Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative study of religious education in Scotland and Malawi with special reference to developments in the secondary school sector, 1970-2010

This thesis provided a systematic comparison of Religious Education (RE) as it has evolved in the secondary school curriculum of Scotland and Malawi, between 1970 and the present day (2010). It sought to draw analogies and, where valid, to indicate significant points of difference regarding key issues that underpin this development between two countries that also have a historical relationship dating back to 1859. This was a qualitative study which used the phenomenological research method. In both countries data was collected through field-based research using key informant interviews (n60), relevant documents and school surveys. The conceptual framework of the thesis was based on concepts and issues in the discourse of contemporary RE. The constant comparison strategy of data analysis was implemented in exploring issues that emerged in the research. To further facilitate the analysis of secondary school RE in Scotland and Malawi a thematic approach was adopted in which six key issues were identified and investigated. The first explored the historical problem of underdevelopment in RE. The second examined motives that engendered reforms in the RE curriculum. The third described the various curriculum changes in RE during the period under study. The fourth discussed contested spaces related to the micro-politics of RE. The fifth surveyed the level of provision in RE in different school contexts. The sixth and last assessed the current state of RE. The findings of this study suggested that despite some points of difference, there was greater similarity on salient issues that underpinned the nature of secondary school RE in the two countries, in areas such as the need for curriculum reform, micro-politics of reform, provision in schools and status of the subject. Given the challenges the subject faces in both Scotland and Malawi, the study concluded that without government intervention and support from other key stakeholders RE will continue to be regarded as a marginal curriculum subject.
An Anthropometric-Based Subject-Specific Finite Element Model of the Human Breast for Predicting Large Deformations

The large deformation of the human breast threatens proper nodules tracking when the subject mammograms are used as pre-planning data for biopsy. However, techniques capable of accurately supporting the surgeons during biopsy are missing. Finite element (FE) models are at the basis of currently investigated methodologies to track nodules displacement. Nonetheless, the impact of breast material modeling on the mechanical response of its tissues (e.g., tumors) is not clear. This study proposes a subject-specific FE model of the breast, obtained by anthropometric measurements, to predict breast large deformation. A healthy breast subject-specific FE parametric model was developed and validated by Cranio-caudal (CC) and Medio-Lateral Oblique (MLO) mammograms. The model was successively modified, including nodules, and utilized to investigate the effect of nodules size, typology, and material modeling on nodules shift under the effect of CC, MLO, and gravity loads. Results show that a Mooney–Rivlin material model can estimate healthy breast large deformation. For a pathological breast, under CC compression, the nodules displacement is very close to zero when a linear elastic material model is used. Finally, when nodules are modeled, including tumor material properties, under CC, or MLO or gravity loads, nodules shift shows ~15% average relative difference.
The Nilpotency Problem of One-Dimensional Cellular Automata

The limit set of a celullar automaton consists of all the configurations of the automaton that can appear after arbitrarily long computations. It is known that the limit set is never empty—it contains at least one homogeneous configuration. A CA is called nilpotent if its limit set contains just one configuration. The present work proves that it is algorithmically undecidable whether a given one-dimensional cellular automaton is nilpotent. The proof is based on a generalization of the well-known result about the undecidability of the tiling problem of the plane. The generalization states that the tiling problem remains undecidable even if one considers only so-called NW-deterministic tile sets, that is, tile sets in which the left and upper neighbors of each tile determine the tile uniquely. The nilpotency problem is known to be undecidable for d-dimensional CA for $d \geq 2$. The result is the basis of the proof of Rice’s theorem for CA limit sets, which states that every nontrivial property of limit set.
A High Gain Low Noise Mixer With Cross-Coupled Bleeding

A mixer implementing a cross-coupled bleeding circuit for improved conversion gain and noise performance is reported. The proposed mixer is implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The measured results show a 17 dB conversion gain, - 4.7 dBm IIP3 for an RF signal frequency of 765 MHz, 7.9 dB noise figure, and 125 kHz flicker noise corner while consuming 3.12 mA from a 1.8 V supply.
Absolutely Sound Testing of Lifted Codes

In this work we present a strong analysis of the testability of a broad, and to date the most interesting known, class of “affine-invariant” codes. Affine-invariant codes are codes whose coordinates are associated with a vector space and are invariant under affine transformations of the coordinate space. Affine-invariant linear codes form a natural abstraction of algebraic properties such as linearity and low-degree, which have been of significant interest in theoretical computer science in the past. The study of affine-invariance is motivated in part by its relationship to property testing: Affine-invariant linear codes tend to be locally testable under fairly minimal and almost necessary conditions.
Leukocyte Telomere Length in Newborns: Implications for the Role of Telomeres in Human Disease

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In adults, leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is variable, familial, and longer in women and in offspring conceived by older fathers. Although short LTL is associated with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, long LTL is associated with major cancers. The prevailing notion is that LTL is a “telomeric clock,” whose movement (expressed in LTL attrition) reflects the pace of aging. Accordingly, individuals with short LTL are considered to be biologically older than their peers. Recent studies suggest that LTL is largely determined before adulthood. We examined whether factors that largely characterize LTL in adults also influence LTL in newborns. METHODS: LTL was measured in blood samples from 490 newborns and their parents. RESULTS: LTL (mean ± SD) was longer (9.50 ± 0.70 kb) in newborns than in their mothers (7.92 ± 0.67 kb) and fathers (7.70 ± 0.71 kb) (both P < .0001); there was no difference in the variance of LTL among the 3 groups. Newborn LTL correlated more strongly with age-adjusted LTL in mothers (r = 0.47; P < .01) than in fathers (r = 0.36; P < .01) (P for interaction = .02). Newborn LTL was longer by 0.144 kb in girls than in boys (P = .02), and LTL was longer by 0.175 kb in mothers than in fathers (P < .0001). For each 1-year increase in father’s age, newborn LTL increased by 0.016 kb (95% confidence interval: 0.04 to 0.28) (P = .0086). CONCLUSIONS: The large LTL variation across newborns challenges the telomeric clock model. Having inherently short or long LTL may be largely determined at birth, anteceding by decades disease manifestation in adults.
Glial glutamate dehydrogenase: Ultrastructural localization and regional distribution in relation to the mitochondrial enzyme, cytochrome oxidase

Glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) is primarily a mitochondrial enzyme involved in the metabolism of glutamate. We have recently shown by light microscopic immunocytochemistry that, within detergent‐permeabilized brain tissue, GDH is enriched in glial cells, particularly in regions utilizing L‐glutamate as a neurotransmitter. In this study, we used immunogold labeling to quantitatively establish that the forms of the enzyme recognized by the presently used GDH antiserum is associated primarily with a subpopulation of mitochondria in ultrathin, plastic‐embedded sections of the rat cortex and striatum. Permeabilization with detergents was omitted in these studies, so as to preserve the ultrastructure. As expected, labeled mitochondria occurred both in neurons and glia. Furthermore, light microscopic comparisons of the regional distributions of peroxidase immunoreactivity for GDH and a histochemical reaction product for a second mitochondrial enzyme, cytochrome oxidase (CO), were used to demonstrate that high levels of GDH in glia of glutamate‐receptive areas do not necessarily reflect the areas's demand for elevated oxidative metabolism. While all showing intense labeling for glial GDH also exhibited high levels of CO activity, many additional regions showing high levels of CO activity contained no detectable immunoreactivity for glial GDH. These light‐microscopic comparisons reveal that the energy requirments are not the only factors accounting for the regional heterogeneity of the enzyme. We conclude that glial mitochondria are heterogeneous withe respect to their GDH content and that GDH is enriched in areas exhibiting chronically active glutamatergic transmission.
Microstructure Noise in the Continuous Case: The Pre-Averaging Approach - JLMPV-9

This paper presents a generalized pre-averaging approach for estimating the integrated volatility. This approach also provides consistent estimators of other powers of volatility – in particular, it gives feasible ways to consistently estimate the asymptotic variance of the estimator of the integrated volatility. We show that our approach, which possess an intuitive transparency, can generate rate optimal estimators (with convergence rate n 1/4 ).
Antidiabetic and antihyperlipidemic effects of the stem of Musa sapientum Linn. in streptozotocin‐induced diabetic rats

Background: Musa sapientum Linn. is a herbaceous plant of the Musaceae family. It has been used in India for the treatment of gastric ulcer, hypertension, diarrhea, dysentery, and diabetes. The antidiabetic effect of the fruit, root, and flower has been demonstrated. The aim of the present study was to assess the antidiabetic and antihyperlipidemic effects of the stem of M. sapientum Linn.
"My Loss is Your Gain": Examining the Role of Message Frame, Perceived Risk, and Ambivalence in the Decision to Become an Organ Donor.

The decision to become an organ donor involves considering both self-relevant risks and the needs of others. This study applied prospect theory to examine how message frames that focus on the possible survival or death of a potential organ transplant recipient affect participants' willingness to become organ donors. Perceived personal risk and ambivalence were examined as moderating variables. Results indicate that risk, rather than ambivalence, played an instrumental role in participants' decisions to donate. Although no main effects or interactions related to message frame emerged in initial analyses, a supplemental analysis revealed a modest persuasive advantage for the loss-framed message among low-risk participants. Additional analyses revealed that for low-risk participants, perceived benefits of organ donation were higher for the loss frame than the gain frame, whereas the opposite pattern was found for high-risk participants. Findings suggest that decisions about organ donation may be associated with unique responses to message frames.
DAWN : Dynamic Ad-hoc Wireless Networks Interim

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comment regarding this burden estimates or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, 11. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES The views opinions and / or findings contained in this report are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy or decision, unless so designated by the documentation. 12a. DISTRIBUTION AVAILIBILITY STATEMENT Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited 13. ABSTRACT (Maximum 13 lines, use the attachment if necessary) The DAWN (Dynamic Ad-hoc Wireless Networks) project is developing a general theory of complex and dynamic wireless communication networks. To accomplish this, DAWN adopts a very different approach than those followed in the past and summarized above. DAWN constitutes what is arguably one of the most ambitious research teams of experts ever assembled that can mount a truly cross-disciplinary approach incorporating the effects of the physical layer explicitly into the modeling, analysis, and control of wireless communication networks. DAWN will systematically redefine and reorganize existing models, protocols and controls, and develop new ones in a framework that guarantees realism and cross-layer consistency to enable the efficient design of such complex wireless systems as those required by the Army. The models, tools, algorithms, and protocols developed in DAWN will provide transformational improvements to the way in which a network-centric battlefield is managed in the future.
Can Limitations of Visuospatial Attention Be Circumvented? A Review

In daily life, humans are bombarded with visual input. Yet, their attentional capacities for processing this input are severely limited. Several studies have investigated factors that influence these attentional limitations and have identified methods to circumvent them. Here, we provide a review of these findings. We first review studies that have demonstrated limitations of visuospatial attention and investigated physiological correlates of these limitations. We then review studies in multisensory research that have explored whether limitations in visuospatial attention can be circumvented by distributing information processing across several sensory modalities. Finally, we discuss research from the field of joint action that has investigated how limitations of visuospatial attention can be circumvented by distributing task demands across people and providing them with multisensory input. We conclude that limitations of visuospatial attention can be circumvented by distributing attentional processing across sensory modalities when tasks involve spatial as well as object-based attentional processing. However, if only spatial attentional processing is required, limitations of visuospatial attention cannot be circumvented by distributing attentional processing. These findings from multisensory research are applicable to visuospatial tasks that are performed jointly by two individuals. That is, in a joint visuospatial task requiring object-based as well as spatial attentional processing, joint performance is facilitated when task demands are distributed across sensory modalities. Future research could further investigate how applying findings from multisensory research to joint action research may facilitate joint performance. Generally, findings are applicable to real-world scenarios such as aviation or car-driving to circumvent limitations of visuospatial attention.
Why some cancer patients choose complementary and alternative medicine instead of conventional treatment.

OBJECTIVES We examined cancer patients' reasons for declining all or part of recommended cancer treatment and choosing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). STUDY DESIGN This was a qualitative interview study. POPULATION Fourteen cancer survivors who reported having declined all or part of the recommended conventional treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation) were included. The participants were a subset from a multi-ethnic (Asian, Native Hawaiian, and white) group of 143 adults diagnosed with cancer in 1995 or 1996 who were recruited through a population-based tumor registry and interviewed about CAM. OUTCOMES MEASURED We performed semistructured interviews regarding experience with conventional cancer treatment and providers, use of CAM, and beliefs about disease. RESULTS All participants used 3 or more types of CAM, most commonly herbal or nutritional supplements. Across the board, participants stated that their reason for declining conventional treatment was to avoid damage or harm to the body. The majority of participants also felt that conventional treatment would not make a difference in disease outcome, and some but not all participants perceived an unsatisfactory or alienating relationship with health care providers. Some participants reported that their discovery of CAM contributed to their decision to decline conventional treatment, and participants generally perceived CAM as an effective and less harmful alternative to conventional treatment. CONCLUSIONS Cancer patients may benefit from interventions (eg, patient education, improvements in physician-patient communication, and psychologic therapy) to facilitate treatment decision making through increased understanding of conventional and CAM treatments and to identify barriers to treatment for individual patients.
Towards the Design of Evidence-based Mental Health Information Systems: A Preliminary Literature Review

Mental disorders belong to a significant and serious disease pattern with an increasing prevalence worldwide. Due to limited health personnel and financial resources, scalability of mental health services and tailored care of individuals are two key barriers for a successful treatment. Mental health information systems (MHIS) are expected to address these barriers and thus, it is of utmost importance to understand the underlying technological rules that guide the design of evidence-based MHIS interventions. However, up till now, there is no systematic literature review on the anatomy of MHIS that quantitatively tests the effects of MHIS service configurations on treatment success. We therefore conducted, as a very first step a preliminary review on MHIS in this research-in-progress. This review has not only the objective to present state-of-the-art on MHIS but also to propose a set of fine-grained evaluation criteria relevant for future work on the design of evidence-based MHIS interventions.
Prospective study of two retrograde endodontic apical preparations with and without the use of CO2 laser.

This article covers a 4-year study that reports 320 cases in which endodontic surgery was performed for residual apical lesions or lesions that could not be treated in a conventional way. Four groups of 80 teeth each were formed and they were followed up after a 12-month interval. The first group comprised cases treated with a micro bur, retrograde filling and IRM; the second, cases treated at the apical and radicular portions with a CO2 laser; the third, cases in which the retrograde cavity was prepared with an ultrasonic device instead of a micro bur; and the fourth group comprised cases treated in a similar way to the second group, i.e., cases treated at the apical and radicular portions, but with a CO2 laser instead of a micro bur. After 12 months, the results showed a better prognosis with ultrasonic treatment. Regardless of technique, the CO2 laser did not improve the healing process.
Immune Adherence–mediated Opsonophagocytosis:  The Mechanism of Leishmania Infection

To mimic the sandfly pool feeding process and characterize the cellular and biochemical events that occur during the early stages of promastigote–host interaction, we developed an ex vivo model of human blood infection with Leishmania promastigotes. Within 30 s of blood contact, Leishmania promastigotes bind natural anti–Leishmania antibodies, which then activate the classical complement pathway and opsonization by the third component of complement. The opsonized promastigotes undergo an immune adherence reaction and bind quantitatively to erythrocyte CR1 receptors; opsonized Leishmania amastigotes also bind to erythrocytes. Progression of infection implies promastigote transfer from erythrocytes to acceptor blood leukocytes. After 10 min of ex vivo infection, 25% of all leukocytes contain intracellular parasites, indicating that blood cells are the early targets for the invading promastigotes. We propose that adaptation to the immune adherence mechanism aids Leishmania survival, promoting rapid promastigote phagocytosis by leukocytes. This facilitates host colonization and may represent the parasite's earliest survival strategy. In light of this mechanism, it is unlikely that infection-blocking vaccines can be developed.
Direct and Indirect Effects of Sequential Treatments

In this paper we review the notion of direct and indirect causal effect as introduced by Pearl (2001). We show how it can be formulated without counterfactuals, using regime indicators instead. This allows to consider the natural (in)direct effect as a special case of sequential treatments discussed by Dawid & Didelez (2005) which immediately yields conditions for identifiability as well as a graphical way of checking identifiability.
TCG: A transitive closure graph-based representation for general floorplans

In this brief, we introduce the concept of the P*-admissible representation and propose a P*-admissible, transitive closure graph-based representation for general floorplans, called transitive closure graph (TCG), and show its superior properties. TCG combines the advantages of popular representations such as sequence pair, BSG, and B*-tree. Like sequence pair and BSG, but unlike O-tree, B*-tree, and CBL, TCG is P*-admissible. Like B*-tree, but unlike sequence pair, BSG, O-tree, and CBL, TCG does not need to construct additional constraint graphs for the cost evaluation during packing, implying a faster runtime. Further, TCG supports incremental update during operations and keeps the information of boundary modules as well as the shapes and the relative positions of modules in the representation. More importantly, the geometric relation among modules is transparent not only to the TCG representation but also to its operation, facilitating the convergence to a desired solution. All of these properties make TCG an effective and flexible representation for handling the general floorplan/placement design problems with various constraints. Experimental results show the promise of TCG.
MT1-matrix metalloproteinase directs arterial wall invasion and neointima formation by vascular smooth muscle cells

During pathologic vessel remodeling, vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) embedded within the collagen-rich matrix of the artery wall mobilize uncharacterized proteolytic systems to infiltrate the subendothelial space and generate neointimal lesions. Although the VSMC-derived serine proteinases, plasminogen activator and plasminogen, the cysteine proteinases, cathepsins L, S, and K, and the matrix metalloproteinases MMP-2 and MMP-9 have each been linked to pathologic matrix-remodeling states in vitro and in vivo, the role that these or other proteinases play in allowing VSMCs to negotiate the three-dimensional (3-D) cross-linked extracellular matrix of the arterial wall remains undefined. Herein, we demonstrate that VSMCs proteolytically remodel and invade collagenous barriers independently of plasmin, cathepsins L, S, or K, MMP-2, or MMP-9. Instead, we identify the membrane-anchored matrix metalloproteinase, MT1-MMP, as the key pericellular collagenolysin that controls the ability of VSMCs to degrade and infiltrate 3-D barriers of interstitial collagen, including the arterial wall. Furthermore, genetic deletion of the proteinase affords mice with a protected status against neointimal hyperplasia and lumen narrowing in vivo. These studies suggest that therapeutic interventions designed to target MT1-MMP could prove beneficial in a range of human vascular disease states associated with the destructive remodeling of the vessel wall extracellular matrix.