patient developed ipsilateral axillary lymph node enlargement, with lymph node metastases in five of the dissected 19 lymph nodes. The patient was treated with six courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Conclusion. Though considered an indolent neoplasm, secretory carcinoma does metastasize to lymph nodes. Surgery in the form of mastectomy with axillary clearance is the treatment of choice. This paper includes a rare case report of secretory carcinoma in young male patient, with axillary lymph node metastasis in spite of the indolent nature that this tumor is known to display.
The Impact of Boards with Financial Expertise on Corporate Policies

We analyze whether and how board members with financial expertise affect corporate finance and investment decisions. Employing a novel data set of FORBES 500 companies with detailed demographic information on the individual directors of corporate boards from 1988 to 2001, we first investigate whether bankers on the board help firms to overcome financial constraints. We find that the presence of commercial bankers on corporate boards increases the size of loans to the corporation and decreases investment to cash flow sensitivity, particularly when the director’s bank has a lending relationship with the firm. However, the increased access to finance affects mostly firms that have good credit, little financial constraints, and relatively poor investment opportunities, suggesting that banker directors do not act in the interest of shareholders but rather in the interest of creditors. Second, we analyze the impact of investment bankers on the board on a range of activities such as securities issues and mergers. We find that the presence of investment bankers on the board is associated with more frequent outside financing and larger public debt issues as well as poorer stock and earnings performance after acquisitions. The impact of board composition on firm policies is significant after accounting for firm fixed effects and instrumenting for bankers by the number of senior board members. Our findings suggest financial experts on corporate boards do not necessarily improve shareholder value.
Power Allocation for OFDM-Based Cognitive Radio Systems under Outage Constraints

This paper investigates power allocation algorithms for OFDM-based cognitive radio systems, where the intra-system channel state information (CSI) of the secondary user (SU) is perfectly known. However, due to loose cooperation between the SU and the primary user (PU), the inter-system CSI is only partially available to the SU transmitter. Two types of PUs are considered to have different capabilities. One is a dumb (Peak Interference-Power tolerable) system that can tolerate a certain amount of peak interference at each subchannel. The other is a more sophisticated (Average Interference-Power tolerable) system that can tolerate the interference from the SU as long as the average interference over all subchannels is within a certain threshold. Accordingly, we introduce an interference power outage constraint, with which the outage is maintained within a target level. The outage is here defined as the probability that peak or average interference power to the PU is greater than a given threshold. With both this interference-power outage constraint along with a transmit-power constraint, we propose optimal and suboptimal algorithms to maximize the capacity of the SU. We evaluate the spectral efficiency through extensive simulations and show that the SU can achieve higher performance (up to two times) with the more sophisticated PU than with the dumb PU.
ARY dual role of hermaphrodite in the Droso latory hierarchy

Sex de contro see Baker, 1989; Slee and Bownes, 1990; Steinman-Zwicky et al., 1990; Belote, 1992; Burtis and Wolfner, 1992; McKeown and Madigan, 1992; Cline, 1993; Cronmiller and Salz, 1993; Parkurst and Meneely, 1994), and new components of this hierarchy continue to be discovered. Here we focus on the pleiotropic sex determination gene hermaphrodite (her), described recently (Pultz et al., 1994). Wild-type her function must be supplied both maternally and zygotically for normal female development – the maternal function is needed for female viability and the zygotic function is needed for female sexual differentiation. To understand how her fits into the sex determination hierarchy, we have examined the interactions of her mutations with many of the known sex determination and dosage compensation genes. We review here briefly those aspects of this hierarchy that are relevant to this study. In Drosophila, sex is determined by the ratio of X chromosomes to autosome sets, which establishes the activity state of Sxl. Sxl activity is initiated and maintained only in females. In femal onsib preve ssary Mahowald, 1990; Steinmann-Zwicky, 1992), but here we will focus only on the soma. The control of Sxl expression depends on positive and negative regulators, supplied maternally and zygotically (for recent reviews, see Cline, 1993; Cronmiller and Salz, 1993; Parkhurst and Meneely, 1994). Sxl initiation is transcriptionally controlled and Sxl function is then maintained through regulation at the level of splicing. Sxl initiation depends on a female-specific ‘early’ promoter, which generates protein-coding mRNAs (Keyes et al., 1992). Later, Sxl is transcribed in both sexes from a sex non-specific ‘late’ promoter; but only females synthesize Sxl protein due to sex-specific regulation of RNA splicing (Bell et al., 1988; Salz et al., 1989; Bopp et al., 1991). The female-specific splice choice is regulated by Sxl protein in a positive autoregulatory feedback loop initiated by products of the early Sxl promoter (Cline, 1984; Bell et al., 1991; Keyes et al., 1992). Downstream of Sxl, somatic sexual differentiation is controlled by a cascade of regulated splicing, such that a signal for Developm Printed in
Are Age Effects in Positivity Influenced by the Valence of Distractors?

An age-related ‘positivity’ effect has been identified, in which older adults show an information-processing bias towards positive emotional items in attention and memory. In the present study, we examined this positivity bias by using a novel paradigm in which emotional and neutral distractors were presented along with emotionally valenced targets. Thirty-five older and 37 younger adults were asked during encoding to attend to emotional targets paired with distractors that were either neutral or opposite in valence to the target. Pupillary responses were recorded during initial encoding as well as a later incidental recognition task. Memory and pupillary responses for negative items were not affected by the valence of distractors, suggesting that positive distractors did not automatically attract older adults’ attention while they were encoding negative targets. Additionally, the pupil dilation to negative items mediated the relation between age and positivity in memory. Overall, memory and pupillary responses provide converging support for a cognitive control account of positivity effects in late adulthood and suggest a link between attentional processes and the memory positivity effect.
Tat Will Tell: Tattoos and Time Preferences

Forty percent of Americans under the age of 40 have at least one tattoo. Yet survey and experimental evidence suggests that the tattooed are viewed negatively and may face discrimination in the labor market and in commercial transactions. In view of the potentially adverse economic consequences of a tattoo, the decision to get one may be regarded as shortsighted and impulsive. We collect numerous measures of time preferences and impulsivity of tattooed and non-tattooed subjects and find broad-ranging and robust evidence that those with tattoos, especially visible ones, are more short-sighted and impulsive than the non-tattooed. Almost nothing mitigates these results, neither the motive for the tattoo, nor the time contemplated before getting tattooed, nor the time elapsed since the most recent tattoo. Even the expressed intention to get a(nother) tattoo predicts increased short-sightedness and helps to pin down the direction of causality between tattoos and short-sightedness.
Radially Symmetric Solutions for a Class of Critical Exponent Elliptic Problems in R N

We give a method for obtaining radially symmetric solutions for the critical exponent problem u +a(x)u = u q +u 2 1 in R N u> 0a nd R RN jruj 2 0. We remark that, dierently from the literature, we do not require any conditions on a at innity.