Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study of active galactic nuclei in low surface brightness galaxies with Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopy

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs) have received little attention in previous studies. We present a detailed spectral analysis of 194 LSBGs from the Impey et al. (1996) APM LSBG sample which has been observed spectroscopically by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 (SDSS DR5). Our elaborate spectral analysis enables us to carry out, for the first time, reliable spectral classification of nuclear processes in LSBGs based on the standard emission line diagnostic diagrams in a rigorous way. Star-forming galaxies are common, as found in about 52% of LSBGs. We find that, contrary to some previous claims, the fraction of galaxies that contain AGNs is significantly lower than that found in nearby normal galaxies of high surface brightness. This is qualitatively in line with the finding of Impey et al. This result holds true even within each morphological type from Sa to Sc. LSBGs that have larger central stellar velocity dispersions or larger physical sizes tend to have a higher chance of harboring an AGN. For three AGNs with broad emission lines, the black hole masses estimated from the emission lines are broadly consistent with the well known M-sigma(*). relation established for normal galaxies and AGNs.
Maintenance of genetic diversity in four taiga specialists

Genetic diversity in three taiga specialists – the Siberian tit (Parus cinctus), the Siberian jay (Perisoreus infaustus) and the Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans) – was assessed by comparing DNA sequence variation across the mitochondrial control region and allele frequencies of microsatellites from samples collected from Fennoscandia and Siberia. Population sizes of these species have declined in association with fragmentation and loss of suitable forest habitat due to modern forestry practices in Fennoscandia. The red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) served as a reference for the flying squirrel. Genetic differentiation among species studied ranged from a panmictic population in the Siberian tit to that of the strong differentiation of populations (θST = 53%) in the flying squirrel in Finland. MtDNA and microsatellite data, together with assignment studies, showed the Siberian jay population to be significantly genetically structured and supported the existence of a metapopulation like structuring in Fennoscandia. Division of genetic variation among flying squirrel populations along the ancient shoreline of the Littorina Lymnea Sea stage of the Baltic Sea (7000 BP) and two geographically associated branches in the minimum spanning network supported a two-way colonisation history for the species. The Finnish inland appears to have been colonised from the east in association with the arrival of Norway spruce. At the same time, Coastal Finland was colonised from the south-east through the Karelian Isthmus. Gene flow of the species appeared female biased and restricted. Species exhibiting more restrictive dispersal characteristics and habitat requirements possessed stronger population genetic structure than those with opposite characteristics. Growth or contractions in population size leave characteristic signatures in mtDNA that can be studied by comparing different sequence diversity estimates among populations. I applied this method to the species studied. Significant differences in nucleotide diversities indicated restrictions in gene flow among populations in all species studied. Half of the Siberian jay populations gave a signal of population size bottleneck. All the species studied showed differences in their population genetic structures across their entire distribution ranges consistent with the multirefugia model, most likely to be attributable to differences in their ecological characteristics and Pleistocene histories.
An Exploration of Instructional Coaching in Western Pennsylvania Schools

Providing high-quality professional learning opportunities for teaching staff is a key responsibility for school leaders that can lead to increased teacher capacity and higher student outcomes. Instructional coaching is a professional development model that has gained in popularity over the past decade. An instructional coach is an individual who works with teachers one-on-one, or in a small group setting on a variety of professional learning topics aiming to increase teacher capacity. This qualitative study examined the experiences of three instructional coaches who are currently working in Western Pennsylvania secondary schools. The three participants work in districts that vary in size, setting, and socioeconomic status. Participants engaged in semi-structured interviews, observations of coaching sessions, and document analysis to examine how instructional coaches perceive their impact on teacher practice, how instructional coaches are able to achieve teacher buy-in, and how the coaching process has enhanced the practices, knowledge and beliefs of instructional coaches. The findings for this qualitative study provide insight for consideration by school leaders, instructional coaches, teachers, school board members, and policy makers. The findings resulted in emerging themes for each research question and five overarching conclusions to the study. Conclusions drawn from this research suggest that school leadership is vital to instructional coaching implementation and success, schools must have an established vision and purpose for instructional coaching and professional development to maximize impact, coaching is a reciprocal process resulting in both instructional coach and teacher advancement, varying contexts should be taken into consideration when implementing instructional coaching, and instructional coaches possess a strong sense of self in terms of self-learning, self-motivation. While these themes were evident in the literature empirical research on instructional coaching is still limited. These findings reveal significant understandings in regard to how instructional coaches perceive their impact on teacher practice, how instructional coaches were able to achieve teacher buy-in and how the instructional coaching has enhanced the beliefs and practices of instructional coaches.
Power law correlations in galaxy distribution and finite volume effects from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Four

We discuss the estimation of galaxy correlation properties in several volume limited samples, in different sky regions, obtained from the Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The small scale properties are characterized through the determination of the nearest neighbor probability distribution. By using a very conservative statistical analysis, in the range of scales [0.5, ∼30] Mpc/h we detect power-law correlations in the conditional density in redshift space, with an exponent y = 1.0 ± 0.1. This behavior is stable in all the different samples we considered; thus it does not depend on galaxy luminosity. In the range of scales [∼30, ∼100] Mpc/h we find evidence for systematic unaveraged fluctuations and we discuss in detail the problems induced by finite volume effects on the determination of the conditional density. We conclude that in such a range of scales there is evidence for a smaller power-law index of the conditional density. However we cannot distinguish between two possibilities: (i) that a crossover to homogeneity (corresponding to y = 0 in the conditional density) occurs before 100 Mpc/h; (ii) that correlations extend to scales of order 100 Mpc/h (with a smaller exponent 0 < y < 1). We emphasize that galaxy distributions in these samples present large fluctuations at the largest scales probed, corresponding to the presence of large scale structures extending up to the boundaries of the present survey. We discuss several differences between the behavior of the conditional density in mock galaxy catalogs built from cosmological N-body simulations and real data. We discuss some theoretical implications of such differences considering also the super-homogeneous features of primordial density fields.
Debating Our Way Toward Stronger Thinking

Teachers often find it challenging to incorporate higher order thinking skills in ways that both inspire student interest and allow for meaningful differentiation. Structured debate is an activity that can facilitate all of these goals. This article explains, in detail, how debates can be structured to promote a variety of critical thinking skills and intrinsic motivation to learn. Concrete suggestions are provided for how to design a high-quality debate and how to avoid pitfalls that allow students to evade higher level thinking.
On the LASSO and its Dual

Abstract Proposed by Tibshirani, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) estimates a vector of regression coefficients by minimizing the residual sum of squares subject to a constraint on the l 1-norm of the coefficient vector. The LASSO estimator typically has one or more zero elements and thus shares characteristics of both shrinkage estimation and variable selection. In this article we treat the LASSO as a convex programming problem and derive its dual. Consideration of the primal and dual problems together leads to important new insights into the characteristics of the LASSO estimator and to an improved method for estimating its covariance matrix. Using these results we also develop an efficient algorithm for computing LASSO estimates which is usable even in cases where the number of regressors exceeds the number of observations. An S-Plus library based on this algorithm is available from StatLib.
PENGARUH GAYA KEPEMIMPINAN DAN BUDAYA ORGANISASI TERHADAP KINERJA PEGAWAI MELALUI KEPUASAN KERJA SEBAGAI VARIABEL INTERVENING (Studi Kasus Pada Kantor Pelayanan Pajak Pratama Ruteng)

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of leadership style and corporate culture on job satisfaction to enhance employee performance. Exogenous variables in this study is the style of leadership, corporate culture toward job satisfaction as an intervening variable to increase employee’s performance as endogenous variable. The study was conducted at Ruteng small tax office, the sample size is about 49 employee, using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with Partial Least Square (PLS). The results showed that corporate culture has positive significance effect on job satisfaction and increase employee performance. The effect of leadership style on job satisfaction is positive significant, but negative significant to increase employee performance. The conclusion of this study, in order to increase performance of employees, companies must be able to provide leadership style that is personal attention to employee, corporate culture that can be applied in the form of synergy between employee and expected job satisfaction is satisfaction with the work itself Keywords: leadership style, corporate culture, job satisfaction, employee performance
Geometry and context for semantic correspondences and functionality recognition in man-made 3D shapes

We address the problem of automatic recognition of functional parts of man-made 3D shapes in the presence of significant geometric and topological variations. We observe that under such challenging circumstances, the context of a part within a 3D shape provides important cues for learning the semantics of shapes. We propose to model the context as structural relationships between shape parts and use them, in addition to part geometry, as cues for functionality recognition. We represent a 3D shape as a graph interconnecting parts that share some spatial relationships. We model the context of a shape part as walks in the graph. Similarity between shape parts can then be defined as the similarity between their contexts, which in turn can be efficiently computed using graph kernels. This formulation enables us to: (1) find part-wise semantic correspondences between 3D shapes in a nonsupervised manner and without relying on user-specified textual tags, and (2) design classifiers that learn in a supervised manner the functionality of the shape components. We specifically show that the performance of the proposed context-aware similarity measure in finding part-wise correspondences outperforms geometry-only-based techniques and that contextual analysis is effective in dealing with shapes exhibiting large geometric and topological variations.
Spatial correction in dynamic photon emission by affine transformation matrix estimation

Photon emission microscopy and Time Resolved Imaging have proved their efficiency for defect localization on VLSI. A common process to find defect candidate locations is to draw a comparison between acquisitions on a normally working device and a faulty one. In order to be accurate and meaningful, this method requires that the acquisition scene remains the same between the two parts. In practice, it can be difficult to set. In this paper, a method to correct position by affine matrix transformation is suggested. It is based on image features detection, description and matching and affine transformation estimation.
c-Fms Signaling Mediates Neurofibromatosis Type-1 Osteoclast Gain-In-Functions

Skeletal abnormalities including osteoporosis and osteopenia occur frequently in both pediatric and adult neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) patients. NF1 (Nf1) haploinsufficient osteoclasts and osteoclast progenitors derived from both NF1 patients and Nf1+/− mice exhibit increased differentiation, migration, and bone resorptive capacity in vitro, mediated by hyperactivation of p21Ras in response to limiting concentrations of macrophage-colony stimulating factor (M-CSF). Here, we show that M-CSF binding to its receptor, c-Fms, results in increased c-Fms activation in Nf1+/ − osteoclast progenitors, mediating multiple gain-in-functions through the downstream effectors Erk1/2 and p90RSK. PLX3397, a potent and selective c-Fms inhibitor, attenuated M-CSF mediated Nf1+/− osteoclast migration by 50%, adhesion by 70%, and pit formation by 60%. In vivo, we administered PLX3397 to Nf1 +/− osteoporotic mice induced by ovariectomy (OVX) and evaluated changes in bone mass and skeletal architecture. We found that PLX3397 prevented bone loss in Nf1+/−-OVX mice by reducing osteoclast differentiation and bone resorptive activity in vivo. Collectively, these results implicate the M-CSF/c-Fms signaling axis as a critical pathway underlying the aberrant functioning of Nf1 haploinsufficient osteoclasts and may provide a potential therapeutic target for treating NF1 associated osteoporosis and osteopenia.
Biochemical Analysis of the Intrinsic Mcm4-Mcm6-Mcm7 DNA Helicase Activity

ABSTRACT Mcm proteins play an essential role in eukaryotic DNA replication, but their biochemical functions are poorly understood. Recently, we reported that a DNA helicase activity is associated with an Mcm4-Mcm6-Mcm7 (Mcm4,6,7) complex, suggesting that this complex is involved in the initiation of DNA replication as a DNA-unwinding enzyme. In this study, we have expressed and isolated the mouse Mcm2,4,6,7 proteins from insect cells and characterized various mutant Mcm4,6,7 complexes in which the conserved ATPase motifs of the Mcm4 and Mcm6 proteins were mutated. The activities associated with such preparations demonstrated that the DNA helicase activity is intrinsically associated with the Mcm4,6,7 complex. Biochemical analyses of these mutant Mcm4,6,7 complexes indicated that the ATP binding activity of the Mcm6 protein in the complex is critical for DNA helicase activity and that the Mcm4 protein may play a role in the single-stranded DNA binding activity of the complex. The results also indicated that the two activities of DNA helicase and single-stranded DNA binding can be separated.
Journalism and political affiliation of the media: Influence of ownership on Indonesian newspapers

Using the Model of Hierarchy of Influences on Media Content as its conceptual framework, this study examines the impact of political ownership of newspapers on journalists’ practice of professional values in day-to-day news-reporting activities in Indonesia. Through a survey of newspaper journalists in Jakarta, this study aims to find out whether journalists perceive political ownership as a potential threat to their practice of professional values. The findings show that political ownership of newspapers may not directly affect the practice of professional values but it can affect such a practice indirectly through interventional practices in the newsroom.
Brain Structural Signatures of Negative Symptoms in Depression and Schizophrenia

Negative symptoms occur in several major mental health disorders with undetermined mechanisms and unsatisfactory treatments; identification of their neural correlates might unveil the underlying pathophysiological basis and pinpoint the therapeutic targets. In this study, participants with major depressive disorder (n = 24), schizophrenia (n = 22), and healthy controls (n = 20) were assessed with 10 frequently used negative symptom scales followed by principal component analysis (PCA) of the scores. A linear model with the prominent components identified by PCA was then regressed on gray and white-matter volumes estimated from T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. In depressed patients, negative symptoms such as blunted affect, alogia, withdrawal, and cognitive impairment, assessed mostly via clinician-rated scales were inversely associated with gray matter volume in the bilateral cerebellum. In patients with schizophrenia, anhedonia, and avolition evaluated via self-rated scales inversely related to white-matter volume in the left anterior limb of internal capsule/anterior thalamic radiation and positively in the left superior longitudinal fasiculus. The pathophysiological mechanisms underlying negative symptoms might differ between depression and schizophrenia. These results also point to future negative symptom scale development primarily focused on detecting and monitoring the corresponding changes to brain structure or function.
Multi-object tracking with representations of the symmetric group

We present an efficient algorithm for approximately maintaining and updating a distribution over permutations matching tracks to real world objects. The algorithm hinges on two insights from the theory of harmonic analysis on noncommutative groups. The first is that most of the information in the distribution over permutations is captured by certain “low frequency” Fourier components. The second is that Bayesian updates of these components can be efficiently realized by extensions of Clausen’s FFT for the symmetric group.
riso : An Implementation of Distributed Belief NetworksRobert DodierUniversity of Colorado at Boulderdodier

This paper describes riso, an implementation of distributed belief network software. Distributed belief networks are a natural extension of ordinary belief networks in which the belief network is composed of sub-networks running on separate processors. In keeping with the distributed computational model, no single processor has information about the structure of the entire distributed belief network, and inferences are to be computed using only local quantities. A general policy is proposed for publishing information as belief networks. A modeling language for the representation of distributed belief networks has been devised, and software has been implemented to compile the model-ing language and carry out inferences. Belief networks may contain arbitrary conditional distributions, and new types of distributions can be deened without modifying the existing inference software. In inference, an exact result is computed if a rule is known for combining incoming partial results, and if an exact result is not known, an approximation is computed on the y | this scheme allows the belief networks to directly represent the distributions that arise in practice. Some features of Java, the implementation language, have been found to be extremely useful, namely the classloader and Remote Method Invocation. The paper concludes with a small example which shows how a monitoring system can be implemented as a distributed belief network.
Dyadic coping in late adolescent couples

Romantic relationships in late adolescence are characterized by strong emotional bonds, serious commitment, and mutual emotional and instrumental support. Accordingly, they resemble rather adult relationships than romantic relationships in early and mid-adolescence. Whereas a growing number of studies have proven the importance of dyadic coping for relationship satisfaction, stability and the health of both partners in adult couples, there are hardly any empirical findings about the nature and dynamics of dyadic coping in adolescent romantic relationships. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis was to lay a foundation for examining dyadic coping in late adolescent couples, to gain further insights into mutual interdependence of adolescent partners, and to contribute to knowledge on intimate relationships in this specific stage of development. Results indicate that there are similarities and differences in late adolescent couples' dyadic coping compared with previous findings on adult couples. Dyadic coping seems to have a primary intimacy promoting function, and contributes on both, current relationship satisfaction as well as physical and mental well-being of adolescent partners. However, dyadic coping can neither predict relationship satisfaction nor relationship stability over one year. Results are discussed in the present state of knowledge on romantic relationships in adolescence.
The garbage gospel: Using the theory of planned behavior to explain the role of religious institutions in affecting pro-environmental behavior among ethnic minorities

ABSTRACT This study used Azjen's Theory of Planned Behavior to examine how pro-recycling and pro-environmental messaging delivered by religious leaders affects stated recycling behavior among ethnic minorities. Using data collected from 12 religious institutions in three Ontario, Canada, communities, a promotion and education program was developed to: (1) increase awareness about existing waste management programs in the region; (2) describe what materials should be recycled; (3) highlight the importance of recycling (to the individual, to the community, and to the environment; and (4) make a direct appeal asking households to participate in their region's recycling programs. Post implementation of the P&E campaign, respondents indicated a statistically significant increase in positive attitudes toward recycling, moral norms, levels of perceived behavioral control, and awareness of recycling consequences. Perceived behavioral control, situational factors, attitudes, and moral norms were found to be the most significant predictors of recycling intention. Community leaders were demonstrably more successful in affecting positive change in stated recycling behavior among minorities relative to previous municipal promotion and education efforts.
A1C Is Associated With Intima-Media Thickness in Individuals With Normal Glucose Tolerance

OBJECTIVE One-hour glucose during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was recently proposed as a valuable marker to identify individuals with normal glucose tolerance (NGT) and increased intima-media thickness (IMT). However, central markers of glycemic control were not considered. The aim of this study was to identify which marker of glycemic control is most informative with respect to the variation of IMT in individuals with NGT. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Cardiovascular risk factors, glucose metabolism (OGTT), and IMT were determined in 1,219 nondiabetic individuals (851 women, 368 men; 558 with NGT). RESULTS One-hour glucose and A1C levels were significantly correlated to carotid IMT in individuals with NGT, whereas fasting and 2-h glucose levels were not informative. Only A1C was associated with IMT independent of other confounders, whereas 1-h glucose was not informative. Comparable results were found in the total cohort, including individuals with IFG and IGT. CONCLUSIONS A1C was the most informative glycemic marker with respect to IMT in individuals with NGT.