Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are Charter School Students Harder to Educate? Evidence From Washington, D.C.

One point of debate in the recent controversy in the media and among policy analysts over the academic achievement of charter school students is whether the charter students are in some way harder to educate than their counterparts enrolled in traditional public schools. This article examines this question using data from the 2002–2003 school year in Washington, D.C. It begins by examining a simple binomial model of the proportion of students in key demographic and programmatic categories linked to educability. It then turns to the estimation of a more theoretically appropriate mixture model that assumes two latent categories of charter schools. It concludes with an analysis that moves beyond simple demographic/programmatic factors to consider measures of educability using individual-level survey data from charter and traditional public school students. Overall, there is mixed evidence of differences in the educability of students in the two sectors.
Effectiveness of Surgery for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background The management of spinal stenosis by surgery has increased rapidly in the past two decades, however, there is still controversy regarding the efficacy of surgery for this condition. Our aim was to investigate the efficacy and comparative effectiveness of surgery in the management of patients with lumbar spinal stenosis. Methods Electronic searches were performed on MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL, Web of Science, LILACS and Cochrane Library from inception to November 2014. Hand searches were conducted on included articles and relevant reviews. We included randomised controlled trials evaluating surgery compared to no treatment, placebo/sham, or to another surgical technique in patients with lumbar spinal stenosis. Primary outcome measures were pain, disability, recovery and quality of life. The PEDro scale was used for risk of bias assessment. Data were pooled with a random-effects model, and the GRADE approach was used to summarise conclusions. Results Nineteen published reports (17 trials) were included. No trials were identified comparing surgery to no treatment or placebo/sham. Pooling revealed that decompression plus fusion is not superior to decompression alone for pain (mean difference –3.7, 95% confidence interval –15.6 to 8.1), disability (mean difference 9.8, 95% confidence interval –9.4 to 28.9), or walking ability (risk ratio 0.9, 95% confidence interval 0.4 to 1.9). Interspinous process spacer devices are slightly more effective than decompression plus fusion for disability (mean difference 5.7, 95% confidence interval 1.3 to 10.0), but they resulted in significantly higher reoperation rates when compared to decompression alone (28% v 7%, P < 0.001). There are no differences in the effectiveness between other surgical techniques for our main outcomes. Conclusions The relative efficacy of various surgical options for treatment of spinal stenosis remains uncertain. Decompression plus fusion is not more effective than decompression alone. Interspinous process spacer devices result in higher reoperation rates than bony decompression.
Heterologous Gln/Asn-Rich Proteins Impede the Propagation of Yeast Prions by Altering Chaperone Availability

Prions are self-propagating conformations of proteins that can cause heritable phenotypic traits. Most yeast prions contain glutamine (Q)/asparagine (N)-rich domains that facilitate the accumulation of the protein into amyloid-like aggregates. Efficient transmission of these infectious aggregates to daughter cells requires that chaperones, including Hsp104 and Sis1, continually sever the aggregates into smaller “seeds. ” We previously identified 11 proteins with Q/N-rich domains that, when overproduced, facilitate the de novo aggregation of the Sup35 protein into the [PSI +] prion state. Here, we show that overexpression of many of the same 11 Q/N-rich proteins can also destabilize pre-existing [PSI +] or [URE3] prions. We explore in detail the events leading to the loss (curing) of [PSI+] by the overexpression of one of these proteins, the Q/N-rich domain of Pin4, which causes Sup35 aggregates to increase in size and decrease in transmissibility to daughter cells. We show that the Pin4 Q/N-rich domain sequesters Hsp104 and Sis1 chaperones away from the diffuse cytoplasmic pool. Thus, a mechanism by which heterologous Q/N-rich proteins impair prion propagation appears to be the loss of cytoplasmic Hsp104 and Sis1 available to sever [PSI +].
A computational continuum model of poroelastic beds

Despite the ubiquity of fluid flows interacting with porous and elastic materials, we lack a validated non-empirical macroscale method for characterizing the flow over and through a poroelastic medium. We propose a computational tool to describe such configurations by deriving and validating a continuum model for the poroelastic bed and its interface with the above free fluid. We show that, using stress continuity condition and slip velocity condition at the interface, the effective model captures the effects of small changes in the microstructure anisotropy correctly and predicts the overall behaviour in a physically consistent and controllable manner. Moreover, we show that the performance of the effective model is accurate by validating with fully microscopic resolved simulations. The proposed computational tool can be used in investigations in a wide range of fields, including mechanical engineering, bio-engineering and geophysics.
Speech recognition with support vector machines in a hybrid system

While the temporal dynamics of speech can be represented very efﬁciently by Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), the classiﬁcation of speech into single speech units (phonemes) is usually done with Gaussian mixture models which do not discriminate well. Here, we use Support Vector Machines (SVMs) for clas-siﬁcation by integrating this method in a HMM-based speech recognition system. In this hybrid SVM/HMM system we translate the outputs of the SVM classiﬁers into conditional probabilities and use them as emission probabilities in a HMM-based decoder. SVMs are very appealing due to their association with statistical learning theory. They have already shown very good classiﬁcation results in other ﬁelds of pattern recognition. We train and test our hybrid system on the DARPA Resource Management (RM1) corpus. Our results show better performance than HMM-based decoder using Gaussian mixtures.
Full-scale demonstration of the cintichem process for the production of Mo-99 using a low-enriched target.

The irradiation, disassembly, and processing of two full-scale low-enriched uranium (LEU) targets were recently demonstrated by personnel in the BATAN PUSPIPTEK Facilities (Serpong, Indonesia). Targets were fabricated at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, IL, U.S.A.) and shipped to PUSPIPTEK. The processing was done by nearly the same procedure used for the production of {sup 99}Mo from high-enriched uranium (HEU) targets. The BATAN Radioisotope Production Centre produces {sup 99}Mo using the Cintichem process by first dissolving the uranium in an acid cocktail; three proprietary separation steps recover the {sup 99}Mo and purify it from other components of the irradiated uranium. Processing of LEU-metal targets is nearly identical to that used for HEU-oxide targets except (1) a separate dissolver is required and (2) the dissolution cocktail is nitric acid alone rather than a nitric/sulfuric acid mixture. The demonstrations went smoothly except for problems with sampling and gamma analysis to assess product purity. Foils could be removed from targets fabricated from zirconium and/or 304 stainless steel, and processing produced an equivalent yield of {sup 99}Mo/{sup 235}U to that of the HEU target.
Gesture Interaction with Spatial Audio Displays: Effects of Target Size and Inter-Target Separation

This paper presents the results of an experiment comparing two spatial audio display segmentation techniques by investigating the relative salience of target width versus distance to target in a gesture based spatial audio selection task. The first technique, MINIMAL, occupies as little of the display area as possible with sounds placed as close to each other as possible. The second technique, MAXIMAL, occupies all the available display area and sounds are placed as far apart as possible and the associated display area assigned to each sound is allowed to grow. Ratios of distance to target to target width were kept constant in both displays to investigate the relative salience of distance to target versus target width in the sound selection task. Participants performed an orientation based pointing task to select an audio display element in the presence of distracting sounds. Results show that the maximal strategy results in faster and more accurate interaction. Target width was found to have significantly more impact on time ratings than distance to target. Time and accuracy ratings indicate that deictic gesture interaction with a spatial audio display is a robust and efficient interaction technique.
Interaction context (ICON)

We introduce a contextual descriptor which aims to provide a geometric description of the functionality of a 3D object in the context of a given scene. Differently from previous works, we do not regard functionality as an abstract label or represent it implicitly through an agent. Our descriptor, called interaction context or ICON for short, explicitly represents the geometry of object-to-object interactions. Our approach to object functionality analysis is based on the key premise that functionality should mainly be derived from interactions between objects and not objects in isolation. Specifically, ICON collects geometric and structural features to encode interactions between a central object in a 3D scene and its surrounding objects. These interactions are then grouped based on feature similarity, leading to a hierarchical structure. By focusing on interactions and their organization, ICON is insensitive to the numbers of objects that appear in a scene, the specific disposition of objects around the central object, or the objects' fine-grained geometry. With a series of experiments, we demonstrate the potential of ICON in functionality-oriented shape processing, including shape retrieval (either directly or by complementing existing shape descriptors), segmentation, and synthesis.
Platelet Rich Plasma ( PRP ) Matrix Grafts PRP

Practical PAIN MANAGEMENT, January/February 2008 ©2008 PPM Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission. Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) grafting techniques are now being utilized in musculoskeletal medicine with increasing frequency and effectiveness. Soft tissue injuries treated with PRP include tendonopathy, tendonosis, acute and chronic muscle strain, muscle fibrosis, ligamentous sprains, and joint capsular laxity. PRP has also been utilized to treat intra-articular injuries. Examples include arthritis, arthrofibrosis, articular cartilage defects, meniscal injury, and chronic synovitis or joint inflammation. Platelet Rich Plasma was first used in cardiac surgery by Ferrari et al. in 1987 as an autologous transfusion component after an open heart operation to avoid homologous blood product transfusion. It is now being utilized by musculoskeletal (MSK) providers following the effective use in multiple specialties. PRP has also been successfully used in various specialties such as maxillofacial, cosmetic, spine, orthopedic, podiatric and for general wound healing. MSK practitioners began using PRP for tendonosis and tendonitis in the early 1990s. PRP techniques have most commonly been applied by MSK practitioners previously trained in the use of—and on the knowledge backbone of—prolotherapy. Although there is a paucity of well designed, randomized trials for its use in MSK medicine, animal studies, case reports, and anecdotal evidence suggests that this technique will continue to develop as a way to regenerate tissue that has lost its inherent homeostasis and thereby relieve associated pain and dysfunction.
Assessment of Sensing Fire Fighters Uniforms for Physiological Parameter Measurement in Harsh Environment

In the last few years, much effort has been devoted to the development of wearable sensing systems able to monitor physiological, behavioral, and environmental parameters. Less has been done on the accurate testing and assessment of this instrumentation, especially when considering devices thought to be used in harsh environments by subjects or operators performing intense physical activities. This paper presents methodology and results of the evaluation of wearable physiological sensors under these conditions. The methodology has been applied to a specific textile-based prototype, aimed at the real-time monitoring of rescuers in emergency contexts, which has been developed within a European funded project called ProeTEX. Wearable sensor measurements have been compared with the ones of suitable gold standards through Bland-Altman statistical analysis; tests were realized in controlled environments simulating typical intervention conditions, with temperatures ranging from 20°C to 45°C and subjects performing mild to very intense activities. This evaluation methodology demonstrated to be effective for the definition of the limits of use of wearable sensors. Furthermore, the ProeTEX prototype demonstrated to be reliable, since it produced negligible errors when used for up to 1 h in normal environmental temperature (20°C and 35°C) and up to 30 min in harsher environment (45°C).
Synaptic plasticity in fear conditioning circuits: induction of LTP in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala by stimulation of the medial geniculate body

Electrical stimulation of the medial geniculate body in the anesthetized rat produces an evoked potential in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala. The potential varies in amplitude with stimulus intensity and reaches peak amplitude in 8.5 msec on the average. High-frequency stimulation of the pathway produces long-lasting increases in the amplitude and slope of the potential. These robust and enduring experience-dependent modifications in neural transmission occur in a pathway known to be involved in the formation of emotional memories and may offer a means for examining the cellular mechanisms of emotional learning, as well as a new approach to questions concerning the relevance of long-term potentiation to normal mnemonic processes.
Disaggregation of Remotely Sensed Soil Moisture in Heterogeneous Landscapes Using Holistic Structure-Based Models

In this paper, a novel machine learning algorithm is presented for disaggregation of satellite soil moisture (SM) based on self-regularized regressive models (SRRMs) using high-resolution correlated information from auxiliary sources. It includes regularized clustering that assigns soft memberships to each pixel at a fine scale followed by a kernel regression that computes the value of the desired variable at all pixels. Coarse-scale remotely sensed SM was disaggregated from 10 to 1 km using land cover (LC), precipitation, land surface temperature, leaf area index, and in situ observations of SM. This algorithm was evaluated using multiscale synthetic observations in NC Florida for heterogeneous agricultural LCs. It was found that the rmse for 96% of the pixels was less than 0.02 m 3/m3. The clusters generated represented the data well and reduced the rmse by up to 40% during periods of high heterogeneity in LC and meteorological conditions. The Kullback-Leibler divergence (KLD) between the true SM and the disaggregated estimates is close to zero, for both vegetated and bare-soil LCs. The disaggregated estimates were compared with those generated by the principle of relevant information (PRI) method. The rmse for the PRI disaggregated estimates is higher than the rmse for the SRRM on each day of the season. The KLD of the disaggregated estimates generated by the SRRM is at least four orders of magnitude lower than those for the PRI disaggregated estimates, whereas the computational time needed was reduced by three times. The results indicate that the SRRM can be used for disaggregating SM with complex nonlinear correlations on a grid with high accuracy.
SketchVisor: Robust Network Measurement for Software Packet Processing

Network measurement remains a missing piece in today's software packet processing platforms. Sketches provide a promising building block for filling this void by monitoring every packet with fixed-size memory and bounded errors. However, our analysis shows that existing sketch-based measurement solutions suffer from severe performance drops under high traffic load. Although sketches are efficiently designed, applying them in network measurement inevitably incurs heavy computational overhead. We present SketchVisor, a robust network measurement framework for software packet processing. It augments sketch-based measurement in the data plane with a fast path, which is activated under high traffic load to provide high-performance local measurement with slight accuracy degradations. It further recovers accurate network-wide measurement results via compressive sensing. We have built a SketchVisor prototype on top of Open vSwitch. Extensive testbed experiments show that SketchVisor achieves high throughput and high accuracy for a wide range of network measurement tasks and microbenchmarks.
Deriving the Quasar Luminosity Function from Accretion-Disk Instabilities

We have derived the quasar luminosity function assuming that the quasar activity is driven by a thermal-viscous unstable accretion disk around a supermassive black hole. The instabilities produce large amplitude, long-term variability of a single source. We take a light curve of a single source and calculate the luminosity function from the fraction of time it spends at each luminosity. Convolving this with an assumed mass distribution we were able to fit well the observed optical luminosity function of quasars at four redshifts. As a result we obtain the evolution of the mass distribution between redshifts 2.5 and 0.5. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) the quasar long-term variability due to the disk thermal-viscous instabilities provides a natural explanation for the observed quasar luminosity function; (2) the peak of the mass function evolves toward lower black hole masses at lower redshifts by a factor ~10; (3) the number of high-mass sources declines rapidly, so low-mass sources become dominant at lower redshift; (4) outbursts of activity appear as long as the matter is supplied to the accretion disk; (5) since the time-averaged accretion rate is low, the remnant sources (or sources in the low activity phase) do not grow into very massive black holes; and (6) a continuous fuel supply at a relatively low accretion rate (~0.01-0.1 Edd) for each single source is required over the lifetime of the entire quasar population.
Gender Dimorphism in Skeletal Muscle Leptin Receptors, Serum Leptin and Insulin Sensitivity

To determine if there is a gender dimorphism in the expression of leptin receptors (OB-R170, OB-R128 and OB-R98) and the protein suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) in human skeletal muscle, the protein expression of OB-R, perilipin A, SOCS3 and alpha-tubulin was assessed by Western blot in muscle biopsies obtained from the m. vastus lateralis in thirty-four men (age = 27.1±6.8 yr) and thirty-three women (age = 26.7±6.7 yr). Basal serum insulin concentration and HOMA were similar in both genders. Serum leptin concentration was 3.4 times higher in women compared to men (P<0.05) and this difference remained significant after accounting for the differences in percentage of body fat or soluble leptin receptor. OB-R protein was 41% (OB-R170, P<0.05) and 163% (OB-R128, P<0.05) greater in women than men. There was no relationship between OB-R expression and the serum concentrations of leptin or 17β-estradiol. In men, muscle OB-R128 protein was inversely related to serum free testosterone. In women, OB-R98 and OB-R128 were inversely related to total serum testosterone concentration, and OB-R128 to serum free testosterone concentration. SOCS3 protein expression was similar in men and women and was not related to OB-R. In women, there was an inverse relationship between the logarithm of free testosterone and SCOS3 protein content in skeletal muscle (r = −0.46, P<0.05). In summary, there is a gender dimorphism in skeletal muscle leptin receptors expression, which can be partly explained by the influence of testosterone. SOCS3 expression in skeletal muscle is not up-regulated in women, despite very high serum leptin concentrations compared to men. The circulating form of the leptin receptor can not be used as a surrogate measure of the amount of leptin receptors expressed in skeletal muscles.
The Effects of an Uninterrupted Switch from Donepezil to Galantamine without Dose Titration on Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia in Alzheimer's Disease

Aims: To elucidate the efficacy of galantamine on cognition and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in outpatients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) who have switched from donepezil to galantamine. Materials and Methods: We performed an uninterrupted switch from donepezil to galantamine without a washout period or dose titration in 44 ambulatory outpatients with amnestic MCI (n = 12) or mild-to-moderate AD (n = 32). Three months after the switch, the efficacy of galantamine was evaluated with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and NPI Brief Questionnaire Form (NPI-Q), respectively, using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: NPI scores improved significantly on BPSD, especially on delusions, agitation and aberrant motor activity in AD patients (p = 0.027); improvement was remarkable in patients with moderate AD (MMSE score 10-19; p = 0.007), while insignificant in those with MCI (MMSE score ≥24; p = 0.648). The NPI-Q score also improved significantly regarding both the severity of the disease (p = 0.009) and caregiver distress (p = 0.012) in AD patients. MMSE scores hardly improved in either MCI (p = 0.394) or AD patients (p = 0.265). Conclusions: An uninterrupted switch from donepezil to galantamine could be a useful alternative treatment option for AD patients whose BPSD are unresponsive to donepezil, or whose caregivers are not satisfied with donepezil treatment.
Boundary element method predictions of the influence of the electrolyte on the galvanic corrosion of AZ91D coupled to steel

This research investigated the galvanic corrosion of the magnesium alloy AZ91D coupled to steel. The galvanic current distribution was measured in 5% NaCl solution, corrosive water and an auto coolant. The experimental measurements were compared with predictions from a Boundary Element Method (BEM) model. The boundary condition, required as an input into the BEM model, needs to be a polarization curve that accurately reflects the corrosion process. Provided that the polarization curve does reflect steady state, the BEM model is expected to be able to reflect steady state galvanic corrosion.