Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
English Language Learners and Academic Achievement: Revisiting the Threshold Hypothesis

This nonexperimental study explored the predictive strength of English proficiency levels on academic achievement of middle school students in a sample of 17,470 native English-speaking (NES) students, 558 English language learners (current ELLs), and 500 redesignated fluent English proficient students (former ELLs). Results of multilevel analyses indicated that after controlling for relevant student- and school-level characteristics, former ELLs significantly outperformed current ELL and NES students in reading (effect sizes: 1.07 and 0.52) and mathematics (effect sizes: 0.86 and 0.42). The results support Cummins's (1979, 2000) lower level threshold hypothesis predicting that upon reaching adequate proficiency in the language of schooling and testing, ELLs would no longer experience academic disadvantages. Refinements for the theory and directions for future research are discussed.
Borrelia burgdorferi Complement Regulator-Acquiring Surface Protein 2 Does Not Contribute to Complement Resistance or Host Infectivity

Borrelia burgdorferi, the pathogen of Lyme disease, cycles in nature through Ixodes ticks and mammalian hosts. At least five Complement Regulator-Acquiring Surface Proteins (BbCRASPs) are produced by B. burgdorferi, which are thought to assist spirochetes in host immune evasion. Recent studies established that BbCRASP-2 is preferentially expressed in mammals, and elicits robust antibody response in infected hosts, including humans. We show that BbCRASP-2 is ubiquitously expressed in diverse murine tissues, but not in ticks, reinforcing a role of BbCRASP-2 in conferring B. burgdorferi defense against persistent host immune threats, such as complement. BbCRASP-2 immunization, however, fails to protect mice from B. burgdorferi infection and does not modify disease, as reflected by the development of arthritis. An infectious BbCRASP-2 mutant was generated, therefore, to examine the precise role of the gene product in spirochete infectivity. Similar to wild type B. burgdorferi, BbCRASP-2 mutants remain insensitive to complement-mediated killing in vitro, retain full murine infectivity and induce arthritis. Quantitative RT-PCR assessment indicates that survivability of BbCRASP-2-deficient B. burgdorferi is not due to altered expression of other BbCRASPs. Together, these results suggest that the function of a selectively expressed B. burgdorferi gene, BbCRASP-2, is not essential for complement resistance or infectivity in the murine host.
Dissolved O2/Ar and other methods reveal rapid changes in productivity during a Lagrangian experiment in the Southern Ocean

[1] We use continuous and discrete measurements of the dissolved O2/Ar ratio in the mixed layer to investigate the dynamics of biological productivity during the Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment in March and April 2008. Injections of SF6 defined two water masses (patches) that were followed for up to 2 weeks. In the first patch, dissolved O2/Ar was supersaturated, indicating net biological production of organic carbon. In the second patch, rapidly decreasing O2/Ar could only be reasonably explained if the mixed layer was experiencing a period of net heterotrophy. The observations rule out dominant contributions from vertical mixing, lateral dilution, or respiration in the ship's underway seawater supply lines. We also compare nine different estimates of net community, new, primary, or gross production made during the experiment. Net community and new production estimates agreed well in the first patch but disagreed in the second patch, both during an initial net heterotrophic period but also during the apparently autotrophic period at the end of the observations. Rapidly changing productivity during the second patch complicated the comparison of methods that integrate over daily and several week timescales. Primary productivity values from on-deck 24 h 14C incubations and gross carbon production values from photosynthesis-irradiance experiments were nearly identical even during highly dynamic periods of net heterotrophy, while gross oxygen production measurements were 3.5–4.2 times higher but with uncertainties in that ratio near ±2. These comparisons show that the photosynthesis-irradiance experiments based on 1–2 h 14C incubations underestimated gross carbon production.
Isolation room exhaust fan noise in a hospital

Healthcare facilities with airborne infection isolation rooms for patients will often use a central building exhaust system dedicated to maintain constant negative air pressure in each isolation room to reduce the spread of airborne infectious diseases from the patient to the rest of the hospital. Such isolation exhaust systems often use a redundant two-fan system to assure that at least one fan stays on while the other fan is shut down for maintenance or failure. This paper presents a case study of one hospital’s rooftop isolation exhaust two-fan system that produced excessive noise in patient areas located below. Several decisions in building design contributed to the noisy conditions, including equipment location, mechanical shaft size, and exhaust duct sizes and paths. In addition, variable frequency drive settings for the primary and backup exhaust fans contributed to noise produced. Indoor noise was reduced significantly using a combination of equipment drive settings along with insulated duct lagging enclosure. Comparative charts of noise and vibration levels will be presented to show criteria and facility performance before and after corrections, along with diagrams, photos and illustrations of noise control measures used. Theoretically predicted noise spectrum results using basic algorithms are compared with measured data.
Work Engagement and Career

Work engagement is currently one of the most studied topics in organizational science. Moreover, from the various performance-based perspectives of human resource development (HRD), work engagement is closely tied to employees’ career. However, although research on work engagement and career has been conducted, more research is necessary to understand these concepts and investigate their relationship given their positive influences on organizations. More specifically, a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between work engagement and career that draws on the extant literature is both relevant to and beneficial for HRD professionals seeking to design and implement career-related strategies to enhance individual employees’ levels of work engagement. Thus, this study aims to examine the relationship between work engagement and career, ultimately synthesizing current studies into an integrated framework that describes the work engagement–career relationship and suggests future research agendas.
Neural Relation Extraction with Multi-lingual Attention

Relation extraction has been widely used for finding unknown relational facts from plain text. Most existing methods focus on exploiting mono-lingual data for relation extraction, ignoring massive information from the texts in various languages. To address this issue, we introduce a multi-lingual neural relation extraction framework, which employs mono-lingual attention to utilize the information within mono-lingual texts and further proposes cross-lingual attention to consider the information consistency and complementarity among cross-lingual texts. Experimental results on real-world datasets show that, our model can take advantage of multi-lingual texts and consistently achieve significant improvements on relation extraction as compared with baselines.
Predicting Treatment Costs After Acute Ischemic Stroke on the Basis of Patient Characteristics at Presentation and Early Dysfunction

Background— Given the pressure on healthcare budgets, assessing the cost of managing a disease has become a major research focus; yet collection of these data are labor intensive and difficult. Understanding the predictors of cost provides an efficient means of incorporating such information in decision-making concerning new therapies. Methods— Data from two 12-week multinational trials that collected information on a variety of neurological, functional, and cost parameters for 1341 ischemic stroke patients were examined by means of multiple linear regression. Because the intent is for the model to be predictive, only patient characteristics that can be known at the time of patient presentation or shortly thereafter were evaluated for inclusion in the model. Results— The Barthel Index was the strongest predictor of cost in all models evaluated. Other major predictors, either directly or through their impact on survival, were stroke subtype, neurological impairment, congestive heart failure, and country. A good model fit was obtained, judging by the model statistics (model F =84, 3 df, P <0.0001) and the accuracy of the predictions (<3% difference between mean actual and predicted cost). Conclusions— Through the use of key patient characteristics, this regression model allows for prediction of the cost of stroke care, which may be helpful in the context of therapeutic decisions and budgetary planning purposes. It also provides insight into how specific treatments, through their impact on clinical characteristics, can modify the cost of stroke treatment.
A Critical Incident Technique Study of the Facilitation of Gang Entry: Perspectives of Indigenous Men Ex-Gang Members

ABSTRACT The aim of the study was to describe incidents that facilitated gang entry among 10 Indigenous men who survived and exited from gang life in Canada’s Prairies. The critical incident technique was applied as participants responded to this question: What facilitated gang entry for you? A total of 103 incidents that facilitated gang entry for participants were sorted into 13 distinct categories. These events led to a progression of gang activity where the gang lifestyle provided validation, provided a site for dedication and learning, and generated traumatic consequences for participants’ actions. Qualitative textual data vignettes, counseling, and research recommendations are provided.
Balancing Enthusiasm for Innovative Technologies with Optimizing Value: An Approach to Adopt New Laboratory Tests for Infectious Diseases Using Bloodstream Infections as Exemplar

A number of exciting new technologies have emerged to detect infectious diseases with greater accuracy and provide faster times to result in hopes of improving the provision of care and patient outcomes. However, the challenge in evaluating new methods lies not in the technical performance of tests but in (1) defining the specific advantages of new methods over the present gold standards in a practicable way and (2) understanding how advanced technologies will prompt changes in medical and public health decisions. With rising costs to deliver care, enthusiasm for innovative technologies should be balanced with a comprehensive understanding of clinical and laboratory ecosystems and how such factors influence the success or failure of test implementation. Selecting bloodstream infections as an exemplar, we provide a 6-step model for test adoption that will help clinicians and laboratorians better define the value of a new technology specific to their clinical practices.
Enrollee appeals of preservice coverage denials at 2 Health Maintenance Organizations.

CONTEXT Congress and state legislatures are considering patient bills of rights that seek to strengthen opportunities for patients to have denials of coverage reconsidered by their health plans. Little is publicly known about such appeals systems. OBJECTIVE To improve understanding of the sources, types, and outcomes of conflicts between patients and managed care organizations over coverage of services. DESIGN AND SETTING Descriptive study of information abstracted from 1774 preservice appeals out of a larger stratified random sample of 3519 appeals lodged between January 1998 and June 2000 at 2 large US health maintenance organizations. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Classification of preservice appeals according to whether they contested access to out-of-network care, the contractual limits of coverage, or the medical necessity of services; analysis of contractual coverage and medical necessity appeals by the services in dispute and out-of-network appeals by enrollees' reasons for seeking care; and comparison of the proportions of appeals won by enrollees across types of appeals and services. RESULTS Approximately one third (36.9%) of preservice appeals involved medical necessity determinations, another third (36.6%) centered on the scope of contractually covered benefits, and most of the remainder (19.7%) involved out-of-network care. Enrollee wins were significantly more frequent among medical necessity appeals than out-of-network or contractual coverage appeals (52.2% vs 35.4% and 33.2%, respectively; P<.001). Appeals were concentrated among relatively few services and among therapies that are generally regarded as nonessential. CONCLUSIONS A majority of preservice appeals disputed choice of provider or contractual coverage issues, rather than medical necessity. Medical necessity disputes proliferate not around life-saving treatments but in areas of societal uncertainty about the legitimate boundaries of insurance coverage. Greater transparency about the coverage status of specific services, through more precise contractual language and consumer education about benefits limitations, may help to avoid a large proportion of disputes in managed care.
A playback attack detector for speaker verification systems

A playback attack detector (PAD), which can be mobilized in guarding speaker verification systems against playback attacks, is described in this paper. To detect playback attacks, the PAD uses a feature set called peakmap, which includes the frame and FFT bin numbers of the five highest spectral peaks from each of the voiced frames in an utterance. During the detection, the peakmap of the incoming recording is first extracted and then compared to those of all the other recordings that are stored at the system end. Each comparison will yield a similarity score that represents the level of similarity between the two recordings. The incoming recording is declared to be a playback recording if its maximum similarity score is above a threshold.
Work-aged stroke survivors’ psychosocial challenges and follow-up needs. A qualitative exploratory study

Background: Extensive studies have documented the complex and comprehensive psychosocial consequences of stroke. Psychosocial difficulties significantly affect long-term functioning and quality of life. Many studies have explored psychosocial interventions to prevent or treat psychosocial problems, but most have found modest effects. This study evaluated, from the perspective of adult stroke survivors, (1) the content, structure and process and (2) experienced usefulness of a dialogue-based psychosocial nursing intervention in primary care aimed at promoting psychosocial health and wellbeing. Methods: This was part of a feasibility study guided by the UK MRC complex interventions framework. It consisted of dialogue-based encounters with trained health professionals during approximately the first year poststroke. It was tested in two formats; individual or group encounters. Inclusion criteria were: Acute stroke, above 18 y.o. , sufficient physical and cognitive functioning to participate. Data were collected immediately before, during and 14 days after the completion of the intervention. Preand post-data included medical and demographic data, quality of life, emotional wellbeing, life satisfaction, anxiety and depression. Qualitative interviews focusing on participant experiences were conducted two weeks following the intervention. Log notes taken by the health professionals conducting the intervention and work sheets filled in by participants also comprised data. Data analysis was case-oriented. The structured instruments were analysed regarding completeness of data and indication of changes in outcome variables. The qualitative interviews, log notes and work sheets were analysed using thematic content analysis. Results: Twenty-five stroke survivors (17 men, 8 women), median age 64 (range 33–89), participated. Physical limitations varied from mild to severe. Seven participants had moderate to severe expressive aphasia. The participants found the content and process of the intervention relevant. Both the individual and group formats were found useful. Patients with aphasia reported that there were too few encounters (eight encounters were originally planned). The participants underscored the benefits of being supported through a difficult time, having a chance to tell and (re)create their story and being supported in their attempts to cope with the situation. Conclusions: This study provides initial support for the usefulness of the psychosocial intervention and highlights areas requiring further consideration and development. Trial registration number: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01912014
Seasonal reproductive tactics: annual timing and the capital-to-income breeder continuum

Tactics of resource use for reproduction are an important feature of life-history strategies. A distinction is made between ‘capital’ breeders, which finance reproduction using stored energy, and ‘income’ breeders, which pay for reproduction using concurrent energy intake. In reality, vertebrates use a continuum of capital-to-income tactics, and, for many species, the allocation of capital towards reproduction is a plastic trait. Here, we review how trophic interactions and the timing of life-history events are influenced by tactics of resource use in birds and mammals. We first examine how plasticity in the allocation of capital towards reproduction is linked to phenological flexibility via interactions between endocrine/neuroendocrine control systems and the sensory circuits that detect changes in endogenous state, and environmental cues. We then describe the ecological drivers of reproductive timing in species that vary in the degree to which they finance reproduction using capital. Capital can be used either as a mechanism to facilitate temporal synchrony between energy supply and demand or as a means of lessening the need for synchrony. Within many species, an individual's ability to cope with environmental change may be more tightly linked to plasticity in resource allocation than to absolute position on the capital-to-income breeder continuum. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Wild clocks: integrating chronobiology and ecology to understand timekeeping in free-living animals’.
Analysis of proxy MIPv6 performance compared to fast MIPv6

One of the main challenges in future ldquoAll-IPrdquo networks is to guarantee seamless mobility with minimal or even without any interaction from the user. The Network-based Localized Mobility Management (NETLMM) working group is currently developing Proxy MIPv6 (PMIPv6), which tries to support terminal mobility without involving the MN. This paper analyzes PMIPv6 and evaluates it compared to the well known Fast MIPv6 (FMIPv6) protocol with respect to the handoff interruption time in different radio access technologies. The analysis has been done by means of simple analytical models. The obtained results show that the best performance can be achieved by FMIPv6 in predictive mode. The access technology has a major impact on the handoff interruption time. PMIPv6 and FMIPv6 in reactive mode perform almost comparable using a fast radio access technology. However, for slower radio access technologies, PMIPv6 shows a better performance over FMIPv6 in reactive mode. PMIPv6 is more robust than FMIPv6 against control message dropping.
Academic Domain College Students ' Storytelling of Ethnicity-Related Events in the

The purpose of the present study was to examine storytelling of ethnicityrelated events among college-going, emerging adults. A total of 280 ethnically diverse participants recounted a memory about a time in which they told a previously reported, ethnicity-related story to others. Analysis centered on the function of the telling and on to whom the story was told. The findings indicated that stories were most often told to share experiences with others, followed by for emotion regulation and validation, and that friends were the most frequent audience. The pattern of story content, telling function, and audience suggests that stories are differentially channeled to various audiences for different purposes. Furthermore, 40% of all stories had never been told to others, suggesting continued barriers in the ability to talk to others about ethnicity-related experiences in the United States.
Low-Complexity Scheduling Policies for Achieving Throughput and Asymptotic Delay Optimality in Multichannel Wireless Networks

In this paper, we study the scheduling problem for downlink transmission in a multichannel (e.g., OFDM-based) wireless network. We focus on a single cell, with the aim of developing a unifying framework for designing low-complexity scheduling policies that can provide optimal performance in terms of both throughput and delay. We develop new easy-to-verify sufficient conditions for rate-function delay optimality (in the many-channel many-user asymptotic regime) and throughput optimality (in general nonasymptotic setting), respectively. The sufficient conditions allow us to prove rate-function delay optimality for a class of Oldest Packets First (OPF) policies and throughput optimality for a large class of Maximum Weight in the Fluid limit (MWF) policies, respectively. By exploiting the special features of our carefully chosen sufficient conditions and intelligently combining policies from the classes of OPF and MWF policies, we design hybrid policies that are both rate-function delay-optimal and throughput-optimal with a complexity of O(n2.5 log n), where n is the number of channels or users. Our sufficient condition is also used to show that a previously proposed policy called Delay Weighted Matching (DWM) is rate-function delay-optimal. However, DWM incurs a high complexity of O(n5). Thus, our approach yields significantly lower complexity than the only previously designed delay and throughput-optimal scheduling policy. We also conduct numerical experiments to validate our theoretical results.
Learning to Infer the Status of Heavy-Duty Sensors for Energy-Efficient Context-Sensing

With the prevalence of smart mobile devices with multiple sensors, the commercial application of intelligent context-aware services becomes more and more attractive. However, limited by the battery capacity, the energy efficiency of context-sensing is the bottleneck for the success of context-aware applications. Though several previous studies for energy-efficient context-sensing have been reported, none of them can be applied to multiple types of high-energy-consuming sensors. Moreover, applying machine learning technologies to energy-efficient context-sensing is underexplored too. In this article, we propose to leverage machine learning technologies for improving the energy efficiency of multiple high-energy-consuming context sensors by trading off the sensing accuracy. To be specific, we try to infer the status of high-energy-consuming sensors according to the outputs of software-based sensors and the physical sensors that are necessary to work all the time for supporting the basic functions of mobile devices. If the inference indicates the high-energy-consuming sensor is in a stable status, we avoid the unnecessary invocation and instead use the latest invoked value as the estimation. The experimental results on real datasets show that the energy efficiency of GPS sensing and audio-level sensing are significantly improved by the proposed approach while the sensing accuracy is over 90%.