Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Longitudinal Evaluation of an Early Immersion School Program

On a compare le rendement des eleves participant t un programme precoce complet d'immersion en francais t celui d'6dlves homologues inscrits dans les programmes normaux d'anglais et de francais. On a mesure ce rendement t la fin de chaque ann6e scolaire (le ea 6e annee) en utilisant une serie de tests d'anglais, de francais et de mathmxnatiques. Les rdsultats des 61eves d'immersion ont et6 inf:rieurs t ceux des leY/es de controle anglais sur les tests qui ndcessitaient une connaissance de la langue anglaise tels que la lecture jusqu't ce que soient introduits dans le programme les matieres de langue anglaise, p6riode i laquelle ils arrivent a 6galit6 avec les 6lves du groupe de contr6le. On ne note pas de diff6rences entre les eleves d'immersion et ceux du groupe de controle anglais, meme en premiere annee, sur les tests de langue anglaise qui ne n6cessitaient pas une connaissance de la langue anglaise, tels que ceux de decodage auditif et d'association de mots, ou sur ceux de rendement en math6matiques. En meme temps, la competence en francais des 6l1ves d'immersion etait grandement sup6rieure i celle du groupe de controle anglais sur tous les instruments de mesure compris dans 1'6valuation. Les r6sultats des 6Ives d'immersion &taient de beaucoup comparables I ceux du groupe de controle francais sur les tests francais n6cessitant des comp&tences en dCcodage, tels que la lecture et la compr6hension auditive. Toutefois, leurs r6sultats sur les tests n6cessitant des comp6tences de production tels que l'expression orale etaient en gCn6ral plus faibles que ceux du groupe de controle franqais. NManmoins, les 6lves d'immersion avaient acquis une bonne connaissance pratique du francais.
The work of teacher educators: an English policy perspective

This paper focuses on the Conservative–Liberal coalition government’s policy in teacher education in England and its implications for the work of teacher educators. It does this by considering, for example, policy documents and the speeches of key politicians responsible for policy formulation. It argues that policies influenced by the neoliberal and neoconservative policies of past governments from the late 1970s have been continued and even accelerated by the current coalition government, with the result of a much more significant and rapid shift to more school-based and school-led initial teacher education and continuing professional development. The implication of such a rapid shift of teacher education into schools is then discussed focusing on how this will both influence who the teacher educators are and the work they do in this rapidly changing policy environment.
Basal Ganglia Calcification (BGC) in Down's Syndrome (DS)—Another Manifestation of Premature Aging *

HE GOAL of this study was to determine the frequency of occurrence T basal ganglia calcification (BGC) in Down’s syndrome (DS) during life and at the time of postmortem examination. Clinical, histopathological and calcium homeostasis concomitants of BGC in DS also were investigated. BGC, detected by computerized transaxonal tomography (CTT) scanning in DS, has been previously reported in only a few cases. ’-3 Some tentative conclusions concerning the natural history of BGC in DS are drawn. The increased incidence and early appearance of BGC in DS suggests that BGC may be a manifestation of premature aging.
Safe To Walk? Neighborhood Safety and Physical Activity Among Public Housing Residents

Background Despite its health benefits, physical inactivity is pervasive, particularly among those living in lower-income urban communities. In such settings, neighborhood safety may impact willingness to be regularly physically active. We examined the association of perceived neighborhood safety with pedometer-determined physical activity and physical activity self-efficacy. Methods and Findings Participants were 1,180 predominantly racial/ethnic minority adults recruited from 12 urban low-income housing complexes in metropolitan Boston. Participants completed a 5-d pedometer data-collection protocol and self-reported their perceptions of neighborhood safety and self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in the ability to be physically active). Gender-stratified bivariate and multivariable random effects models were estimated to account for within-site clustering. Most participants reported feeling safe during the day, while just over one-third (36%) felt safe at night. We found no association between daytime safety reports and physical activity among both men and women. There was also no association between night-time safety reports and physical activity among men (p = 0.23) but women who reported feeling unsafe (versus safe) at night showed significantly fewer steps per day (4,302 versus 5,178, p = 0.01). Perceiving one's neighborhood as unsafe during the day was associated with significantly lower odds of having high physical activity self-efficacy among both men (OR 0.40, p = 0.01) and women (OR 0.68, p = 0.02). Conclusions Residing in a neighborhood that is perceived to be unsafe at night is a barrier to regular physical activity among individuals, especially women, living in urban low-income housing. Feeling unsafe may also diminish confidence in the ability to be more physically active. Both of these factors may limit the effectiveness of physical activity promotion strategies delivered in similar settings.
Atomic structure of the major capsid protein of rotavirus: implications for the architecture of the virion

The structural protein VP6 of rotavirus, an important pathogen responsible for severe gastroenteritis in children, forms the middle layer in the triple‐layered viral capsid. Here we present the crystal structure of VP6 determined to 2 Å resolution and describe its interactions with other capsid proteins by fitting the atomic model into electron cryomicroscopic reconstructions of viral particles. VP6, which forms a tight trimer, has two distinct domains: a distal β‐barrel domain and a proximal α‐helical domain, which interact with the outer and inner layer of the virion, respectively. The overall fold is similar to that of protein VP7 from bluetongue virus, with the subunits wrapping about a central 3‐fold axis. A distinguishing feature of the VP6 trimer is a central Zn2+ ion located on the 3‐fold molecular axis. The crude atomic model of the middle layer derived from the fit shows that quasi‐equivalence is only partially obeyed by VP6 in the T = 13 middle layer and suggests a model for the assembly of the 260 VP6 trimers onto the T = 1 viral inner layer.
Comparison of growth factor expression in fetal and adult fibroblasts: a preliminary report.

BACKGROUND Fetal wounds can heal without any histological evidence of scarring. Fetal wounds lack the inflammatory infiltrate characteristic of adult wounds, and the fetal environment is not necessary for scarless healing to occur. Recent evidence suggests that fibroblasts are the main effector of scarless healing in fetal tissue. What has not been shown is what profile of growth factors the fibroblast uses to influence wound repair. OBJECTIVE To determine the expression of growth factors (transforming growth factors beta1, beta2, and beta3; acidic and basic fibroblast growth factors; keratinocyte growth factor; and platelet-derived growth factor AA, BB, and AB) of fetal and adult fibroblasts in vitro. DESIGN Adult and fetal fibroblasts were grown in culture, and messenger RNA was extracted by standard techniques. Northern hybridization was used to identify messenger RNA transcripts for the aforementioned growth factors. Densitometry was used to compare growth factor messenger RNA expression with that of a ubiquitously expressed control, glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase. RESULTS The data suggest that fetal and adult fibroblasts express acidic and basic fibroblast growth factor and transforming growth factor beta1. Adult fibroblasts show twice the relative expression of these growth factors compared with fetal fibroblasts. CONCLUSIONS The adult fibroblasts demonstrate a relative excess production of cytokines compared with fetal fibroblasts. This is thought to contribute to suboptimal wound healing in adult wounds compared with the scarless healing of fetal wounds.
Optical Imaging of Disseminated Leukemia Models in Mice with Near-Infrared Probe Conjugated to a Monoclonal Antibody

Background The assessment of anticancer agents to treat leukemia needs to have animal models closer to the human pathology such as implantation in immunodeficient mice of leukemic cells from patient samples. A sensitive and early detection of tumor cells in these orthotopic models is a prerequisite for monitoring engraftment of leukemic cells and their dissemination in mice. Therefore, we developed a fluorescent antibody based strategy to detect leukemic foci in mice bearing patient-derived leukemic cells using fluorescence reflectance imaging (FRI) to determine when to start treatments with novel antitumor agents. Methods Two mAbs against the CD44 human myeloid marker or the CD45 human leukocyte marker were labeled with Alexa Fluor 750 and administered to leukemia-bearing mice after having verified the immunoreactivity in vitro. Bioluminescent leukemic cells (HL60-Luc) were used to compare the colocalization of the fluorescent mAb with these cells. The impact of the labeled antibodies on disease progression was further determined. Finally, the fluorescent hCD45 mAb was tested in mice engrafted with human leukemic cells. Results The probe labeling did not modify the immunoreactivity of the mAbs. There was a satisfactory correlation between bioluminescence imaging (BLI) and FRI and low doses of mAb were sufficient to detect leukemic foci. However, anti-hCD44 mAb had a strong impact on the tumor proliferation contrary to anti-hCD45 mAb. The use of anti-hCD45 mAb allowed the detection of leukemic patient cells engrafted onto NOD/SCID mice. Conclusions A mAb labeled with a near infrared fluorochrome is useful to detect leukemic foci in disseminated models provided that its potential impact on tumor proliferation has been thoroughly documented.
Chemopreventive activity of Azadirachta indica on two‐stage skin carcinogenesis in murine model

The present study reports the chemopreventive activity of aqueous Azadirachta indica leaf extract (AAILE) in a murine two‐stage skin carcinogenesis model. Skin tumors were induced by topical application of 7,12‐dimethylbenz(a)anthracene (DMBA) (500 nmol/100 µL for 2 weeks) followed by 12‐O‐tetradecanoylphorbol‐13‐acetate (TPA) (1.7 nmol/100 µL of acetone, twice weekly) as a promoter. Male LACA mice were divided into four groups: control, DMBA/TPA, AAILE and AAILE + DMBA/TPA. AAILE was administered orally at a dose level of 300 mg/kg body weight thrice a week for 20 weeks. 100% tumor incidence was observed in the DMBA/TPA treated animals, whereas the AAILE + DMBA treated animals exhibited a tumor incidence of 58.3% only. A significant reduction in the mean tumor burden (54.5%) and mean tumor volume (45.6%) was observed in the mice that received AAILE along with DMBA/TPA. Topical application of DMBA/TPA to the skin resulted in well‐developed carcinomas associated with decreased expression of pro‐apoptotic protein such as caspase 3 and enhanced expression of antiapoptotic protein such as bcl‐2 when compared with the control counterparts. However, adminstration of AAILE inhibited skin carcinogenesis with induction of pro‐apoptotic proteins such as bax, caspase 3, caspase 9 and inhibition of antiapoptotic proteins such as bcl‐2. These results suggest that the induction of apoptosis may be one of the mechanisms underlying the chemopreventive effects of A. indica. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Deep visual-semantic alignments for generating image descriptions

We present a model that generates natural language descriptions of images and their regions. Our approach leverages datasets of images and their sentence descriptions to learn about the inter-modal correspondences between language and visual data. Our alignment model is based on a novel combination of Convolutional Neural Networks over image regions, bidirectional Recurrent Neural Networks over sentences, and a structured objective that aligns the two modalities through a multimodal embedding. We then describe a Multimodal Recurrent Neural Network architecture that uses the inferred alignments to learn to generate novel descriptions of image regions. We demonstrate that our alignment model produces state of the art results in retrieval experiments on Flickr8K, Flickr30K and MSCOCO datasets. We then show that the generated descriptions significantly outperform retrieval baselines on both full images and on a new dataset of region-level annotations.
Beyond the Cognitive Map: From Place Cells to Episodic Memory

There are currently two major theories about the role of the hippocampus, a distinctive structure in the back of the temporal lobe. One says that it stores a cognitive map, the other that it is a key locus for the temporary storage of episodic memories. A. David Redish takes the approach that understanding the role of the hippocampus in space will make it possible to address its role in less easily quantifiable areas such as memory. Basing his investigation on the study of rodent navigation -- one of the primary domains for understanding information processing in the brain -- he places the hippocampus in its anatomical context as part of a greater functional system. Redish draws on the extensive experimental and theoretical work of the last 100 years to paint a coherent picture of rodent navigation. His presentation encompasses multiple levels of analysis, from single-unit recording results to behavioral tasks to computational modeling. From this foundation, he proposes a novel understanding of the role of the hippocampus in rodents that can shed light on the role of the hippocampus in primates, explaining data from primate studies and human neurology. The book will be of interest not only to neuroscientists and psychologists, but also to researchers in computer science, robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.
A Report on the Size of Information Unit to Extract Contents on the Web Text

In this paper, we report that our proposed wordbased method for extracting the contents of a Web page seems the most effective. Users frequently want to find useful information on Web pages, and they normally utilize a search engine equipped with various methods to extract the contents of Web pages. In most cases, the contents are extracted at sentence level on the assumption that only one content can be extracted from any one sentence. However, this assumption does not always hold, because there are likely to arise some cases in which a sentence contains several contents, especially if the sentence is long. As a result, there is some possibility that users will not recognize the content of a Web page correctly by these methods. In our experiment using an evaluation measure based on recall and precision, we compared the content extraction methods based on sentences with those based on phrases and words.
Esposas, hijos e hijas en el mercado de trabajo de la Ciudad de México en 1995

The aim of this article is to explore the economic participation of wives, sons and daughters in maleheaded households in Mexico City in 1995. Through the use of logistic regressions, we sought to indicate the importance in the current situation of the variables traditionally used to explain the labor activity of various household members, such as age, educational achievement and marital status. We also attempted to demonstrate the relevance of considering variables from the familial demographic and socio-economic context in all social sectors. In particular, the influence of familial socio-economic variables (such as income level and the head of the household's participation in the labor market) has been studied more fully in the case of sectors with scant resources, and this article seeks to expand existing knowledge in this field on relatively wealthier groups. One of the most interesting results was obtained by studying the non-manual independent occupation of heads of household such as professionals, technicians, and established businessmen- since within this family context, a significant economic participation of wives and sons was observed, even when both individual factors and the income levels of the head of the household were controlled.
Adherence and Risk Behaviour in Patients with HIV Infection Receiving Antiretroviral Therapy in Bangkok

It could be postulated that due to lifestyle factors, patients with poor antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence may also have risky sexual behaviour potentially leading to HIV transmission. There are limited data regarding unprotected sex risk and ART adherence in resource limited settings and our study set out to investigate these in an HIV clinic in Bangkok. Patients completed an anonymous questionnaire regarding their relationship details, ART adherence, sexual behaviour, alcohol and drug use and HIV transmission beliefs. Laboratory findings and medical history were also collected. Unprotected sex risk (USR) was defined as inconsistent condom use with a partner of negative or unknown HIV status. Five hundred and twelve patients completed the questionnaire. Fifty seven per cent of patients reported having taken ARV >95% of the time in the last month and 58% had been sexually active in the previous 30 days. Only 27 patients (5%) were classified as having USR in our cohort. Multivariate analysis showed USR was associated with female gender (OR 2.9, 95% CI 1.2-7.0, p0.02) but not with adherence, age, type or number of partners, recreational drug or alcohol use nor beliefs about HIV transmission whilst taking ART. Levels of USR in this resource limited setting were reassuringly low and not associated with poor ART adherence; as all USR patients had undetectable viral loads onward HIV transmission risk is likely to be low but not negligible. Nonetheless condom negotiation techniques, particularly in women, may be useful in this group.
The Algebraic Immersed Interface and Boundary Method for Elliptic Equations with Jump Conditions

A new fictitious domain method, the algebraic immersed interface and boundary (AIIB) method, is presented for elliptic equations with immersed interface conditions. This method allows jump conditions on immersed interfaces to be discretized accurately. The main idea is to create auxiliary unknowns at existing grid locations which increases the degrees of freedom of the initial problem. These auxiliary unknowns allow to impose various constraints to the system on interfaces of complex shapes. For instance, the method is able to deal with immersed interfaces for elliptic equations with jump conditions on the solution or discontinuous coefficients with a second order of spatial accuracy. As the AIIB method acts on an algebraic level and only changes the problem matrix, no particular attention to the initial discretization is required. The method can be easily implemented in any structured grid code and can deal with immersed boundary problems too. Several validation problems are presented to demonstrate the interest and accuracy of the method.
PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CZECH AND SLOVAK MILK PRODUCERS

The paper deals with the analysis of productivity and efficiency differences between Czech and Slovak milk producers. The estimate of stochastic metafrontier multiple output distance function revealed that both Czech and Slovak milk producers highly exploit their production possibilities. On the other hand, productivity differences were pronounced. The Slovak regions were found being falling behind. Only the West Slovak regions can keep pace with competitors. The Central Bohemia and Moravian-Silesian regions are the most productive regions. We found that technical efficiency and management component are the most important factors determining the regional differences.
Measuring Instructor Effectiveness in Higher Education

Instructors are a chief input into the higher education production process, yet we know very little about their role in promoting student success. This is in contrast to elementary and secondary schooling, for which ample evidence suggests teacher quality is an important determinant of student achievement. Whether colleges could improve student and institutional performance by reallocating instructors or altering personnel policies hinges on the role of instructors in student success. In this paper we measure variation in postsecondary instructor effectiveness and estimate its relationship to overall and course-specific teaching experience. We explore this issue in the context of the University of Phoenix, a large for-profit university that offers both online and in-person courses in a wide array of fields and degree programs. We focus on instructors in the college algebra course that is required for all BA degree program students. We find substantial variation in student performance across instructors both in the current class and subsequent classes. Variation is larger for in-person classes, but is still substantial for online courses. Effectiveness grows modestly with course-specific teaching experience, but is unrelated to pay. Our results suggest that personnel policies for recruiting, developing, motivating, and retaining effective postsecondary instructors may be a key, yet underdeveloped, tool for improving institutional productivity.
Realising the Potential of Web 2.0 for Collaborative Learning Using Affordances

With the emergence of the Web 2.0 phenomena, technology-assisted social networking has become the norm. The potential of social software for collaborative learning purposes is clear, but as yet there is little evidence of realisation of the benefits. In this paper we consider Information and Communication Technology student attitudes to collaboration and via two case studies the extent to which they exploit the use of wikis for group collaboration. Even when directed to use a particular wiki designed for the type of project they are involved with, we found that groups utilized the wiki in different ways according to the affordances ascribed to the wiki. We propose that the integration of activity theory with an affordances perspective may lead to improved technology, specifically Web 2.0, assisted collaboration.