Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Earlier Uterine Environment Favors the In Vivo Development of Fresh Pig Morulae and Blastocysts Transferred by a Nonsurgical Deep-uterine Method

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of recipient-donor estrous cycle synchrony on recipient reproductive performance after nonsurgical deep-uterine (NsDU) embryo transfer (ET). The transfers (N=132) were conducted in recipients sows that started estrus 24 h before (–24 h; N=9) or 0 h (synchronous; N=31), 24 h (+24 h; N=74) or 48 h (+48 h; N=18) after the donors. A total of 30 day 5 morulae or day 6 blastocysts (day 0=onset of estrus) were transferred per recipient. The highest farrowing rates (FRs) were achieved when estrus appeared in recipients 24 h later than that in the donors (81.1%), regardless of the embryonic stage used for the transfers. The FR notably decreased (P<0.05) when recipients were –24 h asynchronous (0%), synchronous (61.3%) or +48 h asynchronous (50%) relative to the donors. No differences in litter size (LS) and piglet birth weights were observed among the synchronous and +24 h or +48 h asynchronous groups. While a +24 h asynchronous recipient was suitable for transfers performed with either morulae (FR, 74.3%; LS, 9.2 ± 0.6 piglets) or blastocysts (FR, 84.6%; LS, 9.8 ± 0.6 piglets), a + 48 h asynchronous recipient was adequate for blastocysts (FR, 87.5%; LS, 10.4 ± 0.7 piglets) but not for morulae (FR, 30.0%; LS, 7.3 ± 2.3 piglets). In conclusion, this study confirms the effectiveness of the NsDU-ET technology and shows that porcine embryos tolerate better a less advanced uterine environment if they are nonsurgically transferred deep into the uterine horn.
OceanSense: A practical wireless sensor network on the surface of the sea

In this paper, we present a practical wireless sensor network for environmental monitoring (OceanSense) deployed on the sea. The system is mainly composed of TelosB motes, which are deployed on the surface of the sea collecting environmental data, such as temperature, light and RSSI from the testbed. The motes communicate with a base station, which transmits collected data to a visualization system running on a database server. The data can be accessed using a browser-based web application. The OceanSense has been running for more than half a year, providing environmental monitoring data for further study.
Auditory and Visual Reaction Time in Taekwondo Players

Background: Excellence in a combat sport like Taekwondo relies on the ability to execute a technique with enough force in as little time as possible. Hence reaction time, speed and agility are essential in these practitioners. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to find out the Auditory and Visual Reaction time in Taekwondo players and compare it with non athletes. Method: Reaction time was measured with the response analyzer in trained taekwondo practitioners and non athletes. Results: The practitioners of Taekwondo responded significantly earlier to both auditory and visual stimuli. Conclusion: It can be concluded that shorter reaction time in these players is beneficial as it would prevent them from opponent attacks and help them to score better. Training to achieve a suitable reaction time can significantly influence performance especially during competitions.
Comparing and Combining Predictive Business Process Monitoring Techniques

Predictive business process monitoring aims at forecasting potential problems during process execution before they occur so that these problems can be handled proactively. Several predictive monitoring techniques have been proposed in the past. However, so far those prediction techniques have been assessed only independently from each other, making it hard to reliably compare their applicability and accuracy. We empirically analyze and compare three main classes of predictive monitoring techniques, which are based on machine learning, constraint satisfaction, and Quality-of-Service (QoS) aggregation. Based on empirical evidence from an industrial case study in the area of transport and logistics, we assess those techniques with respect to five accuracy indicators. We further determine the dependency of accuracy on the point in time during process execution when a prediction is made in order to determine lead-times for accurate predictions. Our evidence suggests that, given a lead-time of half of the process duration, all predictive monitoring techniques consistently provide an accuracy of at least 70%. Yet, it also becomes evident that the techniques differ in terms of how accurately they may predict violations and nonviolations. To improve the prediction process, we thus exploit the characteristics of the individual techniques and propose their combination. Based on our case study data, evidence indicates that certain combinations of techniques may outperform individual techniques with respect to specific accuracy indicators. Combining constraint satisfaction with QoS aggregation, for instance, improves precision by 14%; combining machine learning with constraint satisfaction shows an improvement in recall by 23%.
On the Maximum Number of Receiver Diversity Antennas That Can Be Usefully Deployed in a Cochannel Interference Dominated Environment

The question of how many receiver antennas to employ in a diversity system operating in cochannel interference is examined. The long-term signal-power-to-interference-power ratio, the long-term signal amplitude to the square root of the interference power ratio, the average instantaneous signal-to-interference ratio, and the average bit-error rate of a maximal ratio combining diversity system in the presence of an arbitrary number of cochannel interferers are evaluated when the desired user signal and the interfering user signals are independent, and each of them experiences correlated Ricean fading at the receiver antennas. The best number of antennas required for a fixed-size antenna array to achieve a good compromise between system performance and system cost is investigated. The results show that, in general, the performance of a fixed-size antenna array containing the maximum number of independent antennas cannot be significantly improved by adding more than one additional antenna. Some special cases where particular gains can be achieved by adding additional correlated antennas are also discussed.
Cryptanalysis of Fridrich's Chaotic Image Encryption

We cryptanalyze Fridrich’s chaotic image encryption algorithm. We show that the algebraic weaknesses of the algorithm make it vulnerable against chosen-ciphertext attacks. We propose an attack that reveals the secret permutation that is used to shuffle the pixels of a round input. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our attack with examples and simulation results. We also show that our proposed attack can be generalized to other well-known chaotic image encryption algorithms.
Classification of varieties with canonical curve section via gaussian maps on canonical curves

The purpose of this article is to develop further a method to classify varieties X ⊂ [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3. org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i" /] having canonical curve section, using Gaussian map computations. In a previous article we applied these techniques to classify prime Fano threefolds, that is Fano threefolds whose Picard group is generated by the hyperplane bundle. In this article we extend this method and classify Fano threefolds of higher index and Mukai varieties , i.e., varieties of dimension four or more with canonical curve sections. First we determine when the Hilbert scheme [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3. org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="02i" /] of such varieties X is nonempty. Moreover, in the case of Picard number one, we prove that [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3. org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="03i" /] is irreducible and that the examples of Fano-Iskovskih and Mukai form a dense open subset of smooth points of [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3. org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="04i" /].
Computational model for nanocarrier binding to endothelium validated using in vivo, in vitro, and atomic force microscopy experiments

A computational methodology based on Metropolis Monte Carlo (MC) and the weighted histogram analysis method (WHAM) has been developed to calculate the absolute binding free energy between functionalized nanocarriers (NC) and endothelial cell (EC) surfaces. The calculated NC binding free energy landscapes yield binding affinities that agree quantitatively when directly compared against analogous measurements of specific antibody-coated NCs (100 nm in diameter) to intracellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) expressing EC surface in in vitro cell-culture experiments. The effect of antibody surface coverage (σs) of NC on binding simulations reveals a threshold σs value below which the NC binding affinities reduce drastically and drop lower than that of single anti-ICAM-1 molecule to ICAM-1. The model suggests that the dominant effect of changing σs around the threshold is through a change in multivalent interactions; however, the loss in translational and rotational entropies are also important. Consideration of shear flow and glycocalyx does not alter the computed threshold of antibody surface coverage. The computed trend describing the effect of σs on NC binding agrees remarkably well with experimental results of in vivo targeting of the anti-ICAM-1 coated NCs to pulmonary endothelium in mice. Model results are further validated through close agreement between computed NC rupture-force distribution and measured values in atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments. The three-way quantitative agreement with AFM, in vitro (cell-culture), and in vivo experiments establishes the mechanical, thermodynamic, and physiological consistency of our model. Hence, our computational protocol represents a quantitative and predictive approach for model-driven design and optimization of functionalized nanocarriers in targeted vascular drug delivery.
School Principals Leadership and Teachers’ Stress Level in Malaysian Primary Schools

ABSTRACT : Teaching is a profession that needs knowledge and the practice of psychological knowledge because this career relates directly to human. It is said that a long condition of stress could cause an individual to retreat from his/her work whether in physical or psychological way. Thus, a step to control the emotion was necessary for every individual. The purpose of this research was to investigate the leadership style of principals in relation to the stress level of teachers. The Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) measuring instrument was applied to measure the dimensions of principals’ leadership style, initiating structure, and consideration. The teachers’ stress measuring instrument was used to measure the stress level of teachers based on principal leadership style. Sample consists of 200 teachers from Primary Schools in Malaysia. The data was analysed based on descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings showed that teachers had high opinion of principals. Moreover, there was a significant relationship between teachers’ stress level and the structural and consideration dimensions of the principals’ leadership style. It was also discovered that the teacher’s stress level had an influence with the style of headmaster’s leadership. The factor that was identified as the main factor for work stress among the respondents was the discipline problem among student, this was followed by the factors of the restriction of time and source, appreciation factor, and interpersonal factor. KEY WORDS : School principal leadership, teachers, stress level, school leadership management, and human capital development. About the Author: Najeemah Mohd Yusof is a Lecturer at the School of Educational Studies USM (Science University of Malaysia), USM Campus, 1180 Minden, Pulau Penang, Malaysia. She can be reached at: najineen@usm.my How to cite this article? Yusof, Najeemah Mohd. (2011). “School Principals Leadership and Teachers’ Stress Level in Malaysian Primary Schools” in EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies , Vol.4(1) August, pp.63-82. Bandung, Indonesia: Minda Masagi Press owned by ASPENSI in Bandung, West Java; and FKIP UMP in Purwokerto, Central Java, ISSN 1979-7877. Chronicle of the article: Accepted (June 17, 2011); Revised (July 19, 2011); and Published (August 17, 2011).
LANGUAGE ANXIETY IN CHINESE UNIVERSITY EFL LEARNERS IN VARYING LEARNING CONTEXTS

The present study examined Chinese university EFL learners' anxiety in English classrooms in varying learning contexts, and causes for and impact of anxiety on their performance in English. Analyses of 215 journals and 1203 questionnaires revealed the following conclusions: (1) around a third of the whole participant sample and each university sample experienced anxiety in English class, (2) various reasons such as low proficiency in the target language, lack of vocabulary, lack of practice, lack of preparation, and poor pronunciation were responsible for anxiety in the participants, and (3) anxiety mainly debilitated the students' performance in English and the majority of the participants felt helpless about feeling anxious when using the language in English class.
Efficient Work-Stealing with Blocking Deques

Work stealing is a popular and effective approach to implement load balancing in modern multi-/many-core systems, where each parallel thread has its local deque to maintain its own work-set of tasks and performs load balancing by stealing tasks from other deques. Unfortunately, the existing concurrent deques have two limitations. Firstly, these algorithms require memory fences in the owner's critical path operations to ensure correctness, which is expensive in modern weak-memory architectures. Secondly, the concurrent deques are difficult to extend to support various flexible forms of task distribution strategies, which can be more sufficient to optimize computation in some special applications, such as steal-half strategy in solving large, irregular graph problems. This paper proposes a blocking work-stealing deque. We optimize work stealing task deques through effective ways of accessing the deques to decrease the synchronization overhead. These ways can reduce the frequency of races when different threads need to operate on the same deque, especially using massive threads. We present implementation of the algorithm as a C++ library and the experiment results show that it behaves well to Cilk plus on a series of benchmarks. Since our approach relies on blocking deques, it is easy to extend to support flexible task creation and distribution strategies and also reduces the memory fences impact on performance.
Replication of Special Education Research

Increased calls for rigor in special education have often revolved around the use of experimental research design. However, the replicability of research results is also a central tenet to the scientific research process. To assess the prevalence, success rate, and authorship history of replications in special education, we investigated the complete publication history of every replication published in the 36 journals categorized by ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Report as special education. We found that 0.5% of all articles reported seeking to replicate a previously published finding. More than 80% of these replications reported successfully replicating previous findings. However, replications where there was at least one author overlapping with the original article (which happens about two thirds of the time) were statistically significantly more likely to find successful results.
A Formal Characterisation of Institutionalised Power

It is a standard feature of norm-governed institutions that designated agents are empowered to create particular kinds of states of aaairs by means of the performance of speciied types of actions. Frequently, the states of affairs are of a normative kind, in the sense that they pertain to rights and obligations, as for instance when a Head of Department signs a purchase agreement and thereby creates an obligation on his employer to pay for goods received. We use the term institutionalised power to stand for the notion of power we here seek to explicate. Following a lead from jurispru-dential discussions of legal power, we distinguish institutionalised power from permission and practical possibility. We deene a conditional connective intended to capture the consequence relation implicit in statements of the form: according to the constraints operative in institution s, the performance of some act A by agent x counts as a means of creating state of aaairs B. When combined with deontic and action logics, the new connective facilitates the analysis of a number of notions crucial to the understanding of organised interaction in institutions, such as authorisation and delegation. We conclude with some illustrations of the expressive power of the new logical language.
Agent Orange exposure and risk of death in Korean Vietnam veterans: Korean Veterans Health Study.

BACKGROUND Agent Orange (AO) was a mixture of phenoxy herbicides, containing several dioxin impurities including 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD). Various military herbicides, including AO, were sprayed by the US military and allied forces for military purposes during the Vietnam War. This study was performed to identify the associations between the AO exposure and mortality in Korean Vietnam veterans. METHODS From 1 January 1992 to 31 December 2005, 180 639 Korean Vietnam veterans were followed up for vital status and cause of death. The AO exposure index was based on the proximity of the veteran's unit to AO-sprayed areas, using a geographical information system-based model. The adjusted hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated by Cox's proportional hazard model. RESULTS The mortality from all causes of death was elevated with AO exposure. The deaths due to all sites of cancers combined and some specific cancers, including cancers of the stomach, small intestine, liver, larynx, lung, bladder and thyroid gland, as well as chronic myeloid leukaemia, were positively associated with AO exposure. The deaths from angina pectoris, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and liver disease including liver cirrhosis were also increased with an increasing AO exposure. CONCLUSIONS Overall, this study suggests that AO/TCDD exposure may account for mortality from various diseases even several decades after exposure. Further research is needed to better understand the long-term effects of AO/TCDD exposure on human health.
Identification of military vehicles in hyper spectral imagery through spatio-spectral filtering

The application of Hyper Spectral Imagery (HSI) for identification, classification and status of a specific material based on its spectral characteristics has been demonstrated by the researchers in past. In recent years, the use of Hyper spectral imagery in areas relating to tactical detection and classification of military vehicles is growing interest. However, literature on the suitable algorithms or methods for these type of applications are scarce if non existent. In this paper authors are proposing a method for detecting sub pixel sized military vehicles in acquired hyper spectral imagery. In the proposed approach Region Of Interests (ROIs) identified with Reed-Xiaoli (RX) anomaly filter, are processed using spectral-spatial information for identifying military vehicles. Performance of proposed method is analysed on Hyper Spectral Image (HSI) data set constructed by embedding two types of military vehicle signatures in HSI data cube at random locations. Principal Component Analysis, Anomaly detection (RX) and Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classification algorithm are applied to the data set being analysed. This work shows that using proposed method detection and discrimination of military vehicles is feasible with high probability of detection and low probability of false alarm.
The Association between Sentinel Lymph Node Metastasis and Ki-67 Labeling Index

Background: The purpose of this study was to elucidate the association between sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastasis and Ki67 labeling index and to elucidate whether Ki-67 was useful or not for prediction of SLN metastasis in breast cancer. Methods: We identified 343 invasive breast cancer patients with sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) from 2003 to 2012. The association between SLN status and clinicopathological features, molecular subtypes and Ki-67 labeling index were evaluated. Results: SLN metastasis was detected in 79 patients (23.0%). SLN metastasis was significantly associated with clinical T-stage (p = 0.0003), lymphovascular involvement (LVI) (p 0.0001). Ki-67 labeling index of primary tumor was significantly lower in SLN positive patients (p = 0.0331), and Ki-67 cut-off point of 7.5% was useful for dividing SLN positive from negative (p = 0.0197). Conclusion: Low value of Ki-67 labeling index, in addition to progression of clinical T-stage and presence of LVI, is significantly associated with SLN metastasis, and it seems to be useful to consider Ki-67 labeling index for SLN metastasis prediction.
Myocardial energy shortage and unmet anaplerotic needs in the fasted long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase knockout mouse.

AIMS The aim of this animal study is to assess fasting-induced changes in myocardial substrate metabolism and energy status as a consequence of mitochondrial long-chain fatty acid β-oxidation deficiency, using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). METHODS AND RESULTS Carbon-13 ((13)C) MRS of hyperpolarized [1-(13)C]pyruvate was used to assess in vivo pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) activity in fed and fasted wild-type (WT) mice and long-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase knockout (LCAD KO) mice. PDH activity decreased after fasting in both genotypes, but was 2.7-fold higher in fasted LCAD KO mice compared with fasted WT mice. Incorporation of the (13)C label into the myocardial malate and aspartate pools in fasted LCAD KO mice demonstrates enhanced activity of anaplerotic pathways in fasted LCAD KO hearts. These findings were corroborated by ex vivo assays revealing partially depleted pools of citric acid cycle intermediates in fasted LCAD KO myocardium, suggesting an increased, but unmet need for anaplerosis. The in vivo myocardial energy status, assessed using phosphorous-31 ((31)P) MRS, was lower in fasted LCAD KO mice than in fasted WT mice. CONCLUSION This study revealed that the heart of fasted LCAD KO mice has an elevated reliance on glucose oxidation, in combination with an unmet demand for myocardial anaplerosis. Due to a lack of substrate availability, the sustained myocardial glucose uptake and PDH activity in LCAD KO mice are ineffective to maintain metabolic homeostasis during fasting, which is reflected by an impaired myocardial energy status in fasted LCAD KO mice.
Measurable Sensitivity

We introduce the notion of measurable sensitivity, a measure-theoretic version of the condition of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It is a consequence of light mixing, implies a transformation has only ﬁnitely many eigenvalues, and does not exist in the inﬁnite measure-preserving case. Unlike the traditional notion of sensitive dependence, measurable sensitivity carries up to measure-theoretic isomorphism, thus ignoring the behavior of the function on null sets and eliminating dependence on the choice of metric.