Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
What is to be done with curriculum and educational foundations' critical knowledges? Toward critical and decolonizing education sciences

ABSTRACT As editors of the special issue in Teaching Education titled What Is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers, our purpose with this conceptual essay is twofold. First, we historicize and characterize the critical knowledges deployed in this special issue as a broad array of criticalities. Second, we provide a reading of these criticalities that together we tentatively call critical and decolonizing education sciences. In our discussion and conclusion, we focus on the dual challenges of developing work in critical and decolonizing education sciences: (a) better historicizing academic work and (b) clearly responding to demands of institutional praxis.
Children's Attitudes, Knowledge and Behaviors Towards Animals.

This paper identifies some of the social, behavioral, and demographic factors that other research has suggested have demonstrated affects on young people's perceptions of the natural world. This review is by no means comprehensive and inadvertently some important studies have been omitted. We have, nevertheless, attempted to review a wide range of relevant investigations with some very useful results emerging. The focus of most research in this field has not been wildlife but attitudes toward other environmental issues, such as air and water pollution, over-population, recycling, and land use. Attitudes toward these issues seem to be
Local and Divergent Patterns of Technological Learning within (Partly) Globalized Markets. Is There Anything New? And What Can Policies Do about It?: A Concise Guide

In this work, we present an assessment of the nature and impact of current ``globalizing'' tendencies at various levels of observation. The evidence in this respect suggests that it has mostly concerned financial flows (especially short-term ones); to some extent trade flows; and only to very limited degrees, if any, the modes of access to new (and even 'old') technologies. A widely held prejudice is that 'globalization' goes hand in hand with international convergence in technological capabilities and incomes: in quite a few cases the opposite indeed holds. Conversely, such evidence powerfully hints at the continuing role of public policies in fostering the accumulation of technological knowledge and its economic exploitation. We suggest some taxonomies of the 'control' and 'state' variables which policies are likely to influence. Beyond the fading away wave of 'market fundamentalism' -we suggest- it is high time to pragmatically re-assess the role of markets as often powerful, but highly imperfect, mechanisms of decentralized search for and adaptation to technological and organizational novelties.
An experience of educational innovation for the collaborative learning in Software Engineering

This paper describes the experience in collaborative learning based educational innovation for the Software Engineering Subject at the Telecommunications Engineering School of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. We describe the context of evolution of the Software Engineering related subjects in the Master's degree in Telecommunications Engineering (specialization in Telematics) for their adaptation to the educational and organizational postulates of the European Space for Higher Education. In this context, we describe a pilot project for the adaptation of the Software Engineering Lab course, which includes the development and validation of a software engineering tool environment and a web platform for collaborative work.
Nested interpolants

In this paper, we explore the potential of the theory of nested words for partial correctness proofs of recursive programs. Our conceptual contribution is a simple framework that allows us to shine a new light on classical concepts such as Floyd/Hoare proofs and predicate abstraction in the context of recursive programs. Our technical contribution is an interpolant-based software model checking method for recursive programs. The method avoids the costly construction of the abstract transformer by constructing a nested word automaton from an inductive sequence of `nested interpolants' (i.e., interpolants for a nested word which represents an infeasible error trace).
Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities: the Role of Group Identity

The rapid growth of network access and the development of Web 2.0 have resulted in the popularity of virtual communities (VCs), such as Wikipedia, Facebook, professional forums and social network communities. The impact of VCs increasingly spreads over a broad range of fields, from social and educational to business. The content (i.e., knowledge) that VC members provide is the factor that determines the growth and survival of VCs. Previous studies have investigated the factors that influence knowledge-sharing behavior in the VC environment. Despite the fact that these studies have examined the same factors, their findings have been inconsistent. In this paper, we argue that group identity mediates the relationships between knowledge sharing and these factors. This study adopts social identity theory as a theoretical foundation and collects data from a popular virtual community in Taiwan. The results show that group identity indeed mediates the relationships between VC member knowledge sharing and both organizational commitment and organizational support.
Retrospective Forecasts of the Hurricane Season Using a Global Atmospheric Model Assuming Persistence of SST Anomalies

Abstract Retrospective predictions of seasonal hurricane activity in the Atlantic and east Pacific are generated using an atmospheric model with 50-km horizontal resolution by simply persisting sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies from June through the hurricane season. Using an ensemble of 5 realizations for each year between 1982 and 2008, the correlations of the model mean predictions with observations of basin-wide hurricane frequency are 0.69 in the North Atlantic and 0.58 in the east Pacific. In the North Atlantic, a significant part of the degradation in skill as compared to a model forced with observed SSTs during the hurricane season (correlation of 0.78) can be explained by the change from June through the hurricane season in one parameter, the difference between the SST in the main development region and the tropical mean SST. In fact, simple linear regression models with this one predictor perform nearly as well as the full dynamical model for basin-wide hurricane frequency in both the east.
Evolution of Cerebral Tumor Necrosis Factor-&agr; Production During Human Ischemic Stroke

Background and Purpose— Tumor necrosis factor-&agr; (TNF-&agr;) is detected in ischemic brain cells in experimental animal models and is believed to play an important role in apoptosis. However, the natural expression of TNF-&agr; during human stroke is not known. Methods— We examined TNF-&agr; immunohistochemistry and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase–mediated dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL) in brain samples of stroke victims (n=16) after variable survival (15 hours to 18 days). Systemic TNF-&agr; content from a separate cohort including severe or lethal stroke cases (n=26) was also assayed. Results— Neuronal TNF-&agr; was demonstrated from 0.6 to 5.4 days after the onset of stroke symptoms, peaking bilaterally during days 2 and 3. Bilateral glial TNF-&agr; immunoreactivity was detected during the acute phase, with the astrocytic TNF-&agr; expression dominating in later phases and persisting contralaterally to the infarct in more matured phases (17 to 18 days). Invading inflammatory cells were TNF-&agr; immunopositive beginning on the third day. Besides, vascular wall structures showed immunoreactivity sporadically. TNF-&agr; levels were mostly nondetectable in peripheral blood. TUNEL labeling and TNF-&agr; staining overlapped, although not completely, during the first days. Conclusions— The data support the hypothesis that TNF-&agr; may be involved both in the acute propagation of inflammatory processes and cell death and possibly in the more delayed reconstitutive processes of human ischemic stroke.
Modeling stimulus-response functions in the auditory system

In this paper we describe a novel approach to evaluate stimulus-response functions of neurons in the auditory system. This method can account for spectral and other features of acoustic stimuli, e.g. amplitude of sound envelope, sound direction, etc. This approach allows us to investigate the Importance of a diverse set of stimulus features for processing sounds by auditory neurons. It also allows for the design of stimulus-response filters based on neuronal receptive fields, i.e., "neurolets", which are described here as examples of potentially new sound processing methods inspired by neuronal processing.
Reaching the Second Tier--Learning and Teaching Styles in College Science Education.

In her recent study of college science instruction, Sheila Tobias [19] defines two tiers of entering college students, the first consisting of those who go on to earn science degrees and the second those who have the initial intention and the ability to do so but instead switch to nonscientific fields. The number of students in the second category might in fact be enough to prevent the shortfall of American scientists and engineers that has been widely forecast for the coming decade.
Rural Students with Low Incidence Disabilities: Recommended Practices for the Future

Serving students with low incidence disabilities incurs multiple challenges for rural school district personnel. In this article, a comprehensive statewide approach for implementing six recommended practices for students with low incidence and severe disabilities is described. Recommendations for future practice include the use of a system wide framework for disseminating promising practices along with effective collaboration and the use of new communication technologies.
Changing Frequency and Intensity of Rainfall Extremes over India from 1951 to 2003

Using a 1951-2003 gridded daily rainfall dataset for India, the authors assess trends in the intensity and frequency of exceedance of thresholds derived from the 90th and the 99th percentile of daily rainfall. A nonparametric method is used to test for monotonic trends at each location. A field significance test is also applied at the national level to assess whether the individual trends identified could occur by chance in an analysis of the large number of time series analyzed. Statistically significant increasing trends in extremes of rainfall are identified over many parts of India, consistent with the indications from climate change models and the hypothesis that the hydrological cycle will intensify as the planet warms. Specifically, for the exceedance of the 99th percentile of daily rainfall, all locations where a significant increasing trend in frequency of exceedance is identified also exhibit a significant trend in rainfall intensity. However, extreme precipitation frequency over many parts of India also appears to exhibit a decreasing trend, especially for the exceedance of the 90th percentile of daily rainfall. Predominantly increasing trends in the intensity of extreme rainfall are observed for both exceedance thresholds.
High-Resolution Magnetic Resonance Imaging Enhanced With Superparamagnetic Nanoparticles Measures Macrophage Burden in Atherosclerosis

Background— Macrophages contribute to the progression and acute complications of atherosclerosis. Macrophage imaging may serve as a biomarker to identify subclinical inflamed lesions, to predict future risk, and to aid in the assessment of novel therapies. Methods and Results— To test the hypothesis that nanoparticle-enhanced, high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can measure plaque macrophage accumulation, we used 3-T MRI with a macrophage-targeted superparamagnetic nanoparticle preparation (monocrystalline iron oxide nanoparticles-47 [MION-47]) in cholesterol-fed New Zealand White rabbits 6 months after balloon injury. In vivo MRI visualized thickened abdominal aortas on both T1- and T2-weighted spin-echo images (T1 spin echo, 20 axial slices per animal; T2 spin echo, 28 slices per animal). Seventy-two hours after MION-47 injection, aortas exhibited lower T2 signal intensity compared with before contrast imaging (signal intensity ratio, aortic wall/muscle: before, 1.44±0.26 versus after, 0.95±0.22; 164 slices; P<0.01), whereas T1 spin echo images showed no significant change. MRI on ex vivo specimens provided similar results. Histological studies colocalized iron accumulation with immunoreactive macrophages in atheromata. The magnitude of signal intensity reduction on T2 spin echo in vivo images further correlated with macrophage areas in situ (150 slices; r=0.73). Treatment with rosuvastatin for 3 months yielded diminished macrophage content (P<0.05) and reversed T2 signal intensity changes (P<0.005). Signal changes in rosuvastatin-treated rabbits correlated with reduced macrophage burden (r=0.73). In vitro validation studies showed concentration-dependent MION-47 uptake by human primary macrophages. Conclusion— The magnitude of T2 signal intensity reduction in high-resolution MRI after administration of superparamagnetic phagocytosable nanoparticles can assess macrophage burden in atheromata, providing a clinically translatable tool to identify inflamed plaques and to monitor therapy-mediated changes in plaque inflammation.
Deploy spontaneously: supporting end-users in building and enhancing a smart home

This paper explores system issues for involving end users in constructing and enhancing a smart home. In support of this involvement we present an infrastructure and a tangible deployment tool. Active participation of users is essential in a domestic environment as it offers simplicity, greater usercentric control, lower deployment costs and better support for personalization. Our proposed infrastructure provides the foundation for end user deployment utilizing a loosely coupled framework to represent an artefact and its augmented functionalities. Pervasive applications are built independently and are expressed as a collection of functional tasks. A runtime component, FedNet maps these tasks to corresponding service provider artefacts. The tangible deployment tool uses FedNet and allows end users to deploy and control artefacts and applications only by manipulating RFID cards. Primary advantages of our approach are two-fold. Firstly, it allows end users to deploy ubicomp systems easily in a Do-it-Yourself fashion. Secondly, it allows developers to write applications and to build augmented artefacts in a generic way regardless of the constraints of the target environment. We describe an implemented prototype and illustrate its feasibility in a real life deployment session by the end users. Our study shows that the end users might be involved in deploying future ubicomp systems if appropriate tools and supporting infrastructure are provided.
Teaching Math and Science to Language Minority Children: Implications for Teachers.

Factors influencing the learning of mathematics in the linguistically diverse classroom are examined, drawing on the literature of mathematics and science instruction and of multicultural education. Teachers are encouraged to be aware that several linguistic, cultural, and cognitive factors affect the learner's academic performance, and to use linguistically and culturally sensitive instructional methods and activities to ensure success in math. First, a rationale for multicultural math instruction is presented, and then the relationship between language and math is examined in terms of the specific needs of limited-English-proficient students. Finally, some pedagogical implications and recommendations for classroom activities are offered. The latter include word problems that encourage repetitive language use, concrete and sensory experiences, cooperative activities that encourage interpersonal contact and problem-solving, writing and rewriting math problems, and songs and rhymes. (MSE) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************
A progressive refinement approach for image magnification

The rapid growth in computer graphics and digital cameras has resulted in computer users being able to easily produce digital images. As a result, the need to display and print digital images has increased. Nowadays, high-resolution display and printing devices are available to users. Therefore, high-resolution images are needed in order to produce high quality displayed images and high quality prints. However, since high-re solution images are not usually provided, there is a need to magnify the original images. Previous methods on magnifying images have the disadvantage that either the sharpness of the edges cannot be preserved or that some distinct artifacts are produced in the magnified image. In this paper, we present a novel method for doubling the size of images in which the sharpness of the edges is preserved without introducing distinct artifacts in the magnified images. The proposed method consists of two steps, first generation of an initial magnified image and then progressively refining this image to produce a high quality magnified image. The experimental results show that with the proposed method it is possible to produce magnified images of comparable, and in some cases superior, visual quality to those produced using previous methods.
RNAi of FACE1 protease results in growth inhibition of human cells expressing lamin A: implications for Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome

FACE 1 is the endoprotease responsible for cleavage of prelamin A to lamin A. Transfection of HeLa cells with siRNA for human FACE 1 results in a strong phenotype. Protein and mRNA levels for FACE 1 are knocked down and cell division stops abruptly. Two populations of cells are detected. The first form aberrant mitotic spindles, arrest in mitosis and later enter apoptosis. The second show dramatic changes in nuclear morphology with extensive formation of lobulated nuclei and micronuclei. Using antibodies that specifically recognise prelamin A, but not lamin A, we show that prelamin A accumulates at the nuclear lamina in FACE1 silenced cells, whereas in control cells prelamin A is found in many small nuclear dots, but not at the nuclear lamina. In double knockdown experiments with FACE 1 and lamin A siRNAs, the results depend on which protein is knocked down first. FACE1 knockdown 24 hours prior to lamin A knockdown gives results similar to the single FACE1 knockdown. By contrast, lamin A knockdown 24 hours prior to FACE1 knockdown results in none of the changes described above. Silencing of FACE1 in HL60, a cell line that lacks lamin A, also has no effect. The combined results suggest that prelamin A is a poison in cells subjected to FACE 1 knockdown. Finally, we draw attention to similarities in phenotype between FACE1-silenced HeLa cells and fibroblasts from patients with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome containing prelamin A mutations that prevent cleavage by the FACE1 endoprotease.
Visualization of Evolving Status Epilepticus with Diffusion and Perfusion Mr Imaging Case Report Case Report

Since Kojewnikoff's first description of epilepsia partialis continua, isolated case reports and small case series have elucidated the disease. However, few imaging studies have been performed. We report a case in which serial diffusion and perfusion MR imaging allowed monitoring of the changes in hemodynamic and cell membrane permeability until the resolution of clinical and electrical epileptic activity. Epilepsia partialis continua (EPC) can be defined as a form of partial status epilepticus with simple motor manifestations that are maintained for over 1 hour. In EPC, clonic activity is restricted to one body part and recurs at fairly regular intervals (1, 2). In patients with status epilepticus, brain imaging studies have documented an array of accompanying alterations. Such studies have also allowed follow-up of the abnormal electrical activity, which is, at least in part, topographically correlated with the EEG epilep-tiform anomalies. Hemodynamic changes in focal seizures are characterized by ictal hyperperfusion and postictal hypoperfusion (3, 4). Transient ultrastruc-tural changes have been recently demonstrated with the use of diffusion MR imaging. These changes consist of the redistribution of intracellular and extracel-lular water, presumably due to an alteration in cell membrane permeability or cytotoxic edema or both (4 –7). Hemodynamic and ultrastructural changes in areas remote from the site of the primary epilepto-genic activity have also been reported in focal epilepsy. These changes consisting of areas with high blood flow or decreased apparent diffusion coefficients (ADCs) that are located in the cerebellar hemisphere contralateral to the cerebral areas involved (6, 8, 9). We report a case in which serial EEG and MR imaging studies allowed monitoring of the whole spectrum of hemodynamic, ultrastructural, and electrical changes in a woman with EPC until the clinical and electrical conditions resolved. Perturbation of the blood flow and the abnormal cellular water distribution were demonstrated, both in cortical areas and in the contralateral cerebellar hemisphere during the ictal phase. This change was followed by the reestab-lishment of near-normal perfusion and membrane-ion homeostasis. An 83-year-old woman was bedridden as a result of a 2-year history of osteoporosis. This patient was admitted at our hospital after a sudden onset of involuntary mouth movements on the left side that spread to the ipsilateral arm and leg. After unrevealing brain CT and EEG, which demonstrated abnormal electric activity, therapy with phenytoin was started. After the first event, the woman presented with seizures occurring every 5–10 minutes. The frequency of her seizures …
Exploring heterogeneous NoC-based MPSoCs: From FPGA to high-level modeling

This paper proposes a novel strategy for enabling dynamic task mapping on heterogeneous NoC-based MPSoC architectures. The solution considers three different platforms with different area constraints and applications with distinct efficient characteristics. We propose a solution that uses a unified model-based framework, which is calibrated according to area information obtained from FPGA synthesis. Besides, we present the performance of various applications running on different processors on FPGAs aiming to obtain application efficiency characteristics for calibrating the proposed high-level model. The paper also presents three different scenarios and discusses the reduction in terms of energy consumption as well as the end-to-end communication cost for different applications such as MPEG and ADPCM, among others multimedia benchmarks.
Discrete simulations of continuous-time query algorithms that are efficient with respect to queries , gates and space ∗

The continuous-time query model [3] can be thought of as a variant of the stardard query model, but where arbitrarily small λ-fractional queries to the data x1x2 . xN ∈ {0, 1} , of the form |j⟩ 7→ ej |j⟩, can be made at cost only λ. In the limit as λ→ 0, such algorithms become continuous-time Hamiltonian evolution processes. We show that any continuous-time quantum query algorithm whose total query time is T and whose driving Hamiltonian is implementable with G 1and 2-qubit gates (in a sense defined below) can be simulated by a discrete-query quantum algorithm using the following resources: