Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elite Research in Germany

Elite research is a well-established  eld in Germany. This is mainly due to German history. After World War II, many intellectuals, politicians, and social scientists argued that the inability of German elites to accommodate the deep sociopolitical cleavages in German society had been a major factor in the failure of the  rst German democracy. Political scientists, sociologists, and historians have therefore analyzed German elites from a variety of perspectives. At the same time, however, the term elite fell into disrepute because it was associated with a belief in genetic differences and with the Führerkult around Adolf Hitler’s person. It was not until the  rst comprehensive German elite study was published by Zapf (1965) that the term was again used in public discourse. This also explains why Germans have been reluctant to embrace an elite concept that de nes elites as the powerful in society. Even today, many German social scientists prefer to use alternative terms such as leadership groups, top position-holders, or political class when dealing with elites. And I believe that in no other country have social scientists and intellectuals devoted more effort to discussing the meaning of the elite concept. A concept of elites as individuals epitomizing the basic values of society (Werteliten) still looms large in German intellectual discourse and even many social scientists embrace this particular notion of elites, denouncing the actual holders of socioeconomic and political power (Machteliten) as a class of individuals collectively failing to conform to such high standards. I will return to this discourse at the end of the paper. Research on German elites has been carried out by sociologists, political scientists, and increasingly also historians. These three  elds can be roughly associated with different methodological approaches, i.e. longitudinal social background studies, cross-sectional studies on career patterns and political attitudes, and historical case studies. In the following, I discuss the research objectives and the main results of studies done in each of these  elds.
Research methods for power system stability using Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference Systems

The performance of the Automatic Voltage Regulate (AVR) and the Power System Stability (PSS) methods may be degraded stability of the power system. This paper presents an Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference Systems (ANFIS) algorithm for stability of the power system, we use an Adaptive Network based Fuzzy Interference System architecture extended to response with multivariable systems. By using a hybrid learning method, the suggested ANFIS can setting structure diagram input - output based on both human knowledge and stipulated input-output data pairs. Simulation results present the convergence of the algorithm is improved.
Sex Differences in Occupational Aspirations and Expectations

The research reported in this paper examines sex differences in the prestige and sex-type of occupational aspirations and expectations held by adolescents. Sex differences in the discrepancy between aspirations and expectations are examined, and the effects of socioeconomic background and academic achievement on the unmeasured construct of occupational ambition are compared for the two sexes. The study is based on a random sample of eleventh-grade students in Pennsylvania. The findings indicate that: (I) occupational aspirations and expectations held by adolescents are highly differentiated by sex according to the pattern of sexual segregation in the occupational structure; (2) boys aspire to and expect higher levels of occupational attainment than girls; (3) boys' occupational aspirations and expectations are characterized by greater variability than those of girls; (4) the discrepancy between the prestige of occupations aspired to and expected is greater for girls than boys at higher levels of aspiration; (5) there is no difference in the sex-type of occupations aspired to and expected by boys, but girls are more likely to aspire to male-dominated occupations than to expect they will enter them; and (6) both socioeconomic background and academic achievement have a greater effect on occupational ambition for boys than girls, although these variables have a greater effect on girls than has been found in previous studies.
A quantitative study of Luneberg-lens reflectors

Luneberg-lens reflectors, which provide passive wideband and wide-angle radar-signature augmentation, have been widely used in small military target drones, decoys, and marine vessels. Due to the difficulty of fabricating inhomogeneous dielectrics with a continuously varying index, Luneberg lenses are usually constructed with multilayered step-index dielectrics. This paper presents a quantitative study of a practical design of a three-layer Luneberg-lens reflector for C- and X-band operations. Extensive wideband and wide-angle measurements were carried out for this lens with three different cap reflectors, as well as for the lens alone without any reflector. A comprehensive numerical analysis, using the finite-element method combined with boundary integral equations, was also conducted. This was done to support the measured data and to provide additional insight for a better understanding of the performance and the limitations of the Luneberg-lens reflector than could be achieved with the traditional ray-optics method. The effect of reflector size is discussed, and the limitation of three-layer design is demonstrated. It has also been shown that very accurate material parameters must be ascertained so as to achieve the level of accuracy commonly desired in the computational electromagnetic codes applied to inhomogeneous dielectrics. The excellent agreement between the numerical and measured data indicates that this full-wave Maxwell solver can be used to explore the design limits and optimize designs for this type of lens reflector.
Subject Recognition Based on Ground Reaction Force Measurements of Gait Signals

An effective subject recognition approach is designed in this paper, using ground reaction force (GRF) measurements of human gait. The method is a three-stage procedure: 1) The original GRF data are translated through wavelet packet (WP) transform in the time-frequency domain. Using a fuzzy-set-based criterion, we determine an optimal WP decomposition, involving feature subspaces with distinguishing gait characteristics. 2) A feature extraction scheme is employed next for wavelet feature ranking, according to discrimination power. 3) The classification task is accomplished by means of a kernel-based support vector machine. The design parameters of the classifier are tuned through a genetic algorithm to improve recognition rates. The method is evaluated on a database comprising GRF records obtained from 40 subjects. To account for the natural variability of human gait, the experimental setup is designed, allowing different walking speeds and loading conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that high recognition rates can be achieved with moderate number of features and for different training/testing settings. Finally, the performance of our approach is favorably compared with the one obtained using other traditional classification algorithms.
Octreotide inhibits the growth and development of three types of experimental liver metastases

A study was performed to assess the effects of octreotide on the growth and development of liver metastases in rats. Tumour was induced by intraportal injection of three tumorigenic cell lines (the fibrosarcoma HSN and colonic adenocarcinomas K12/Tr and WB2054M) in syngeneic rats. Octreotide treatment (2 μg subcutaneously for 3 or 4 weeks) was started 18 h and 1 week after tumour induction; a delay in treatment of 1 week allowed micrometastases to develop. Treatment with octreotide significantly (P < 0.001) reduced the median hepatic replacement of liver by tumour compared with that of control rats given saline (controls: HSN 76.4 per cent, K12/Tr 17.5 per cent, WB2054M 43.9 per cent; octreotide treatment delayed 18 h: HSN 2.7 per cent, K12/Tr 0.6 per cent, WB2054M 1.3 per cent; octreotide treatment delayed 1 week: HSN 9.3 per cent, K12/Tr 2.5 per cent, WB2054M 2.3 per cent). These results clearly indicate that octreotide significantly inhibits the growth and development of experimental liver metastases. Further studies are required both to delineate the mechanism of action and to investigate these effects in a clinical setting.
Assessing the clinical significance of single items relative to summated scores.

How many items are needed to measure an individual's quality of life (QOL)? This article describes the strengths and weaknesses of single items and summated scores (from multiple items) as QOL measures. We also address the use of single global measures vs multiple subindices as measures of QOL. The primary themes that recur throughout this article are the relationships between well-defined research objectives, the research setting, and the choice single item vs summated scores to measure QOL. The conceptual framework of the study, the conceptual fit with the measure, and the purpose of the assessment should all be considered when choosing a measure of QOL. No "gold standard" QOL measure can be recommended because no "one size fits all. " Single items have the advantage of simplicity at the cost of detail. Multiple-item indices have the advantage of providing a complete profile of QOL component constructs at the cost of increased burden and of asking potentially irrelevant questions. The 2 types of indices are not mutually exclusive and can be used together in a single research study or in the clinical setting.
Implicit Religion in Popular Culture: the Religious Dimensions of Fan Communities

Studies of the relationship between religion and popular culture are not new, and the past decade has seen a dramatic burgeoning of interest in this relationship. Explorations of everything from Star Trek to Elvis have appeared in the scholarly literature, often making comparative arguments regarding the religious dimensions of popular culture. However, when scholars explore the religious dimensions of fan communities, analyses tend to pathologize the implicitly religious dimensions of fan experience. The concept of “authenticity” is used to undermine and devalue the sacred spaces that fans create, raising the question of what it means to be authentically religious.
Goals Change When Life's Fragility is Primed: Lessons Learned From Older Adults, the September 11 Attacks and Sars

Abstract Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that the perception of time systematically influences motivation. Most experimental research testing this postulate has relied on paradigms in which participants are asked to make choices under conditions where they imagine that time is constrained or expanded. The present studies tested key theoretical postulates under naturalistic conditions by examining social goals before and after the September 11 attacks and throughout the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong. Findings suggest that sociocultural events that presumably prime the fragility of life increase motivation to derive emotional meaning from life in both the young and old.
Teaching Students ''Ideas-About-Science": Five Dimensions of Effective Practice

In this paper, we report work undertaken with a group of 11 UK teachers over a period of a year to teach aspects of the nature of science, its porcess and its practices. The teachers, who taught science in a mix of elementary, junior high and high schools, were asked to teach a set of 'ideas-about-science' for which consensual support had been established using a Delphi study in the first part of the project. Data were collected through field notes, videos of the teachers' lessons, teachers' reflective diaries, and instruments that measured their understanding of the nature of science and their views on the role and value of discussion in the classroom. In this paper, drawing on a sample of the data we explore the factors that afforded or inhibited the teachers' pedagogic performance in this domain. Using these data we argue that there are five critical dimensions that distinguish and determine a teacher's ability to teach effectively about science. Whilst these dimensions are neither mutually independent nor equally important, they serve as a valuable analytical tool for evaluating and explaining the success. or otherwise, that individual teachers of science have when confronted with teaching aspects about science. In addition, we argue that they are an important means of identifying salient aspects of pedagogy for initial and in-service training of science teachers for curricula that incorporate elements of 'ideas-about-science'.
Non-Local Auto-Encoder With Collaborative Stabilization for Image Restoration

Deep neural networks have been applied to image restoration to achieve the top-level performance. From a neuroscience perspective, the layerwise abstraction of knowledge in a deep neural network can, to some extent, reveal the mechanisms of how visual cues are processed in human brain. A pivotal property of human brain is that similar visual cues can stimulate the same neuron to induce similar neurological signals. However, conventional neural networks do not consider this property, and the resulting models are, as a result, unstable regarding their internal propagation. In this paper, we develop the (stacked) non-local auto-encoder, which exploits self-similar information in natural images for stability. We propose that similar inputs should induce similar network propagation. This is achieved by constraining the difference between the hidden representations of non-local similar image blocks during training. By applying the proposed model to image restoration, we then develop a collaborative stabilization step to further rectify forward propagation. To obtain a reliable deep model, we employ several strategies to simplify training and improve testing. Extensive image restoration experiments, including image denoising and super-resolution, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Phylo-MCOA: a fast and efficient method to detect outlier genes and species in phylogenomics using multiple co-inertia analysis.

Full genome data sets are currently being explored on a regular basis to infer phylogenetic trees, but there are often discordances among the trees produced by different genes. An important goal in phylogenomics is to identify which individual gene and species produce the same phylogenetic tree and are thus likely to share the same evolutionary history. On the other hand, it is also essential to identify which genes and species produce discordant topologies and therefore evolve in a different way or represent noise in the data. The latter are outlier genes or species and they can provide a wealth of information on potentially interesting biological processes, such as incomplete lineage sorting, hybridization, and horizontal gene transfers. Here, we propose a new method to explore the genomic tree space and detect outlier genes and species based on multiple co-inertia analysis (MCOA), which efficiently captures and compares the similarities in the phylogenetic topologies produced by individual genes. Our method allows the rapid identification of outlier genes and species by extracting the similarities and discrepancies, in terms of the pairwise distances, between all the species in all the trees, simultaneously. This is achieved by using MCOA, which finds successive decomposition axes from individual ordinations (i.e., derived from distance matrices) that maximize a covariance function. The method is freely available as a set of R functions. The source code and tutorial can be found online at http://phylomcoa.cgenomics. org.
Compact Object Modeling with the StarTrack Population Synthesis Code

We present a comprehensive description of the population synthesis code StarTrack. The original code has been significantly modified and updated. Special emphasis is placed here on processes leading to the formation and further evolution of compact objects (white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes). Both single and binary star populations are considered. The code now incorporates detailed calculations of all mass transfer phases, a full implementation of orbital evolution due to tides, as well as the most recent estimates of magnetic braking. This updated version of StarTrack can be used for a wide variety of problems, with relevance to observations with many current and planned observatories, e.g., studies of X-ray binaries (Chandra, XMM-Newton), gravitational radiation sources (LIGO, LISA), and gamma-ray burst progenitors (HETE-II, Swift). The code has already been used in studies of Galactic and extragalactic X-ray binary populations, black holes in young star clusters, Type Ia supernova progenitors, and double compact object populations. Here we describe in detail the input physics, we present the code calibration and tests, and we outline our current studies in the context of X-ray binary populations.
Operationalizing the postmodernity construct for efficient organizational change management

As postmodernity is increasingly discussed in the management disciplines, there is growing acceptance that the postmodernity debates challenge the adequacy of traditional research and teaching practices. Argues that, to date, this has been interpreted primarily as a need for new theoretical and/or pedagogical content. Believes the issue is more fundamental. Contrasting modernist and postmodernist theories of post‐industrialism, argues that postmodern transformations of work and society throw the very forms, even the existence of organizational theorizing, academic business education, and “management” as it is currently understood into question. While it is directed at those who have some background with these debates, attempts to provide background and citations sufficient to point the new reader towards other commentary on these issues.
Shower development of particles with momenta from 1 to 10 GeV in the CALICE Scintillator-Tungsten HCAL

Lepton colliders are considered as options to complement and to extend the physics programme at the Large Hadron Collider. The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is an e+e− collider under development aiming at centre-of-mass energies of up to 3 TeV. For experiments at CLIC, a hadron sampling calorimeter with tungsten absorber is proposed. Such a calorimeter provides sufficient depth to contain high-energy showers, while allowing a compact size for the surrounding solenoid. A fine-grained calorimeter prototype with tungsten absorber plates and scintillator tiles read out by silicon photomultipliers was built and exposed to particle beams at CERN. Results obtained with electrons, pions and protons of momenta up to 10 GeV are presented in terms of energy resolution and shower shape studies. The results are compared with several GEANT4 simulation models in order to assess the reliability of the Monte Carlo predictions relevant for a future experiment at CLIC.
Intenção de mudança de comportamento em adolescentes para a prática de atividades físicas de lazer

O objetivo deste estudo foi investigar a intencao da mudanca de comportamento de adolescentes de diferentes niveis socioeconomicos (NSE) para a pratica de atividades fisicas de lazer, adotando o Modelo Transteoretico e a Teoria do Comportamento Planejado (TCP). Foi realizado um estudo transversal com a participacao de 416 adolescentes, pertencentes a escolas do ensino medio nas cidades de Belo Horizonte e Contagem/MG, com media de idade de 16,4 ± 1,2 anos. As analises foram feitas utilizando estatisticas descritivas e parametricas (ANOVA e regressao logistica). Os resultados encontrados demonstraram que a maioria dos adolescentes e inativa no lazer, e as variaveis, sexo, atitude e controle percebido sao os fatores mais relevantes para classificar o nivel de atividade fisica de lazer, sendo que as variaveis sociais (nivel socioeconomico e norma subjetiva) tem pouca importância para predizer a intencao de mudanca de comportamento para a pratica dessas atividades.
National Sports and Other Myths: The Failure of US Soccer

Despite its undisputed popularity as the world’s number one sport and despite recent successes, soccer in the US remains in the minor leagues. Notwithstanding the growth of the US soccer market since the 1994 World Cup, the US Major League Soccer (MLS) teams continue to struggle despite their anticipated market potential. The economics of professional sports has much to do with this failure. Without a large fan base, the MLS cannot secure the broadcasting fees necessary to escape its conservative economic model. How will a large and loyal fan base for US soccer emerge? The recent emergence of 14‐year‐old Freddy Adu as the youngest professional player in soccer history, however, may prove to be helpful in helping to create a star system within the US soccer world. One cannot overlook, however, the powerful draw of nationalism that sport evokes. The popularity of baseball, basketball or football in the US has much to do with how these sports have come to be identified with being American. This essay reviews the recent history of soccer in the US and analyzes several cultural and economic factors in order to argue that for the next foreseeable future, soccer in the US remains problematic.
Automated classification of mouse pup isolation syllables: from cluster analysis to an Excel-based “mouse pup syllable classification calculator”

Mouse pups vocalize at high rates when they are cold or isolated from the nest. The proportions of each syllable type produced carry information about disease state and are being used as behavioral markers for the internal state of animals. Manual classifications of these vocalizations identified 10 syllable types based on their spectro-temporal features. However, manual classification of mouse syllables is time consuming and vulnerable to experimenter bias. This study uses an automated cluster analysis to identify acoustically distinct syllable types produced by CBA/CaJ mouse pups, and then compares the results to prior manual classification methods. The cluster analysis identified two syllable types, based on their frequency bands, that have continuous frequency-time structure, and two syllable types featuring abrupt frequency transitions. Although cluster analysis computed fewer syllable types than manual classification, the clusters represented well the probability distributions of the acoustic features within syllables. These probability distributions indicate that some of the manually classified syllable types are not statistically distinct. The characteristics of the four classified clusters were used to generate a Microsoft Excel-based mouse syllable classifier that rapidly categorizes syllables, with over a 90% match, into the syllable types determined by cluster analysis.
Molecular structure of the sarcomeric Z‐disk: two types of titin interactions lead to an asymmetrical sorting of α‐actinin

The sarcomeric Z‐disk, the anchoring plane of thin (actin) filaments, links titin (also called connectin) and actin filaments from opposing sarcomere halves in a lattice connected by α‐actinin. We demonstrate by protein interaction analysis that two types of titin interactions are involved in the assembly of α‐actinin into the Z‐disk. Titin interacts via a single binding site with the two central spectrin‐like repeats of the outermost pair of α‐actinin molecules. In the central Z‐disk, titin can interact with multiple α‐actinin molecules via their C‐terminal domains. These interactions allow the assembly of a ternary complex of titin, actin and α‐actinin in vitro, and are expected to constrain the path of titin in the Z‐disk. In thick skeletal muscle Z‐disks, titin filaments cross over the Z‐disk centre by ∼30 nm, suggesting that their α‐actinin‐binding sites overlap in an antiparallel fashion. The combination of our biochemical and ultrastructural data now allows a molecular model of the sarcomeric Z‐disk, where overlapping titin filaments and their interactions with the α‐actinin rod and C‐terminal domain can account for the essential ultrastructural features.