Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating Future Teacher Supply: Any Policy Implications for Educational Reform?

How many new teachers will be needed in American schools in the next decade? Wtll there be enough quali­ fied teachers? The answers to these questions are im­ portant to various actors in the educational system. For example, school board members need answers in order to evaluate whether teacher salaries are adequate to at­ tract qualified teachers. Superintendents need infor­ mation about the characteristics of college students to be teachers, in order to attract qualified teachers to their schools. Educational policymakers also need in-
Mesothelioma Cells Escape Heat Stress by Upregulating Hsp40/Hsp70 Expression via Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases

Therapy with hyperthermal chemotherapy in pleural diffuse malignant mesothelioma had limited benefits for patients. Here we investigated the effect of heat stress on heat shock proteins (HSP), which rescue tumour cells from apoptosis. In human mesothelioma and mesothelial cells heat stress (39–42°C) induced the phosphorylation of two mitogen activated kinases (MAPK) Erk1/2 and p38, and increased Hsp40, and Hsp70 expression. Mesothelioma cells expressed more Hsp40 and were less sensitive to heat stress compared to mesothelial cells. Inhibition of Erk1/2 MAPK by PD98059 or by Erk1 siRNA down-regulated heat stress-induced Hsp40 and Hsp70 expression and reduced mesothelioma cell survival. Inhibition of p38MAPK by SB203580 or siRNA reduced Hsp40, but not Hsp70, expression and also increased mesothelioma cell death. Thus hyperthermia combined with suppression of p38 MAPK or Hsp40 may represent a novel approach to improve mesothelioma therapy.
Fault tree analysis and process instrumentation of S2WRS based hydrogen cooling system

A comprehensive hydrogen cooling system (HCS) is required for cooling of the generators of 2×300 MW unit power plant at a pressure of 4 to 5 bar. The faster heat dissipation of generators depends on purity of hydrogen (H2), as it improves its ability to dissipate heat within generators. Therefore, the process involved should be reliable enough to maintain the availability of Hydrogen as and when required at desired pressure. Thus, the requirement of a highly reliable and efficient process instrumentation system is a must. The key focus of this paper is to present fault tree analysis (FTA) having improved system reliability of proposed model as compared to existing available systems. A novel six stages warm redundant structured (S2WRS) HCS for cooling of the generators in typical thermal power plant is proposed. The system reliability test of proposed S2WRS model is simulated using MATLAB. The entire process instrumentation system is designed and simulated on RSViewSE, a real-time supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platform by Rockwell Automation. This process model is designed as per specifications guided by IEEE C37.1–2007, IEEE 1413–2003, IEEE 493–1997, IEC 60034–3, IEC 61025 and IEC 61131–3.
Kernel ridge vs. principal component regression: Minimax bounds and the qualification of regularization operators

: Regularization is an essential element of virtually all kernel methods for nonparametric regression problems. A critical factor in the eﬀectiveness of a given kernel method is the type of regularization that is employed. This article compares and contrasts members from a general class of regularization techniques, which notably includes ridge regression and principal component regression. We derive an explicit ﬁnite-sample risk bound for regularization-based estimators that simultaneously accounts for (i) the structure of the ambient function space, (ii) the regularity of the true regression function, and (iii) the adaptability (or qualiﬁcation ) of the regularization. A simple consequence of this upper bound is that the risk of the regularization-based estimators matches the minimax rate in a vari- ety of settings. The general bound also illustrates how some regularization techniques are more adaptable than others to favorable regularity prop- erties that the true regression function may possess. This, in particular, demonstrates a striking diﬀerence between kernel ridge regression and ker- nel principal component regression. Our theoretical results are supported by numerical experiments.
Genotype–environment interactions affecting preflowering physiological and morphological traits of Brassica rapa grown in two watering regimes

Plant growth and productivity are greatly affected by drought, which is likely to become more threatening with the predicted global temperature increase. Understanding the genetic architecture of complex quantitative traits and their interaction with water availability may lead to improved crop adaptation to a wide range of environments. Here, the genetic basis of 20 physiological and morphological traits is explored by describing plant performance and growth in a Brassica rapa recombinant inbred line (RIL) population grown on a sandy substrate supplemented with nutrient solution, under control and drought conditions. Altogether, 54 quantitative trait loci (QTL) were identified, of which many colocated in 11 QTL clusters. Seventeen QTL showed significant QTL–environment interaction (Q×E), indicating genetic variation for phenotypic plasticity. Of the measured traits, only hypocotyl length did not show significant genotype–environment interaction (G×E) in both environments in all experiments. Correlation analysis showed that, in the control environment, stomatal conductance was positively correlated with total leaf dry weight (DW) and aboveground DW, whereas in the drought environment, stomatal conductance showed a significant negative correlation with total leaf DW and aboveground DW. This correlation was explained by antagonistic fitness effects in the drought environment, controlled by a QTL cluster on chromosome A7. These results demonstrate that Q×E is an important component of the genetic variance and can play a great role in improving drought tolerance in future breeding programmes.
Year-round high physical activity levels in agropastoralists of Bolivian Andes: Results from repeated measurements of DLW method in peak and slack seasons of agricultural activities

By the repeated use of the doubly labeled water method (DLW), this study aimed to investigate (1) the extent of changes in energy expenditure and physical activity level (PAL) in response to increased agricultural work demands, and (2) whether the seasonal work demands induce the changes in the fairly equitable division of work and similarity of energy needs between men and women observed in our previous study (Phase 1 study; Kashiwazaki et al., 1995 : Am J Clin Nutr 62: 901–910). In a rural small agropastoral community of the Bolivian Andes, we made the follow‐up study (Phase 2, 14 adults; a time of high agricultural activity) of the Phase 1 study (12 adults; a time of low agricultural activity). In the Phase 2 study, both men and women showed very high PAL (mean±SD), but there was no significant difference by sex (men; 2.18 ± 0.23 (age; 64 ± 11 years, n = 7), women; 2.26 ± 0.25 (63 ± 10 years, n = 7)). The increase of PAL by 11% (P = 0.023) in the Phase 2 was equally occurred in both men and women. The factorial approach underestimated PAL significantly by ≈15% (P < 0.05). High PAL throughout the year ranging on average 2.0 and 2.2 was attributable to everyday tasks for subsistence and domestic works undertaking over 9–11 h (men spent 2.7 h on agricultural work and 4.7 h on animal herding, whereas women spent 7.3 h almost exclusively on animal herding). The seasonal increase in PAL was statistically significant, but it was smaller than those anticipated from published reports. A flexible division of labor played an important role in the equitable energetic increase in both men and women. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Computational Prediction of Human Salivary Proteins from Blood Circulation and Application to Diagnostic Biomarker Identification

Proteins can move from blood circulation into salivary glands through active transportation, passive diffusion or ultrafiltration, some of which are then released into saliva and hence can potentially serve as biomarkers for diseases if accurately identified. We present a novel computational method for predicting salivary proteins that come from circulation. The basis for the prediction is a set of physiochemical and sequence features we found to be discerning between human proteins known to be movable from circulation to saliva and proteins deemed to be not in saliva. A classifier was trained based on these features using a support-vector machine to predict protein secretion into saliva. The classifier achieved 88.56% average recall and 90.76% average precision in 10-fold cross-validation on the training data, indicating that the selected features are informative. Considering the possibility that our negative training data may not be highly reliable (i.e., proteins predicted to be not in saliva), we have also trained a ranking method, aiming to rank the known salivary proteins from circulation as the highest among the proteins in the general background, based on the same features. This prediction capability can be used to predict potential biomarker proteins for specific human diseases when coupled with the information of differentially expressed proteins in diseased versus healthy control tissues and a prediction capability for blood-secretory proteins. Using such integrated information, we predicted 31 candidate biomarker proteins in saliva for breast cancer.
Understanding adaptive thermal comfort: new directions for UbiComp

In many parts of the world, mechanical heating and cooling is used to regulate indoor climates, with the aim of maintaining a uniform temperature. Achieving this is energy-intensive, since large indoor spaces must be constantly heated or cooled, and the difference to the outdoor temperature is large. This paper starts from the premise that comfort is not delivered to us by the indoor environment, but is instead something that is pursued as a normal part of daily life, through a variety of means. Based on a detailed study of four university students over several months, we explore how Ubicomp technologies can help create a more sustainable reality where people are more active in pursuing and maintaining their thermal comfort, and environments are less tightly controlled and less energy-intensive, and we outline areas for future research in this domain.
Factors influencing students career choices among secondary school students in Kisumu municipality, Kenya

Career choice is a complex decision for students since it determines the kind of profession that they intend to pursue in life. As students try to make career choice while in secondary school, they face problem of matching their career choices with their abilities and school performance. In Kenya every year form four secondary school students make career choices before sitting for their final examination (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations) however, studies indicate that most students enter into careers that are totally different from the ones they chose while in secondary. The purpose of this study was to examine factors influencing career choice among form four secondary school students in Kisumu municipality, Kenya. The study was conducted using descriptive survey design with a population of 332 students. The data for this study was collected using questionnaire and interview schedules. The findings of this study indicate that availability of advancement opportunities and learning experiences are the most influential factors affecting career choices among students. While males reported learning experiences and career flexibility as the most influential factors, females however reported availability of advancement opportunity and opportunity to apply skills as the most influential factors. However, no variance was reported for persons influencing career choice by gender.
How will Your Workload Look Like in 6 Years? Analyzing Wikimedia's Workload

Accurate understanding of workloads is key to efficient cloud resource management as well as to the design of large-scale applications. We analyze and model the workload of Wikipedia, one of the world's largest web sites. With descriptive statistics, time-series analysis, and polynomial splines, we study the trend and seasonality of the workload, its evolution over the years, and also investigate patterns in page popularity. Our results indicate that the workload is highly predictable with a strong seasonality. Our short term prediction algorithm is able to predict the workload with a Mean Absolute Percentage Error of around 2%.
A log-linear analysis of efficiency in elite basketball applied to observational methodology

Although the full potential of observational methodology is realized through diachronic analyses, synchronic analyses can be used to investigate associations between categorical variables. Log-linear modeling is an appropriate method for investigating associations between three or more dimensions using multidimensional contingency tables. We provide a practical example of how we used log-linear analysis to study efficiency in a men’s basketball competition played by Spain’s top teams using a model containing three dimensions (and their respective categories): position of last pass before a shot, position of shot, and result of shot. The best-fit and most parsimonious model (i.e., the model that provided the best explanation of the observed frequencies in the contingency table and that contained the fewest effects) was a conditional independence model in which last pass position and shot position were associated independently of the categories in the shot result dimension and the interaction between shot position and shot result was not affected by the categories in the last pass dimension. Estimation and subsequent interpretation of the significant parameters in the selected model showed how log-linear modeling can provide basketball coaches with practical insights within an observational methodology study.
Phylo: A Citizen Science Approach for Improving Multiple Sequence Alignment

Background Comparative genomics, or the study of the relationships of genome structure and function across different species, offers a powerful tool for studying evolution, annotating genomes, and understanding the causes of various genetic disorders. However, aligning multiple sequences of DNA, an essential intermediate step for most types of analyses, is a difficult computational task. In parallel, citizen science, an approach that takes advantage of the fact that the human brain is exquisitely tuned to solving specific types of problems, is becoming increasingly popular. There, instances of hard computational problems are dispatched to a crowd of non-expert human game players and solutions are sent back to a central server. Methodology/Principal Findings We introduce Phylo, a human-based computing framework applying “crowd sourcing” techniques to solve the Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) problem. The key idea of Phylo is to convert the MSA problem into a casual game that can be played by ordinary web users with a minimal prior knowledge of the biological context. We applied this strategy to improve the alignment of the promoters of disease-related genes from up to 44 vertebrate species. Since the launch in November 2010, we received more than 350,000 solutions submitted from more than 12,000 registered users. Our results show that solutions submitted contributed to improving the accuracy of up to 70% of the alignment blocks considered. Conclusions/Significance We demonstrate that, combined with classical algorithms, crowd computing techniques can be successfully used to help improving the accuracy of MSA. More importantly, we show that an NP-hard computational problem can be embedded in casual game that can be easily played by people without significant scientific training. This suggests that citizen science approaches can be used to exploit the billions of “human-brain peta-flops” of computation that are spent every day playing games. Phylo is available at: http://phylo.cs. mcgill.ca.
Single calcium channel domain gating of synaptic vesicle fusion at fast synapses; analysis by graphic modeling

At fast-transmitting presynaptic terminals Ca2+ enter through voltage gated calcium channels (CaVs) and bind to a synaptic vesicle (SV) -associated calcium sensor (SV-sensor) to gate fusion and discharge. An open CaV generates a high-concentration plume, or nanodomain of Ca2+ that dissipates precipitously with distance from the pore. At most fast synapses, such as the frog neuromuscular junction (NMJ), the SV sensors are located sufficiently close to individual CaVs to be gated by single nanodomains. However, at others, such as the mature rodent calyx of Held (calyx of Held), the physiology is more complex with evidence that CaVs that are both close and distant from the SV sensor and it is argued that release is gated primarily by the overlapping Ca2+ nanodomains from many CaVs. We devised a 'graphic modeling' method to sum Ca2+ from individual CaVs located at varying distances from the SV-sensor to determine the SV release probability and also the fraction of that probability that can be attributed to single domain gating. This method was applied first to simplified, low and high CaV density model release sites and then to published data on the contrasting frog NMJ and the rodent calyx of Held native synapses. We report 3 main predictions: the SV-sensor is positioned very close to the point at which the SV fuses with the membrane; single domain-release gating predominates even at synapses where the SV abuts a large cluster of CaVs, and even relatively remote CaVs can contribute significantly to single domain-based gating.
Protist-Type Lysozymes of the Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans Contribute to Resistance against Pathogenic Bacillus thuringiensis

Pathogens represent a universal threat to other living organisms. Most organisms express antimicrobial proteins and peptides, such as lysozymes, as a protection against these challenges. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans harbours 15 phylogenetically diverse lysozyme genes, belonging to two distinct types, the protist- or Entamoeba-type (lys genes) and the invertebrate-type (ilys genes) lysozymes. In the present study we characterized the role of several protist-type lysozyme genes in defence against a nematocidal strain of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Based on microarray and subsequent qRT-PCR gene expression analysis, we identified protist-type lysozyme genes as one of the differentially transcribed gene classes after infection. A functional genetic analysis was performed for three of these genes, each belonging to a distinct evolutionary lineage within the protist-type lysozymes (lys-2, lys-5, and lys-7). Their knock-out led to decreased pathogen resistance in all three cases, while an increase in resistance was observed when two out of three tested genes were overexpressed in transgenic lines (lys-5, lys-7, but not lys-2). We conclude that the lysozyme genes lys-5, lys-7, and possibly lys-2 contribute to resistance against B. thuringiensis, thus highlighting the particular role of lysozymes in the nematode's defence against pathogens.
Taking the Case: An Evaluation of Digital Case Study Libraries

Case study libraries have emerged from the development of educational resource tools as a potent contender due to their accessibility and flexibility in supporting various aspects of a learning curriculum. However, despite their advantages, the effective realization of such a tool presents a number of design challenges in its implementation. This study explores the ability of a collection of such case libraries to support its users, while revealing useful heuristics information derived from design characteristics affecting the usability of each system. Several interesting questions regarding specific deficiencies and usability issues are raised that may warrant additional exploration.
Greenspan’s Conundrum and the Fed’s Ability to Affect Long-Term Yields

In February 2005 Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noticed that the 10-year Treasury yields failed to increase despite a 150-basis-point increase in the federal funds rate as a “conundrum. ” This paper shows that the connection between the 10-year yield and the federal funds rate was severed in the late 1980s, well in advance of Greenspan’s observation. The paper hypothesize that the change occurred because the Federal Open Market Committee switched from using the federal funds rate as an operating instrument to using it to implement monetary policy and presents evidence from a variety of sources supporting the hypothesis. The analysis has implications for central banks’ interest rate policies.
PREDICTIVE LEARNING VIA RULE ENSEMBLES

General regression and classification models are constructed as linear combinations of simple rules derived from the data. Each rule consists of a conjunction of a small number of simple statements concerning the values of individual input variables. These rule ensembles are shown to produce predictive accuracy comparable to the best methods. However, their principal advantage lies in interpretation. Because of its simple form, each rule is easy to understand, as is its influence on individual predictions, selected subsets of predictions, or globally over the entire space of joint input variable values. Similarly, the degree of relevance of the respective input variables can be assessed globally, locally in different regions of the input space, or at individual prediction points. Techniques are presented for automatically identifying those variables that are involved in interactions with other variables, the strength and degree of those interactions, as well as the identities of the other variables with which they interact. Graphical representations are used to visualize both main and interaction effects.
Who bears social security taxes?: A meta-analysis approach

In this paper we apply the meta-regression technique to survey the empirical literature on the economic incidence of social security payroll taxes. In particular, we focus on the effects of taxation on wages, to test the conventional view that employees bear the burden due to lower net wages. Based on 45 empirical papers, we find that temporal fixed effects, key economic institutions, the tax wedge definition, and the temporal focus significantly affect the results. In the long run, workers bear between three quarters of the tax burden in Continental and Anglo-Saxon economies, and the whole tax burden in the Nordic ones. However, despite the numerous set of controlling variables, a significant part of the variability of the empirical literature remains unexplained.