Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
‘Slimmed down’ assessment or increased accountability? Teachers, elections and UK government assessment policy

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government in power has implemented a range of reforms in relation to assessment at all stages of education in England. This paper focuses on two assessment reforms relating to children aged five and six years old, and considers their evolution from manifesto commitments to practice in classrooms. These reforms are the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check at age six, and the revised Early Years Foundation Stage Profile at age five. The main focus is on the coherence of these policies, both over time and as part of an overall government strategy on assessment in early years and primary education. It is argued that, despite claims of reducing bureaucracy, these assessment policies are driven by an agenda of increasing accountability in the first years of primary school.
Cooperative assessment in the hands on skills of computer networks subjects

The cooperative assessment system promotes teamwork, increases the mental practice and develops the social skills that are so necessary in the working life. In this paper we present the experiences and methodologies undertaken to assess the subjects “Local Area Networks” and “Networks Integration” of the Degree in Technical Engineering in Telecommunications of the Higher Polytechnic School of Gandia of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain. This courses attempt to stimulate the students' motivation and teamwork through various activities and to provide the appropriate training to safely resolve situations that may be happen in real life. This article shows the opinions of the students, their feedback and their marks. All these data will be used to improve the teaching methodology for the next year. Finally, we can say that the main aim of the courses has been achieved, because the survey results, the opinions of these students, and their marks have been very satisfactory.
Is linguistic ability variation in paired oral language testing problematic

This study looks at the real and perceived effects of inter-candidate variation in linguistic ability during pair-tested oral examinations in a southern Italian context. Pair testing has not been taken up in schools and universities in southern Italy despite its wide use in international testing systems. Colleagues and prospective candidates often report to teachers their belief that test results can be adversely or positively affected by candidate pairing. To investigate the existence and validity of these beliefs, a series of tests was devised consisting of paired oral tests and pre- and post-test questionnaires. It was found that while the great majority of candidates believed that their test scores could be, and in many cases had been, affected by their candidate pairing, no evidence came to light to support these beliefs. In fact the linguistic ability of a candidate�s partner appeared to have little or no effect on his or her performance.
Application of a Multitiered System of Support with English Language Learners

This study examined the effects of a phonological awareness (PA) intervention on the phonological and alphabetic principle skills of first-grade English language learners (ELLs). Nine first-grade classrooms in two large elementary schools were screened with DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) in the fall and winter. Sixteen ELLs were identified as at-risk readers based on the following selection criteria: (a) Spanish-speaking ELL with beginning or early intermediate English language proficiency, and (b) PSF and NWF scores below recommended cutoffs. The at-risk students received a PA intervention for 30 minutes, 5 days a week, for 11 weeks. The effect of the intervention was addressed by comparing the mean pre- and posttest scores of the students in intervention. Results revealed significant differences between preintervention scores and postintervention scores on both PSF and NWF. The second research question addressed mean and growth rate differences between ELLs in intervention and a nonintervention comparison group at the same schools. Group comparison results indicated the intervention students closed the gap in PA between themselves and typically performing peers as measured by a significant interaction and differences in growth rate (d = 1.22). There were no significant group differences on alphabetic principle.
Impact of Process Variations on Multicore Performance Symmetry

Multi-core architectures introduce a new granularity at which process variations may occur, yielding asymmetry among cores that were designed - and that software expects to be symmetric in performance. The chief source of this phenomenon are highly correlated, "systematic" within-die variations such as optical imperfections yielding variations across the exposure field. Per-core voltages can be used to bring all cores to the same performance level, but this compensation strategy also affects power, chiefly due to leakage power. Boosting a core's frequency may therefore boost its leakage sufficiently to engage thermal throttling. This sets up a tradeoff between static performance asymmetry due to frequency variation versus dynamic performance asymmetry due to thermal throttling. This paper explores the potential magnitude of these effects
Salient Object Detection with Higher Order Potentials and Learning Affinity

In this paper, we propose a novel graph-based salient object detection algorithm which exploits higher order potential to capture the cross-scale grouping cues instead of using multi-scale graph model or naive multi-scale fusion (i.e. individually compute a saliency result for each scale and then combine them). And, we investigate the importance of graph affinities in graph labeling. We take both local (spatial distribution) and nonlocal (feature distribution) priors into account and learn the pairwise similarity values in a semi-supervised manner, thereby obtaining a faithful graph affinity model. With the guidance of foreground and background seeds, salient object detection is formulated as a labeling inference problem. Extensive experiments on two large benchmark datasets demonstrate the proposed method performs well when against the state-of-the-art methods in terms of accuracy.
Effects of Exercise Training on Quality of Life, Psychological Well-Being, Immune Status, and Cardiopulmonary Fitness in an HIV-1 Positive Population

The present study was designed to examine the effects of a 16-week exercise intervention on several aspects of psychological and physical well-being in a sample of HIV-1 positive individuals. An exercise group (n = 19) was compared with a control group (n = 14) prior to and following the intervention on several outcome variables, including health related quality of life, psychological well-being (depression, anxiety, global symptoms), immune parameters, and cardiopulmonary parameters. The exercise group experienced a significant improvement in cardiopulmonary fitness, and health related quality of life improved significantly in that group relative to the control group. Psychological well-being improved similarly in both groups, however, while immune indices did not change in either group. Consistent with earlier studies, it is suggested that a moderate exercise intervention enhanced the health related quality of life in HIV-1 positive individuals.
Demonstration of specific high‐affinity Fcɛ‐receptors on the human basophil‐like leukemia cell line KU812 by flow cytometry

specificity of IgE binding to a human basophil‐like cell line (KU812) was studied by flow cytometry. Four IgE myeloma proteins, representing both light‐chain types, one chimeric IgE protein, and polyclonal serum IgE blocked the direct binding of FITC‐labeled IgE(DES) myeloma protein to KU812 cells in a dose‐dependent and nearly equimolar way. Although not as efficiently as human IgE (from five to eight times less on a molar basis), both rat and mouse IgE blocked IgE(DES)‐FITC binding to KU812 cells. In sharp contrast, all four human IgG subclasses, both IgA subclasses, and IgM myeloma proteins, as well as monomeric and heat‐aggregated polyclonal human IgG, were unable to block significantly IgE(DES)‐FITC binding to KU812 cells (≤0.5/0 on a molar basis). The cytophilic epitope on IgE was heat‐susceptible (56 °h), lost after reduction alkylation, and resident in the papain‐derived Fcɛ ‐fragment, but not in the papain‐derived F(ab') 2ɛ. ‐ and Fcɛ‐fragments nor in the pepsin‐derived F(ab')2ɛ‐ and Fcɛ. '‐fragments. Washing and displacement experiments indicated that a major part of IgE reacted with high affinity to KU812 cells. The results indicate that the binding of IgE to KU812 cells is highly specific and involves the classical high‐affinity FcɛRI‐receptor. Although the density of receptors is low, this human cell line offers a unique model to study IgE/FcɛRI interactions.
What the Future May Bring

The educational system is assumed to facilitate our full participation in society by laying the foundation for participatory rights and possibilities and at the same time strengthening civil society by fostering its individuals into democratic citizens. The question is what the future may bring if continuous economic cutbacks in the educational system lead to diminishing resources for the teaching of values of liberal democracy and multiculturalism. I try to answer this question by focusing on how xenophobia among Swedish teenage school adolescents is related to other values in the democratic system. The empirical data are drawn from a national sample comprising more than 6000 adolescents between 14 and 15 years of age. I conclude that willingness to participate actively in the democratic process through both political participation and other legal action relates negatively to xenophobia, whereas willingness to undertake acts of civil disobedience and mistrust in the political institutions relate positively to xenophobia. These findings raise the question of what the educational system should focus on in trying to combat racism and xenophobia and of what will happen in the future in times of diminishing resources.
Models of Non-Independence in Dyadic Research

In dyadic research, the responses of the two members of the dyad are likely to be non-independent. Statistical estimation for three different processes that bring about non-independence are presented. In each, a variable X influences Y. First, the X variable of one person may influence the Y variable of his or her partner. Second, the Y variables of the two people may directly influence each other. Third, the two X and Y scores may be indicators of couple-level factors.
Intrastrain Variants of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Isolated from a Neonate with Fatal Disseminated Infection Differ in the ICP34.5 Gene, Glycoprotein Processing, and Neuroinvasiveness

ABSTRACT Two intrastrain variants of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) were isolated from a newborn with fatal disseminated infection. A small-plaque-producing variant (SP7) was the predominant virus (>99%) in the brain, and a large-plaque-producing variant (LP5) was the predominant virus (>99%) in the lung and gastrointestinal tract. EcoRI and BamHI restriction fragment patterns indicated that SP7 and LP5 are related strains. The large-plaque variants produced plaques similar in size to those produced by HSV-1 KOS. Unlike LP5 or KOS, SP7 was highly cell associated and processing of glycoprotein C and glycoprotein D was limited to precursor forms in infected Vero cells. The large-plaque phenotype from KOS could be transferred into SP7 by cotransfection of plasmids containing the EK or JK EcoRI fragment or a 3-kb plasmid with the UL34.5 gene of HSV-1 KOS together with SP7 DNA. PCR analysis using primers from within the ICP34.5 gene indicated differences for SP7, LP5, and KOS. Sequencing data indicated two sets of deletions in the UL34.5 gene that distinguish SP7 from LP5. Both SP7 and LP5 variants were neurovirulent (lethal following intracranial inoculation of young BALB/c mice); however, the LP5 variant was much less able to cause lethal neuroinvasive disease (footpad inoculation) whereas KOS caused no disease. Passage of SP7 selected for viruses (SLP-5 and SLP-10) which were attenuated for lethal neuroinvasive disease, were not cell-associated, and differed in the UL34.5 gene. UL34.5 from SLP-5 or SLP-10 resembled that of KOS. These findings support a role for UL34.5 in promoting virus egress and for neuroinvasive disease.
Doing, Undoing, or Redoing Gender?

Drawing from the perspectives of transgender individuals, this article offers an empirical investigation of recent critiques of West and Zimmerman’s “doing gender” theory. This analysis uses 19 in-depth interviews with transpeople about their negotiation and management of gendered interactions at work to explore how their experiences potentially contribute to the doing, undoing, or redoing of gender in the workplace. I find that transpeople face unique challenges in making interactional sense of their sex, gender, and sex category and simultaneously engage in doing, undoing, and redoing gender in the process of managing these challenges. Consequently, I argue that their interactional gender accomplishments are not adequately captured under the rubric of “doing gender” and suggest instead that they be understood as “doing transgender. ” This article outlines the process of and consequences of “doing transgender” and its potential implications for the experience of and transformation of gender inequality at work.
Men with coronary artery disease have lower levels of androgens than men with normal coronary angiograms.

(e.g. a reduction of 0·26% coronary heart disease risk per 1 g . day 1 of arginine, P=0·53, adjusted for saturated fatty acids and smoking; additional adjustment for flavonols was hampered by multicollinearity). These results indicate that arginine is not clearly associated with coronary heart disease mortality at the population level. This is in agreement with our findings at the individual level. In both study designs, arginine intake was strongly associated with the intake of energy and other nutrients through its widespread presence in animal and vegetable foods. The potential impact of arginine is therefore difficult to disentangle. Additional observational studies, preferably in populations with a relatively high range of intake, and including e.g. biomarkers for arginine intake, should be carried out to confirm the hypothesis of a protective effect of arginine on coronary heart disease as suggested by recent human and animal experiments. E. J. M. FESKENS C. M. OOMEN E. HOGENDOORN A. MENOTTI D. KROMHOUT
Helical Nature of Sperm Swimming Affects the Fit of Fertilization-Kinetics Models to Empirical Data

Models of fertilization kinetics rely upon estimates of the swimming velocity of sperm to predict collision rates between egg and sperm. Most investigators measure sperm swimming velocity without accounting for the helical motion of sperm, thereby obtaining an inflated estimate of the velocity with which sperm approach eggs. In turn, models of fertilization predict inflated rates of sperm/egg collision. I observed sea urchin sperm colliding with eggs, quantified the rate of sperm/egg collision, and measured sperm velocity as a component of the helix through which they swim. I also adjusted the “target size” of eggs to reflect the diameter of the helix. My estimate of sperm swimming velocity is an order of magnitude lower than other estimates for the same species. By using helical parameters in fertilization kinetics models and accounting for dead sperm in laboratory trials, I was able to accurately predict lower rates of sperm/egg collision. Moreover, making these adjustments in the model increased the estimated proportion of sperm that initiate fertilization by 6- to 7-fold, suggesting that a better understanding of sperm swimming might lead to a more complete understanding of fertilization biology and natural selection on gamete traits.
Perceived teacher-student interpersonal relationships in Dutch multi-ethnic classes

Research on students' perceptions of the teacher-student interpersonal relationship in multi-ethnic classes is scarce in Europe. This study compares students' perceptions in multi-ethnic classes in The Netherlands with those in mainstream Dutch classes and investigates differences in perceptions between students with various ethnic backgrounds. Perceptions were mapped in terms of 2 dimensions: influence (the degree of teacher control) and proximity (the degree of cooperation between teacher and students). Data were collected from students in 114 multi-ethnic classes in Dutch secondary education. Results showed that teachers in multi-ethnic classes were perceived higher on influence and proximity compared to teachers in mainstream classes. Moreover, Moroccan students perceived their teachers as more dominant than students from other countries. Students with a Surinamese background perceived their teachers relatively high on the proximity dimension.
The Feedback Consistency Effect in Lexical Decision and Naming

Abstract Previous consistency research investigated inconsistency only in the mapping of spelling to phonology (feedforward inconsistency). The present experiments investigated whether inconsistency in the mapping of phonology to spelling (feedback inconsistency) would also affect visual word perception. In Experiment 1, we replicated the basic feedback consistency effect previously obtained by Stone, Vanhoy, and Van Orden (1997) in a lexical-decision task. Lexical-decision latencies and errors were increased when a word's phonological rhyme could be spelled in multiple ways. In Experiment 2, we showed that both feedforward and feedback consistency affected lexical-decision performance to the same extent. In Experiment 3, feedback consistency effects persisted in immediate naming, but they were smaller and less reliable than feedforward consistency effects. A portion of the feedforward consistency effects persisted in delayed naming. Our results suggest that a part of both feedforward and feedback consistency effects seem to be modulated by task specific properties (e.g., spelling check in lexical decision or ease of generating articulatory programs in naming). However, another part seems to uncover a task-independent basic principle underlying word perception: the bidirectional coupling of orthography and phonology.
Blood–brain barrier integrity, intrathecal immunoactivation, and neuronal injury in HIV

Objective: Although blood–brain barrier (BBB) impairment has been reported in HIV-infected individuals, characterization of this impairment has not been clearly defined. Methods: BBB integrity was measured by CSF/plasma albumin ratio in this cross-sectional study of 631 HIV-infected individuals and 71 controls. We also analyzed CSF and blood HIV RNA and neopterin, CSF leukocyte count, and neurofilament light chain protein (NFL) concentrations. The HIV-infected participants included untreated neuroasymptomatic patients, patients with untreated HIV-associated dementia (HAD), and participants on suppressive antiretroviral treatment (ART). Results: The albumin ratio was significantly increased in patients with HAD compared to all other groups. There were no significant differences between untreated neuroasymptomatic participants, treated participants, and controls. BBB integrity, however, correlated significantly with CSF leukocyte count, CSF HIV RNA, serum and CSF neopterin, and age in untreated neuroasymptomatic participants. In a multiple linear regression analysis, age, CSF neopterin, and CSF leukocyte count stood out as independent predictors of albumin ratio. A significant correlation was found between albumin ratio and CSF NFL in untreated neuroasymptomatic patients and in participants on ART. Albumin ratio, age, and CD4 cell count were confirmed as independent predictors of CSF NFL in multivariable analysis. Conclusions: BBB disruption was mainly found in patients with HAD, where BBB damage correlated with CNS immunoactivation. Albumin ratios also correlated with CSF inflammatory markers and NFL in untreated neuroasymptomatic participants. These findings give support to the association among BBB deterioration, intrathecal immunoactivation, and neuronal injury in untreated neuroasymptomatic HIV-infected individuals.
Multilingual awareness and heritage language education: children's multimodal representations of their multilingualism

In this article, we analyse visual narratives of multilingual children, in order to acknowledge their self-perception as multilingual selves. Through the analysis of drawings produced by children enrolled in Portuguese as heritage language (PHL) classes in Germany, we analyse how bi-/multilingual children perceive their multilingual repertoires and depict the relationship between the various multilingual and semiotic resources. The analysis describes five tendencies of representation of the multilingual self, covering diverse representations from juxtaposition to coordination of linguistic resources, and using several visual resources, such as flags and speech bubbles. The integrated analysis of children's linguistic and visual resources clarifies how they perceive their multilingualism and uncovers their multilingual awareness. We will (1) reflect on some pedagogical and political challenges that PHL classes in Germany face, regarding the enhancement of a deeper multilingual awareness; and (2) evaluate the data collection methodology, i.e. drawings as narratives about multilingualism or ‘multimodal translanguaging’, namely its validity and usefulness in order to understand children's perceptions about multilingualism and about their multilingual selves.
Standards of Good Practice in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Fuzzy-Sets

As a relatively new methodological tool, QCA is still a work in progress. Standards of good practice are needed in order to enhance the quality of its applications. We present a list from A to Z of twenty-six proposals regarding what a “good” QCAbased research entails, both with regard to QCA as a research approach and as an analytical technique. Our suggestions are subdivided into three categories: criteria referring to the research stages before, during, and after the analytical moment of data analysis. Th is listing can be read as a guideline for authors, reviewers, and readers of QCA.
Selectivity, sharing and competitive interactions in the regulation of Hoxb genes

The clustered organisation of Hox complexes is highly conserved in vertebrates and the reasons for this are believed to be linked with the regulatory mechanisms governing their expression. In analysis of the Hoxb4–Hoxb6 region of the HoxB complex we identified enhancers which lie in the intergenic region between Hoxb4 and Hoxb5, and which are capable of mediating the correct boundaries of neural and mesodermal expression for Hoxb5. We examined their regulatory properties in the context of the local genomic region spanning the two genes by transgenic analysis, in which each promoter was independently marked with a different reporter, to monitor simultaneously the relative transcriptional read‐outs from each gene. Our analysis revealed that within this intergenic region: (i) a limb and a neural enhancer selectively activate Hoxb4 as opposed to Hoxb5; (ii) a separate neural enhancer is able to activate both genes, but expression is dependent upon competition between the two promoters for the enhancer and is influenced by the local genomic context; (iii) mesodermal enhancer activities can be shared between the genes. We found similar types of regulatory interactions between Hoxb5 and Hoxb6. Together these results provide evidence for three separate general mechanisms: selectivity, competition and sharing, that control the balance of cis‐regulatory interactions necessary for generating the proper spatial and temporal patterns of Hox gene expression. We suggest that these mechanisms are part of a regulatory basis for maintenance of Hox organisation.