Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low gene flow but high genetic diversity in the threatened Mallorcan midwife toad Alytes muletensis

We investigated fine‐scale genetic structuring in the rare and vulnerable Mallorcan midwife toad Alytes muletensis using eight polymorphic microsatellite markers. The current range of this amphibian is restricted to some 19 sites of which six are derived from reintroductions, all located in the mountain ranges of Mallorca. We sampled tadpoles from 14 pools covering 10 natural sites and two reintroduction sites for microsatellite DNA analyses. Relatively high levels of genetic variation were found in most pools (HE = 0.38–0.71, allelic richness = 2.6–6.2). Only at one pool has the population recently gone through a bottleneck. Dispersal between pools in different torrents does not occur whereas downstream dispersal between pools within the same torrent does happen at low frequencies. This occasional exchange of individuals does not lead to neighbouring pools in the same torrent being panmictic. This can be concluded because all FST values (0.12–0.53) differ significantly from zero and structure analyses identified neighbouring pools as separate populations. Furthermore, assignment and migration tests showed little exchange between neighbouring pools. If upstream locations or complete torrents go extinct, they are unlikely to be recolonized naturally. For conservation purposes, reintroductions of tadpoles to sites where local extinctions have occurred may therefore be advisable.
Machine Learning Applied to Weather Forecasting

Weather forecasting has traditionally been done by physical models of the atmosphere, which are unstable to perturbations, and thus are inaccurate for large periods of time. Since machine learning techniques are more robust to perturbations, in this paper we explore their application to weather forecasting to potentially generate more accurate weather forecasts for large periods of time. The scope of this paper was restricted to forecasting the maximum temperature and the minimum temperature for seven days, given weather data for the past two days. A linear regression model and a variation on a functional regression model were used, with the latter able to capture trends in the weather. Both of our models were outperformed by professional weather forecasting services, although the discrepancy between our models and the professional ones diminished rapidly for forecasts of later days, and perhaps for even longer time scales our models could outperform professional ones. The linear regression model outperformed the functional regression model, suggesting that two days were too short for the latter to capture significant weather trends, and perhaps basing our forecasts on weather data for four or five days would allow the functional regression model to outperform the linear regression model.
Designing of Test Pattern Generators for stimulation of crosstalk faults in bus-type connections

The paper reveals a completely new and original structure of a Test Pattern Generator (TPG) dedicated for detection of crosstalk faults that may happen to bus-type connections between individual cores of a System on a Chip (SoC). The TPG is designed to generate either the MAFM (Maximum Aggressor Fault Model) sequence of test vectors or the XMAFM (eXtended Maximum Aggressor Fault Model) one, which guarantees that all possible crosstalk faults of the capacitive nature that may occur between individual lines of a digital bus are detectable. The study presents the synthesizable and parameterized (scalable) model of the mentioned TPG developed in the VHDL language. The proposed TPG structures feature with high working frequency and good scalability in terms of both the hardware overhead and length of the output test sequence. In addition, the TPG structure enables easy integration of the solution with Design for Testability solutions, such as a scan path, a wrapper designed in compliance with the IEEE 1500 standard or with the Built-in Self-Test circuits that might be already implemented in IP cores embedded in a SoC. In such a case the area overhead of the proposed structure never exceeds several dozens of equivalent gates, which is a negligible amount.
Examining the influence of teachers ' beliefs towards technology integration in classroom

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how the direct and indirect factors of the elaborated theory of planned behaviour (TPB) relate to teachers’ intentions and use of technology in teaching. Design/methodology/approach – The current study attempted to provide an understanding of teachers’ beliefs and intentions to use technology in teaching, and their influence on behaviours by applying and elaborating Ajzen’s TPB, a widely applied model for investigating social behaviour. Findings – The elaborated TPB model was found to be a marginally fitting model in predicting and explaining intention and behaviour. The model explained only 17 per cent of variance in intention and 13 per cent in use of technology. Teacher’s use of technology in teaching was predicted by intention and perceived behavioural control (PBC); and intention was predicted by attitude towards the technology and PBC. Subjective norms made weak prediction on intention. The TPB model of direct factors explained 25 per cent of varianc.
On the Performance of Device-to-Device Communications With Delay Constraint

Device-to-device (D2D) communication permits direct communication between devices, thereby it provides performance gain for traditional cellular networks. In this paper, we investigate how to improve the performance of D2D communication while satisfying the delay constraint for practical applications. Closed-form expressions are derived for trade-offs among system performance, such as successful transmission probability, transmission capacity, delay constraint, and energy consumption. In addition, two schemes are proposed to improve the performance for D2D communication under a given delay constraint. First, an optimal transmission scheme is proposed in which the transmission of user equipment (UE) can be scheduled adaptively to have the best successful transmission probability, whereas the D2D link satisfies the delay constraint. Second, a delay assignment scheme is proposed in which delay is adaptively assigned for each hop to achieve the maximum capacity when the network employs multihop D2D communication. Simulation results show that the adaptive transmission scheme improves the successful transmission probability (e.g., increased by 13 times when the source density is 10-4) compared with the fixed-probability transmission scheme, although it can satisfy the delay constraints for different applications. Furthermore, compared with the fixed delay assignment scheme, the network capacity can be improved up to 50% by the proposed scheme with proper delay assignment for each hop.
Inhibition of Protein Kinase C Restores Na+, K+‐ATPase Activity in Sciatic Nerve of Diabetic Mice

Abstract: We have tested if inhibition of protein kinase C is able to prevent and/or to restore the decrease of Na+, K+‐ATPase activity in the sciatic nerve of alloxan‐induced diabetic mice. Mice were made diabetic by subcutaneous injection of 200 mg of alloxan/kg of body weight. The activity of Na+, K+‐ATPase decreased rapidly (43% after 3 days) and slightly thereafter (58% at 11 days). We show that intraperitoneal injection of 1‐(5‐isoquinolinylsulfonyl)‐2‐methylpiperazine (H7), an inhibitor of protein kinase C, prevents completely the loss of Na+, K+‐ATPase activity produced by alloxan. Also, H7 injected into diabetic mice, 4–9 days after the injection of alloxan, restores the activity of the enzyme. The amount of activity recovered depends on the dose of H7 administered; complete recovery was reached with injection of 15 mg of H7/kg of body weight. The effect of H7 is transient, with a half‐life of ∼ 1 h.
Large-Scale Implementation of Check-In, Check-Out

Check-In, Check-Out (CICO) is one of the most widely implemented Tier 2 behavior interventions in a school-wide system of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Much literature has documented implementation of CICO across individual schools or districts. The Illinois PBIS Network, currently known as the Midwest PBIS Network, has provided extensive training and technical assistance (TA) on CICO with more than 400 schools in more than 125 districts. The purpose of this descriptive study was to detail the training process for implementation of CICO across 441 schools, evaluate student success based on Daily Progress Reports (DPRs), and document fidelity and implementation on a subset of 41 elementary and 13 middle schools. Results indicated more than 80% of students earned at least 80% of their DPR points, the majority of schools implemented CICO with more than 70% fidelity, and schools were able to support between 7% and 12% of student population on CICO. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are included.
Power at Play: Sport, Gender and Commercialisation

Sport is an important social activity in contemporary Irish society. We need only glance at the daily and weekly coverage given to sporting events in the print and visual media to appreciate its fundamental role. Its full significance, however, is not in its prevalence, but in the manner in which it imparts key social meanings about individual/group identity as well as about ways of living. In this chapter, I firstly look at the relationship between sport and gender, specifically the role of sport in the construction and reproduction of cultural conceptions of gender but also, how our ideological notions of gender structure sport. Evidence for this can be seen in rates of participation in sport; motivation for and, popularity of, sporting activities and; perceptions of sporting and physical activities as gender-appropriate. I then address the social and economic context in which sport exists, focusing in particular on the process of commercialisation and its impact on sport per se. In the final section, I focus on the interplay between cultural and economic factors by highlighting issues in the commercialisation of women’s sports. I conclude with some thoughts on the future of women’s sports in Ireland.
Priority based and secured traffic management system for emergency vehicle using IoT

Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) is one of the most recent research topics in the Internet of Things (IoT). The ever increasing number of vehicles in modern cities is creating heavy traffic congestion. To reduce the traffic congestion, a number of research have already been done to provide a clear pathway to the emergency vehicles in the urban area. However, they often fail to meet the target travel time of an emergency vehicle set by the Department of Treasury and Finances Budget and Financial Management Guidance (BFMG). To address this issue directly, an innovative ITS system considering the priorities of emergency vehicles based on the type of an incident and a method for detecting and responding to the hacking of traffic signals have been proposed in this paper. An experiment using a simulation software, namely Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) was conducted. The simulation results have exhibited superior performance of our proposed system over the currently operational and recently proposed ITS for emergency vehicles, in terms of both congestion avoidance and travel time. The response time attained by our scheme meets the target set by BFMG for both normal and hacked traffic signals.
MK3 Modulation Affects BMI1-Dependent and Independent Cell Cycle Check-Points

Although the MK3 gene was originally found deleted in some cancers, it is highly expressed in others. The relevance of MK3 for oncogenesis is currently not clear. We recently reported that MK3 controls ERK activity via a negative feedback mechanism. This prompted us to investigate a potential role for MK3 in cell proliferation. We here show that overexpression of MK3 induces a proliferative arrest in normal diploid human fibroblasts, characterized by enhanced expression of replication stress- and senescence-associated markers. Surprisingly, MK3 depletion evokes similar senescence characteristics in the fibroblast model. We previously identified MK3 as a binding partner of Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 (PRC1) proteins. In the current study we show that MK3 overexpression results in reduced cellular EZH2 levels and concomitant loss of epigenetic H3K27me3-marking and PRC1/chromatin-occupation at the CDKN2A/INK4A locus. In agreement with this, the PRC1 oncoprotein BMI1, but not the PCR2 protein EZH2, bypasses MK3-induced senescence in fibroblasts and suppresses P16INK4A expression. In contrast, BMI1 does not rescue the MK3 loss-of-function phenotype, suggesting the involvement of multiple different checkpoints in gain and loss of MK3 function. Notably, MK3 ablation enhances proliferation in two different cancer cells. Finally, the fibroblast model was used to evaluate the effect of potential tumorigenic MK3 driver-mutations on cell proliferation and M/SAPK signaling imbalance. Taken together, our findings support a role for MK3 in control of proliferation and replicative life-span, in part through concerted action with BMI1, and suggest that the effect of MK3 modulation or mutation on M/SAPK signaling and, ultimately, proliferation, is cell context-dependent.
A posteriori energy-norm error estimates for advection-diffusion equations approximated by weighted interior penalty methods

We propose and analyze a posteriori energy-norm error estimates for weighted interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin approximations to advection-diffusion-reaction equations with heterogeneous and anisotropic diffusion. The weights, which play a key role in the analysis, depend on the diffusion tensor and are used to formulate the consistency terms in the discontinuous Galerkin method. The error upper bounds, in which all the constants are specified, consist of three terms: a residual estimator which depends only on the elementwise fluctuation of the discrete solution residual, a diffusive flux estimator where the weights used in the method enter explicitly, and a non-conforming estimator which is nonzero because of the use of discontinuous finite element spaces. The three estimators can be bounded locally by the approximation error. For moderate advection, it is shown that full robustness with respect to diffusion heterogeneities is achieved owing to the specific design of the weights in the discontinuous Galerkin method, while diffusion anisotropies remain purely local and impact the constants through the square root of the condition number of the diffusion tensor. For dominant advection, it is shown, in the spirit of previous work by Verfurth on continuous finite elements, that the constants are bounded by the square root of the local Peclet number.
The impact of the National Essential Medicines Policy on prescribing behaviours in primary care facilities in Hubei province of China.

AIM To assess the impact of the National Essential Medicines Policy (NEMP) on the use of medicines in government-owned primary care institutions in Hubei province of China. STUDY DESIGN Quasi-experimental design and time-trend analysis. METHODS A systematic random sampling strategy was employed to select 55,800 prescriptions from 18 primary care organizations who progressively implemented the NEMP from January 2009 to July 2011. We examined the change of patterns of prescriptions. The facilities that implemented the NEMP at a later stage served as control. RESULTS An immediate increased uptake of essential medicines of all drugs prescribed which ultimately neared 95%. In total, 38,151 prescriptions (68%) involved antibiotics, and we found no evidence of reduction after the NEMP interventions. A high percentage (59-66%) of prescription drugs were administered through parenteral routes and no reduction was found after the NEMP interventions. Although the average number of medicines per prescription remained unchanged (nearly four), the average cost per prescription declined significantly after the NEMP interventions (¥ 44.67 vs ¥ 26.67 CNY, P < 0.03). CONCLUSIONS The NEMP interventions reduced the average cost per prescription; however, the irrational use of antibiotics and unnecessary parenteral administration remains prevalent. The goals of the NEMP are partially achieved; we therefore recommend a strategic approach involving all stakeholders to comprehensively achieve all aspirations.
Teacher professionalism and student evaluation of teaching: will better teachers receive higher ratings and will better students give higher ratings?

The use of student evaluations of teaching performance has been an important but controversial tool in the improvement of teaching quality during the past few decades. Although student evaluations of teaching are implemented in many faculties, not everyone is convinced of the desirability and utility of these ratings. In this paper, we present the results of a study with regard to the existence of a higher‐order factor that might influence students' perceptions of teaching and, thus, explain the variance in teacher rating scales. A second question concerns the effect of students' grades on teacher ratings and of other factors influencing this relationship (for instance, students' overall grades).
Seismic tomography using parameter-free Backus–Gilbert inversion

SUMMARY This proof-of-concept study presents a parameter-free, linear Backus–Gilbert inversion scheme, tractable for seismic tomography problems. It leads to efﬁcient computations of unbiased tomographic images, accompanied by meaningful resolution and uncertainty informations. Moreover, as there is no need to parameterize the model space in this parameter-free approach, it enables numerically accurate data sensitivity kernels to be effectively exploited in tomographic inversions. This is a major beneﬁt over discrete tomographic methods, for which data sensitivity kernels are often inaccurate, as they are projected on a given model parameterization prior to be exploited in the inversion, and these parameterizations are usually coarse to limit the number of parameters and keep tractable the problems of model estimation and/or appraisal. Therefore, this new tomographic scheme fuels great hopes on better constraining multi-scale seismic heterogeneities in the Earth’s interior by exploiting accurate data sensitivity kernels, i.e., taking full advantage of known wave-propagation physics, and enabling quantitative appraisals of tomographic features. As a remark, since its computational cost grows as a function of the total number of data squared, it may be better suited to handle moderate-size data sets, typically encountered in regional-scale tomography. Theoretical developments are illustrated within a ﬁnite-frequency physical framework. A set of 27 070 teleseismic S 2 wave time residuals is inverted, with focus on imaging and appraising shear-wave velocity anomalies lying in the mantle below Southeast Asia, in the 350–1410 km depth range.
Nephrotoxic Effect of Amphotericin B Administered in Different Doses and Infusion Mode in Dogs

Ceylan, E. , Akkan, H. A. , Tutuncu, M. , Z. Agaoglu: Nephrotoxic Effect of Amphotericin B Administered in Different Doses and Infusion Mode in Dogs. Acta Vet. Brno 2003, 72: 229-234. In this study, nephrotoxic effect of Amphotericin B (AmB) was investigated together with clinical, biochemical, and histopathological findings in dogs intoxicated with different doses and methods of administration. 18 healthy cross-bred dogs were allocated to three groups. Amphotericin B diluted with sterile water was used. Dogs in group A (n = 6) were treated with 0.5 mg/kg AmB in 25 ml 5% dextrose as a rapid bolus (4-5 min). Dogs in group B (n = 6) were treated with 1 mg/kg AmB in 50 ml 5% dextrose as a rapid bolus (4-5 min). Dogs in group C (n = 6) were treated with 2 mg/kg AmB in 1000 ml 5% dextrose as a slow infusion (4-5 h). Clinical, haematological and biochemical analyses were made in all dogs before the experiment as well as on the 5 th and 12 th days. Haematological and biochemical values recorded before the experiment were compared with those on the 5th and 12th day. After the third day of the experiment, vomiting, diarrhoea, anorexia, fever, phlebitis, irritability and tachycardia were recorded in all dogs (Groups A, B and C). However, the symptoms recognised were minimum in Group C, moderate in Group A and severe in Group B. There were differences in biochemical values among groups (p < 0.001). Group B was different from Group A and C in haematological parameters (p < 0.05). The most severe histopathologic changes were observed in Group B animals. These results suggest that the toxicity of AmB on kidney could be decreased when it is administered in a long period and more diluted form. Amphotericin B, nephrotoxicity, haematology, biochemistry, dog
The Neurophysiology of Reminiscence

When this stimulation of the hippocampal gyrus was carried out, the hippocampal formation and amygdaloid nucleus were still intact. But the rest of the anterior half of the temporal lobe had been removed. The fact that stimulation could still produce a flash-back of former experience would support the suggestion that comes from other evidence (Milner and Penfield, 1958) that the hippocampus of the two sides is, in fact, the repository of the ganglionic patterns that preserve the record of the stream of consciousness. If not the repository, then each hippocampus plays an important role in the mechanism of reactivation of that record (Penfield and Roberts, 1959, Speech and brain mechanisms. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
‘It was nothing to do with the university, it was just the people’: the role of social support in the first‐year experience of higher education

This article argues that to understand higher education student retention, equal emphasis needs to be placed on successful integration into the social world of the university as into the academic world. To date, sociological research reflecting first‐year students’ perceptions of the processes involved in developing social lives at university is scarce. Here the concept of ‘social support’ is used to analyse interviews with 34 first‐year students, investigating the processes through which social integration (or lack of it) influenced their decision as to whether or not to leave university. Our data support the claim that making compatible friends is essential to retention, and that students’ living arrangements are central to this process. Such friends provide direct emotional support, equivalent to family relationships, as well as buffering support in stressful situations. Course friendships and relationships with personal tutors are important but less significant, providing primarily instrumental, informational and appraisive support.
ASESMEN OTENTIK: IMPLEMENTASI DAN PERMASALAHANNYA DALAM PEMBELAJARAN BAHASA INGGRIS DI SEKOLAH MENENGAH

The aims of this research are to find out the teachers’ knowledge of authentic assessment,how to arrange the instruments of authentic assessment, how to implement authentic assessment, theconsideration of authentic assessment in deciding the final mark of the students, the problems faced bythe teachers. The subjects of the research are 10 teachers and 56 students of grade VII and VIII ofJunior High School A and B Padang. The data were collected through questionnaire, interview, anddocument analysis. The data were analyzed descriptively. The findings of the research are (1) theteachers’ knowledge about authentic assessment is good enough to implement authentic assessmentbased on the standard of authentic assessment; (2) teachers are able to arrange the instruments ofauthentic assessment, especially in speaking and writing, but because there were various kind of textto be assessed, teachers’ knowledge has to be increased; (3) the implementation of authenticassessment is not good enough in the process of learning, (4) teachers still need training andguidance book to implement authentic assessment in the learning process.