Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Meaningful Choices? Understanding and Participation in Direct Democracy in the American States

What role does political knowledge play in campaigning for and participation in direct democracy? A foundational principle of democracy is citizen participation in decision-making. This foundation assumes that citizens are at least somewhat knowledgeable about government and able to make informed choices. This analysis examines the role that meaningful decisions play in direct democracy, because “for voters to make meaningful decisions, they must understand the options on which they are deciding” (Dalton 1988: 13). This analysis uses three different methodologies to investigate this relationship. First, through qualitative analysis and a mail survey of petitioners, this study explores how petitioners view and approach the public. This study finds that expectations of political knowledge affects how petitioners approach the public and how much time they spend educating the public about their initiative. Second, through statistical (multi-level regression) analysis, this study investigates the impact of the ballot language on participation in individual ballot propositions. This study finds that ballot language is a significant barrier to participation. Third, through experimental analysis, this study connects measures of political knowledge and participation on ballot propositions written by petitioners across the country. This study finds that when confronted with more difficult ballot language voters are less likely to participate. However, when controlling for political knowledge this effect is truncated. The findings of this analysis argue the elite bias of direct democracy in ballot language, accessibility, and motives of petitioners. The study of participation in direct democracy and political knowledge across American states advances the theoretical understanding of democratic participation, and furthers our understanding of the role citizen political knowledge plays in policymaking. INDEX WORDS: Direct democracy, Elections, Ballot language, Political knowledge, Readability, Voting, ‘Voting correctly’, Petitioners MEANINGFUL CHOICES? UNDERSTANDING AND PARTICIPATION IN DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAN STATES
BiographyNet: Managing Provenance at Multiple Levels and from Different Perspectives

The BiographyNet project aims at inspiring historians when setting up new research projects. The goal is to create a semantic knowledge base by extracting links between people, historic events, places and time periods from a variety of Dutch biographical dictionaries. A demonstrator will be developed providing visualization and browsing techniques for the knowledge base. In order to establish its credibility as a serious research tool, keeping track of provenance information is crucial. This paper describes a schema that models provenance from different perspectives and at multiple levels within BiographyNet. We will present a concrete model for the BiographyNet demonstrator that uses elements from the Europeana Data Model [6], PROV-DM [17] and P-PLAN [11].
A mutation in the canine gene encoding folliculin‐interacting protein 2 (FNIP2) associated with a unique disruption in spinal cord myelination

Novel mutations in myelin and myelin‐associated genes have provided important information on oligodendrocytes and myelin and the effects of their disruption on the normal developmental process of myelination of the central nervous system (CNS). We report here a mutation in the folliculin‐interacting protein 2 (FNIP2) gene in the Weimaraner dog that results in hypomyelination of the brain and a tract‐specific myelin defect in the spinal cord. This myelination disruption results in a notable tremor syndrome from which affected dogs recover with time. In the peripheral tracts of the lateral and ventral columns of the spinal cord, there is a lack of mature oligodendrocytes. A genome‐wide association study of DNA from three groups of dogs mapped the gene to canine chromosome 15. Sequencing of all the genes in the candidate region identified a frameshift mutation in the FNIP2 gene that segregated with the phenotype. While the functional role of FNIP2 is not known, our data would suggest that production of truncated protein results in a delay or failure of maturation of a subpopulation of oligodendrocytes. GLIA 2014;62:39–51
Using portfolio assessment to improve EFL students’ expository-writing performance

The objectives of the research were to find out the extent to which the use of portfolio assessment improves EFL students’ performances in expository-writing and to find out the students’ responses about the taking of portfolio assessment in improving their performance in writing expository text. The researcher applied classroom action research which was done through two cycles. The location of this research was at one of the secondary schools in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. There were 31 students as a sample in this research and the data were collected using observation, writing test, interview, and analyzed by using descriptive statistics. The result showed that portfolio assessment had improved EFL students’ expository-writing performance. The students were better in arranging the words into sentences and paragraph in order to convey their ideas, opinions, and feeling because they had already known the steps in the writing process, and they learned from their previous evaluated portfolios, and their responses on the using of portfolio assessment as a method in writing expository process was positive. They got positive motivation and appreciation to progress their writing performance. They were excited to revise and edit their draft to become the best work in every meeting.
The Impact of Shiftwork on Skeletal Muscle Health

(1) Background: About one in four workers undertake shift rosters that fall outside the traditional 7 a.m.–6 p.m. scheduling. Shiftwork alters workers’ exposure to natural and artificial light, sleep patterns, and feeding patterns. When compared to the rest of the working population, shiftworkers are at a greater risk of developing metabolic impairments over time. One fundamental component of metabolic health is skeletal muscle, the largest organ in the body. However, cause-and-effect relationships between shiftwork and skeletal muscle health have not been established; (2) Methods: A critical review of the literature was completed using online databases and reference lists; (3) Results: We propose a conceptual model drawing relationships between typical shiftwork consequences; altered light exposure, sleep patterns, and food and beverage consumption, and drivers of skeletal muscle health—protein intake, resistance training, and hormone release. At present, there is no study investigating the direct effect of shiftwork on skeletal muscle health. Instead, research findings showing that acute consequences of shiftwork negatively influence skeletal muscle homeostasis support the validity of our model; (4) Conclusion: Further research is required to test the potential relationships identified in our review, particularly in shiftwork populations. Part of this testing could include skeletal muscle specific interventions such as targeted protein intake and/or resistance-training.
Likelihood‐Ratio Tests for Hidden Markov Models

Summary. We consider hidden Markov models as a versatile class of models for weakly dependent random phenomena. The topic of the present paper is likelihood‐ratio testing for hidden Markov models, and we show that, under appropriate conditions, the standard asymptotic theory of likelihood‐ratio tests is valid. Such tests are crucial in the specification of multivariate Gaussian hidden Markov models, which we use to illustrate the applicability of our general results. Finally, the methodology is illustrated by means of a real data set.
A Collaborative Model for Participatory Load Management in the Smart Grid

The major task of a grid operator is perfectly balancing the demand of all customers at any instant with supply. One of the facets of the Smart Grid vision is tackling the problem of balancing demand with supply using strategies that act on the demand side. With the deployment of intelligent ICT devices in domestic environments, homes are becoming smarter and able to optimise the electricity consumption to minimise costs and/or meet supply constraints. In this work, we envision a scenario where smart homes actively participate in the balancing of demand with supply by forming groups of electricity consumers that agree on a joint demand profile to be contracted with a retail electricity provider. We put forward a novel business model as well as an optimisation model for collaborative load management, showing the economic benefits for the participants.
Using real options to select stable middleware-induced software architectures

The requirements that force decisions towards building distributed system architectures are usually of a non-functional nature. Scalability, openness, heterogeneity, and fault-tolerance are examples of such non-functional requirements. The current trend is to build distributed systems with middleware, which provide the application developer with primitives for managing the complexity of distribution, system resources, and for realising many of the non-functional requirements. As non-functional requirements evolve, the 'coupling' between the middleware and architecture becomes the focal point for understanding the stability of the distributed software system architecture in the face of change. It is hypothesised that the choice of a stable distributed software architecture depends on the choice of the underlying middleware and its flexibility in responding to future changes in non-functional requirements. Drawing on a case study that adequately represents a medium-size component-based distributed architecture, it is reported how a likely future change in scalability could impact the architectural structure of two versions, each induced with a distinct middleware: one with CORBA and the other with J2EE. An option-based model is derived to value the flexibility of the induced-architectures and to guide the selection. The hypothesis is verified to be true for the given change. The paper concludes with some observations that could stimulate future research in the area of relating requirements to software architectures.
On improving the BER performance of rate-adaptive block transceivers, with applications to DMT

Two strategies for improving the (uncoded) bit error rate (BER) performance of practical rate-adaptive block-by-block communication schemes, such as discrete multitone modulation (DMT) is proposed. Our strategies are inspired by some recent work which showed that for uniformly bit-loaded schemes, the transmission strategy which minimizes the BER for a linear receiver involves allocating power to the subchannels that are implicit in the block-by-block framework in a minimum mean square error (MMSE) fashion and linearly combining these subchannels using a normalized discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrix. This combining equalizes the decision point signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of the subchannels. Given a nonuniformly bit-loaded scheme, our first design strategy simply performs a DFT-based linear combination within the groups of subchannels which share the same constellation. Our second strategy provides further reduction in the BER by reallocating power within these groups in a MMSE fashion prior to DFT combining. Our examples indicate that our design strategies can provide significant reductions in the BER, and give rise to substantial SNR gains (of the order of several decibels).
PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE Trends in the Consumption and Income of Poor Families *

There has been a long-standing debate over how the well-being of the poor has changed over time. This debate has received renewed interest in light of notable increases in income inequality during the 1970s and 1980s and, more recently, dramatic changes in the tax and transfer programs that affect the poor. A substantial literature has examined trends in summary measures of income and consumption inequality such as variances and Gini coefficients. Other work has examined the relative quality of income and consumption data for those with few resources (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003). This paper investigates more fully changes over time for those at the bottom of the distributions of income and consumption. We examine several datasets to determine what trends are robust to the choice of survey. We find sharp differences between recent trends in measured income and consumption. We first document these sharp differences, focusing on families headed by a single mother. Income changes are often as much as twenty percent below consumption changes at very low percentiles, but are often as much as twenty percent above consumption changes at somewhat higher percentiles. Changes in food consumption also have a somewhat different pattern than those for overall consumption. We then explore several explanations for these differences, including changes in income underreporting, changes in prices of goods such as housing, and other reporting and measurement issues. We also explore what can be learned about well-being from looking at the components of consumption or from examining the consumption of non-market time. *We would like to thank seminar participants at the Fundacion Ramon Areces, Universitat Pampeu Fabra, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Virginia, and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank Vladimir Sokolov for excellent research assistance. Meyer: Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, 1155 E. 60 Street, Chicago, IL 60637 bdmeyer@uchicago.edu Sullivan: University of Notre Dame, Department of Economics and Econometrics, 447 Flanner Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556 sullivan.197@nd.edu See Cutler and Katz (1991), Slesnick (1993) and Triest (1998). See Cutler and Katz (1991), Johnson and Smeeding (1998), Blundell and Preston (1998), Krueger and Perri (2003), Attanasio, Battistin and Ichimura (2004), and Autor, Katz, and Kearney (2004). We focus on single mothers and their children because they constitute a large share of the poor, especially poor children, and because they can be selected based on demographic characteristics rather than being selected on having low values for the outcome of interest, such as low income or low consumption. See Section IV for a more detailed discussion of why we focus on single mothers. See Meyer and Sullivan (2003).
Disulfiram/copper causes redox-related proteotoxicity and concomitant heat shock response in ovarian cancer cells that is augmented by auranofin-mediated thioredoxin inhibition

A valuable strategy to develop new therapeutic options for a variety of diseases has been the identification of new targets and applications for already approved drugs, the so-called drug repositioning. Recurrent ovarian cancer is a nearly incurable malignancy for which new and effective treatments are urgently needed. The alcohol-deterring drug disulfiram has been shown to cause preferential cell death in a variety of cancer cells. In this study, it is shown that disulfiram mediates effective cell death in ovarian cancer cells by promoting a pro-oxidative intracellular environment in a copper-dependent mechanism. Within few hours of application, disulfiram caused irreversible cell damage associated with pronounced induction of the inducible heat shock proteins HSP70, HSP40, and HSP32. The small heat shock protein HSP27 was found to be covalently dimerized via oxidized disulfide bonds and precipitated in para-nuclear protein aggregates. Simultaneous inhibition of the cellular thioredoxin system by auranofin further enhanced the cytotoxic effect of disulfiram. These data indeed indicate that the combination of two approved drugs, the anti-alcoholic disulfiram and the anti-rheumatic auranofin, may be of interest for the treatment of recurrent and genotoxic drug-resistant ovarian cancer by inducing a proteotoxic cell death mechanism.
Global Self-Worth among Adolescents: The Role of Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction in Physical Education

ABSTRACT Global self-worth is important for healthy development and learning, and is therefore highlighted as a major aim in the Norwegian physical education (PE) curriculum. Based on prior research this study aimed to assess potential differences in global self-worth and contextual basic need satisfaction among 2854 adolescents (47.5% boys, 52.5% girls, ages 13 and 16) participating in different movement contexts, and to determine whether basic need satisfaction in PE relates to global self-worth. Structural equation modeling analyses indicate that basic need satisfaction in PE relates significantly to global self-worth. However, adolescents who do not participate in movement contexts outside school report significantly lower basic need satisfaction in PE compared to their sports-active peers, and could possibly therefore experience reduced global self-worth development through PE. Findings support research showing that sports active youth reap most of the beneﬁts of PE, and thus, that PE violates the principles of equal education.
Exact entanglement studies of strongly correlated systems: role of long-range interactions and symmetries of the system

We study the bipartite entanglement of strongly correlated systems using exact diagonalization techniques. In particular, we examine how the entanglement changes in the presence of long-range interactions by studying the Pariser–Parr–Pople model with long-range interactions. We compare the results for this model with those obtained for the Hubbard and Heisenberg models with short-range interactions. This study helps us to understand why the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique is so successful even in the presence of long-range interactions. To better understand the behavior of long-range interactions and why the DMRG works well with it, we study the entanglement spectrum of the ground state and a few excited states of finite chains. We also investigate if the symmetry properties of a state vector have any significance in relation to its entanglement. Finally, we make an interesting observation on the entanglement profiles of different states (across the energy spectrum) in comparison with the corresponding profile of the density of states. We use isotropic chains and a molecule with non-Abelian symmetry for these numerical investigations.
Measuring Instructional Responses to Standards-Based Accountability

This product is part of the RAND Education working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers' latest findings and to solicit informal peer review. They have been approved for circulation by RAND Education but have not been formally edited or peer reviewed. Unless otherwise indicated, working papers can be quoted and cited without permission of the author, provided the source is clearly referred to as a working paper. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. is a registered trademark.Preface This paper was presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association as part of a symposium entitled " Measuring the Quality of Mathematics conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. In addition, this paper has not been formally reviewed and does not represent the views of RAND or its sponsors.Introduction Efforts to improve the quality of mathematics instruction often originate at the district level and focus on the provision of new curriculum materials and teacher professional development. Although district-level decisions about materials and training are undoubtedly important influences on teachers' practices, there is growing recognition that instructional practices are also influenced by broader policy decisions that take place at the district, state, or externally mandated policies aimed at influencing instruction often fail to achieve the desired results, in part because instructional activities are so distant from the source of the policy initiatives and tend to be poorly monitored and evaluated Although it might not be possible to understand fully the means through which local and state initiatives influence teachers, it is important that instructional reform efforts recognize the complex ways in which externally mandated policies may affect what happens in the classroom. Perhaps one of the most salient factors influencing public school teachers' instructional practices in mathematics today is the need to prepare students for state and district tests. In the context of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, most mathematics teachers are facing pressure to improve test scores. Examinations of classroom practice are therefore likely to be incomplete without some effort to understand how teachers' actions are influenced by externally mandated testing. In addition, in order to interpret gains on state or district accountability tests, it is crucial to examine the degree to which these gains might be …
A policy study of the emergence of a joint interdisciplinary school

xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . xiii CHAPTER ONE: THE NATURE OF THE STUDY . 1 Background to the Study . 2 Purpose of the Study . 5 Significance of the Study . 5 Parameters of the Study . 8 Assumptions . 8 Delimitations . 8 Limitations . 9 Definitions . 10 Isomorphism . 10 Institutional change . 10 Institutional formation . 10 Institutional development (or elaboration) . 10 Deinstitutionalization . 10 Reinstitutionalization . 11 Policy . 11 Public policy . 11 Stakeholders and actors . 11 Policy community . 12 Policy networks . 12 Policy analysis . 12 Problem stream . 12 Policy stream . 12
Indoor propagation characteristics at 5.2GHz in home and office environments

This paper presents results of continuous wave and swept frequency response measurements over the frequency range of U-NII lower and middle bands from 5.15GHz to 5.35GHz in indoor environments. From the continuous wave measurements at 5.2GHz, the excess path loss, and the statistical characteristics of the temporal and spatial fading were found. By sweeping the frequency over the band, envelope correlation as a function of frequency was found and the coherence bandwidth (CBW) was determined from the envelope correlation. Using a channel model, the CBW was used to evaluate RMS delay spread. The dependence of CBW on the antenna polarization was simulated and compared with the measurement results. The influence of room size and separation of transmitter and receiver for LOS paths on RMS delay spread was discussed.