Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inviting Families into the Classroom: Learning From a Life in Teaching (Practitioner Inquiry Series)

Teachers need to read books by other teachers, yet there are few available on the important subject of parent-teacher relationships. Lynne Yermanock Strieb fills the gap with this engaging account of her 30-year career teaching children in urban classrooms. Drawing on an extensive archive of documents she kept as a first- and second-grade public school teacher in Philadelphia, Strieb captures the complexity and nuance of working with the families of her students. Readers experience how her teaching developed over time and gain access to the useful materials she created throughout her career, including a successful newsletter for parents. Her story also provides a unique example of practitioner research, showing how teachers can use a variety of data collected in the classroom to both enhance their own practice and to inform that of others.
Predictive risk algorithms in a population setting: an overview

Background The widespread use of risk algorithms in clinical medicine is testimony to how they have helped transform clinical decision-making. Risk algorithms have a similar but underdeveloped potential to support decision-making for population health. Objective To describe the role of predictive risk algorithms in a population setting. Methods First, predictive risk algorithms and how clinicians use them are described. Second, the population uses of risk algorithms are described, highlighting the strengths of risk algorithms for health planning. Lastly, the way in which predictive risk algorithms are developed is discussed briefly and a guide for algorithm assessment in population health presented. Conclusion For the past 20 years, absolute and baseline risk has been a cornerstone of population health planning. The most accurate and discriminating method to generate such estimates is the use of multivariable risk algorithms. Routinely collected data can be used to develop algorithms with characteristics that are well suited to health planning and such data are increasingly available. The widespread use of risk algorithms in clinical medicine is testimony to how they have helped transform clinical decision-making. Risk algorithms have a similar but underdeveloped potential to support decision-making for population health.
Image Processing using Approximate Data-path Units by Madhu Vasudevan A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science Approved November 2013 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Chaitali Chakrabarti, Chair

In this work, we present approximate adders and multipliers to reduce data-path complexity of specialized hardware for various image processing systems. These approximate circuits have a lower area, latency and power consumption compared to their accurate counterparts and produce fairly accurate results. We build upon the work on approximate adders and multipliers presented in [23] and [24]. First, we show how choice of algorithm and parallel adder design can be used to implement 2D Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) algorithm with good performance but low area. Our implementation of the 2D DCT has comparable PSNR performance with respect to the algorithm presented in [23] with ~35-50% reduction in area. Next, we use the approximate 2x2 multiplier presented in [24] to implement parallel approximate multipliers. We demonstrate that if some of the 2x2 multipliers in the design of the parallel multiplier are accurate, the accuracy of the multiplier improves significantly, especially when two large numbers are multiplied. We choose Gaussian FIR Filter and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithms to illustrate the efficacy of our proposed approximate multiplier. We show that application of the proposed approximate multiplier improves the PSNR performance of 32x32 FFT implementation by 4.7 dB compared to the implementation using the approximate multiplier described in [24]. We also implement a state-of-the-art image enlargement algorithm, namely Segment Adaptive Gradient Angle (SAGA) [29], in hardware. The algorithm is mapped to pipelined hardware blocks and we synthesized the design using 90 nm technology. We show that a 64x64 image can be processed in 496.48 μs when clocked at 100 MHz. The average PSNR performance of our implementation using accurate parallel adders and multipliers i is 31.33 dB and that using approximate parallel adders and multipliers is 30.86 dB, when evaluated against the original image. The PSNR performance of both designs is comparable to the performance of the double precision floating point MATLAB implementation of the algorithm.
Comparison of methods for the analysis of the parallel resonant converter with capacitive output filter

Several different approaches for the investigation of the steady-state properties of resonant converters have been published to date. In addition to solving the occurring equations in the time domain, which turns out to be quite cumbersome, the designer can make use of approximate approaches in the frequency domain. Two of these methods are compared to the exact solution with regard to their accuracy and mathematical complexity within this paper for the parallel loaded resonant LC converter with capacitive output filter. Some practical aspects are discussed by means of measured voltage conversion ratios.
Genetic Divergence and Evolutionary Instability inospE-Related Members of the Upstream Homology Box Gene Family in Borrelia burgdorferi Sensu Lato Complex Isolates

ABSTRACT A series of related genes that are flanked at their 5′ ends by a conserved upstream sequence element called the upstream homology box (UHB) have been identified in Borrelia burgdorferi. These genes have been referred to as the UHB or erp gene family. We previously demonstrated that among a limited number of B. burgdorferi isolates, the UHB gene family is variable in composition and organization. Prior to this report the UHB gene family in other species of the B. burgdorferi sensu lato complex had not been studied, and if this family is important in the pathogenesis or biology of the Lyme disease spirochetes, then a wide distribution among species and isolates of the B. burgdorferi sensu lato complex would be expected. To assess this, we screened for the UHB element by Southern hybridization and determined its restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns. The UHB element was found to be carried by all B. burgdorferi sensu lato complex species tested (B. burgdorferi, B. garinii, B. afzelii,B. japonica, B. valaisiana sp. nov., andB. andersonii), but the RFLP patterns varied widely at both the inter- and intraspecies levels. Variation in both the number and size of the hybridizing restriction fragments was evident. PCR analyses also revealed the presence of polymorphic, ospE-related alleles in many isolates. Sequence analyses identified the molecular basis of the polymorphisms as being primarily insertions and deletions. Sequence variation and the insertions and deletions were found to be clustered in two distinct domains (variable domains 1 and 2). In many isolates variable domain 1 is flanked by direct repeat elements, some as long as 38 bp. Computer analyses of the deduced amino acid sequences encoded within variable domain 1 predict them to be hydrophilic, surface exposed, and antigenic. The analyses conducted here suggest that the UHB gene family, as evidenced by the variable UHB RFLP patterns, is not evolutionarily stable and that the polymorphicospE alleles are derived from a common ancestral gene which has been modified through mutation or recombination events. The characterization of ospE-related genes of the UHB gene family among B. burgdorferi sensu lato species will prove important in attempts to construct a model for UHB gene family organization and in deciphering the role of the UHB gene family in the biology and pathogenesis of the Lyme disease spirochetes.
Unprecedented genomic diversity of RNA viruses in arthropods reveals the ancestry of negative-sense RNA viruses

Although arthropods are important viral vectors, the biodiversity of arthropod viruses, as well as the role that arthropods have played in viral origins and evolution, is unclear. Through RNA sequencing of 70 arthropod species we discovered 112 novel viruses that appear to be ancestral to much of the documented genetic diversity of negative-sense RNA viruses, a number of which are also present as endogenous genomic copies. With this greatly enriched diversity we revealed that arthropods contain viruses that fall basal to major virus groups, including the vertebrate-specific arenaviruses, filoviruses, hantaviruses, influenza viruses, lyssaviruses, and paramyxoviruses. We similarly documented a remarkable diversity of genome structures in arthropod viruses, including a putative circular form, that sheds new light on the evolution of genome organization. Hence, arthropods are a major reservoir of viral genetic diversity and have likely been central to viral evolution. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.05378. 001
Interleaved Group Convolutions for Deep Neural Networks

In this paper, we present a simple and modularized neural network architecture, named interleaved group convolutional neural networks (IGCNets). The main point lies in a novel building block, a pair of two successive interleaved group convolutions: primary group convolution and secondary group convolution. The two group convolutions are complementary: (i) the convolution on each partition in primary group convolution is a spatial convolution, while on each partition in secondary group convolution, the convolution is a point-wise convolution; (ii) the channels in the same secondary partition come from different primary partitions. We discuss one representative advantage: Wider than a regular convolution with the number of parameters and the computation complexity preserved. We also show that regular convolutions, group convolution with summation fusion, and the Xception block are special cases of interleaved group convolutions. Empirical results over standard benchmarks, CIFAR-$10$, CIFAR-$100$, SVHN and ImageNet demonstrate that our networks are more efficient in using parameters and computation complexity with similar or higher accuracy.
Pollution Problem in River Kabul: Accumulation Estimates of Heavy Metals in Native Fish Species

The contamination of aquatic systems with heavy metals is affecting the fish population and hence results in a decline of productivity rate. River Kabul is a transcountry river originating at Paghman province in Afghanistan and inters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan and it is the major source of irrigation and more than 54 fish species have been reported in the river. Present study aimed at the estimation of heavy metals load in the fish living in River Kabul. Heavy metals including chromium, nickel, copper, zinc, cadmium, and lead were determined through atomic absorption spectrophotometer after tissue digestion by adopting standard procedures. Concentrations of these metals were recorded in muscles and liver of five native fish species, namely, Wallago attu, Aorichthys seenghala, Cyprinus carpio, Labeo dyocheilus, and Ompok bimaculatus. The concentrations of chromium, nickel, copper, zinc, and lead were higher in both of the tissues, whereas the concentration of cadmium was comparatively low. However, the concentration of metals was exceeding the RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance of USA) limits. Hence, continuous fish consumption may create health problems for the consumers. The results of the present study are alarming and suggest implementing environmental laws and initiation of a biomonitoring program of the river.
Immunization of mice with viable Cocidioides immitis.

Mice which were vaccinated with a nonliving vaccine prepared from the mycelium-arthrospore phase of Coccidioides immitis survived challenge doses with a virulent strain administered intraperitoneally. However, the immunity was insufficient to protect the animals against similar challenge doses administered by the intranasal route. After vaccination with viable arthrospores obtained from strains of varying virulence, protection was provided against both intraperitoneal and intranasal challenge. Immunity evoked by the subcutaneous administration of a riboflavin-dependent auxotroph of very low virulence afforded protection against intranasally administered challenges of up to 200 arthrospores. The immune response was augmented by vaccinating the mice concurrently by both the subcutaneous and the intranasal routes. When the auxotroph was administered by the intranasal route exclusively, the extent of immunity afforded was, within limits, a function of dosage. The reversion of the auxotroph to prototrophy and virulence in vivo currently contraindicates its use in other than experimental studies.
Intrinsic Gain Modulation and Adaptive Neural Coding

In many cases, the computation of a neural system can be reduced to a receptive field, or a set of linear filters, and a thresholding function, or gain curve, which determines the firing probability; this is known as a linear/nonlinear model. In some forms of sensory adaptation, these linear filters and gain curve adjust very rapidly to changes in the variance of a randomly varying driving input. An apparently similar but previously unrelated issue is the observation of gain control by background noise in cortical neurons: the slope of the firing rate versus current (f-I) curve changes with the variance of background random input. Here, we show a direct correspondence between these two observations by relating variance-dependent changes in the gain of f-I curves to characteristics of the changing empirical linear/nonlinear model obtained by sampling. In the case that the underlying system is fixed, we derive relationships relating the change of the gain with respect to both mean and variance with the receptive fields derived from reverse correlation on a white noise stimulus. Using two conductance-based model neurons that display distinct gain modulation properties through a simple change in parameters, we show that coding properties of both these models quantitatively satisfy the predicted relationships. Our results describe how both variance-dependent gain modulation and adaptive neural computation result from intrinsic nonlinearity.
The attitudes of clergy in Benin City, Nigeria towards persons with mental illness.

OBJECTIVE The clergy in sub-Saharan Africa play a major role in the care and pathways to orthodox mental health services of the mentally ill. Their attitudes concerning mental illnesses would influence community mental health intervention efforts. This study aimed to determine the attitudes of clergy towards persons with mental illness. METHOD A cross-sectional survey of clergy (n = 107) of the Christian and Muslim faiths was conducted, using a socio-demographic questionnaire and the 40- item Community Attitudes towards Mental Illness (CAMI) scale. RESULTS Stigmatizing attitudes were evident among members of the clergy surveyed. Most (71.1%) believed the mentally ill were different from other persons, while 68.2% were of the opinion that the mentally ill should be controlled like children. Over 80% of respondents were not comfortable with the idea of the mentally ill living in their vicinity and wanted mental health hospitals situated out of residential areas. Almost half of respondents (45.8%) were uncomfortable with women who were once mentally ill baby-sitting and 63.2% agreed that our mental hospitals seem more like prisons than where the mentally ill can be cared for. CONCLUSION Negative attitudes towards the mentally ill were widespread among the clergy sampled. Mental health professionals need to take proactive steps to improve the mental health knowledge of the clergy which may facilitate their roles in the pathway to mental health care.
The Power of Linear Reconstruction Attacks

We consider the power of linear reconstruction attacks in statistical data privacy, showing that they can be applied to a much wider range of settings than previously understood. Linear attacks have been studied before (Dinur and Nissim PODS'03, Dwork, McSherry and Talwar STOC'07, Kasiviswanathan, Rudelson, Smith and Ullman STOC'10, De TCC'12, Muthukrishnan and Nikolov STOC'12) but have so far been applied only in settings with releases that are obviously linear. Consider a database curator who manages a database of sensitive information but wants to release statistics about how a sensitive attribute (say, disease) in the database relates to some nonsensitive attributes (e.g., postal code, age, gender, etc). We show one can mount linear reconstruction attacks based on any release that gives: a) the fraction of records that satisfy a given non-degenerate boolean function. Such releases include contingency tables (previously studied by Kasiviswanathan et al., STOC'10) as well as more complex outputs like the error rate of classifiers such as decision trees; b) any one of a large class of M-estimators (that is, the output of empirical risk minimization algorithms), including the standard estimators for linear and logistic regression. We make two contributions: first, we show how these types of releases can be transformed into a linear format, making them amenable to existing polynomial-time reconstruction algorithms. This is already perhaps surprising, since many of the above releases (like M-estimators) are obtained by solving highly nonlinear formulations. Second, we show how to analyze the resulting attacks under various distributional assumptions on the data. Specifically, we consider a setting in which the same statistic (either a) or b) above) is released about how the sensitive attribute relates to all subsets of size k (out of a total of d) nonsensitive boolean attributes.
Increased voluntary drive is associated with changes in common oscillations from 13 to 60 Hz of interference but not rectified electromyography

The purpose of this study was to compare the capability of interference and rectified electromyography (EMG) to detect changes in the beta (13–30‐HZ) and Piper (30–60‐HZ) bands when voluntary force is increased. Twenty adults exerted a constant force abduction of the index finger at 15% and 50% of maximum. The common oscillations at various frequency bands (0–500 HZ) were estimated from the first dorsal interosseous muscle using cross wavelets of interference and rectified EMG. For the interference EMG signals, normalized power significantly (P < 0.01) increased with force in the beta (9.0 ± 0.9 vs. 15.5 ± 2.1%) and Piper (13.6 ± 0.9 vs. 21 ± 1.7%) bands. For rectified EMG signals, however, the beta and Piper bands remained unchanged (P > 0.4). Although rectified EMG is used in many clinical studies to identify changes in the oscillatory drive to the muscle, our findings suggest that only interference EMG can accurately capture the increase in oscillatory drive from 13 to 60 HZ with voluntary force. Muscle Nerve, 2010
BABELOMICS: a suite of web tools for functional annotation and analysis of groups of genes in high-throughput experiments

We present Babelomics, a complete suite of web tools for the functional analysis of groups of genes in high-throughput experiments, which includes the use of information on Gene Ontology terms, interpro motifs, KEGG pathways, Swiss-Prot keywords, analysis of predicted transcription factor binding sites, chromosomal positions and presence in tissues with determined histological characteristics, through five integrated modules: FatiGO (fast assignment and transference of information), FatiWise, transcription factor association test, GenomeGO and tissues mining tool, respectively. Additionally, another module, FatiScan, provides a new procedure that integrates biological information in combination with experimental results in order to find groups of genes with modest but coordinate significant differential behaviour. FatiScan is highly sensitive and is capable of finding significant asymmetries in the distribution of genes of common function across a list of ordered genes even if these asymmetries were not extreme. The strong multiple-testing nature of the contrasts made by the tools is taken into account. All the tools are integrated in the gene expression analysis package GEPAS. Babelomics is the natural evolution of our tool FatiGO (which analysed almost 22 000 experiments during the last year) to include more sources on information and new modes of using it. Babelomics can be found at .
MORAL HAZARD AND PRICES IN ARGENTINA'S HEALTH MARKETS

This paper empirically studies two issues in health insurance provision for wage and salary workers in Argentina and their utilization of health services: (1) the moral hazard problem; and (2) the role of prices in utilization. I examine the relationship between insurance and utilization both by estimating how insurance type affects utilization and by parameterizing characteristics of seven major Obras Sociales (social insurance organizations) using out-of-pocket expenditures. Results from two-part count data models of utilization show that social and private insurance matter in the decision of contacting physicians and hospital services but not in the frequency choice. Evidence that could be interpreted as supply-induced demand for physician
Analysis of the AC-contactor electrical behavior under voltage dips

This paper proposes a study of the AC contactor coil responses under voltage dips with different magnitude and duration. Existing standards and previously published work are reviewed and related to the obtained results, and a detailed description of the testing procedure is presented. Considering few previous contributions have been reported on the AC contactor electrical behavior under voltage dips, the main contribution of this work is focused on identifying from the experiments performed the presence of a relevant scatter-band where the sensitivity of contactors in the presence voltage dips responds to stochastic issues.