Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New possibilities in thinking, speaking and doing: Early childhood teachers' professional identity constructions and ethics

THE EARLY CHILDHOOD SECTOR HAS in recent times engaged in processes of professionalisation. The expectations associated with engagement in professional relationships is one element of such processes. Another element is an expectation of ethical practice. The paper considers how particular representations of relationships and representations of ethics contribute to the construction of the professional identities of early childhood teachers. Discussion is presented of the ways early childhood teachers experience relationships with parents and colleagues. Possibilities of ‘new’ constructions of professionalism are explored through disruptions to taken-for-granted discursive practices which shape relationships between teachers and parents and between teachers and colleagues. To engage in such disruptions, a theoretical framework of poststructuralism is used to analyse early childhood literature, which works to construct particular identities for early childhood teachers. This analysis identifies possible challenges to a binary response of either acceptance of, or resistance to, dominant discourses at work in identity constructions. One outcome of this challenge is to argue the possibility of holding opposites together in the work of identity construction. Holding opposites together makes possible new, socially and contextually informed ways to think, speak and do constructions of these identities. Representation of ethics as a relational construct is located within these new possibilities of professional identity constructions.
Stability of beta coefficients of sector and subsector portfolios in an uncertain environment

This paper is a first approach to the study of beta coefficients using fuzzy regression. We intend to improve the calculation of the sector and subsector betas of the Spanish Stock Market using fuzzy regression in an attempt to incorporate all future inaccuracies and the subjectivity associated with decision making. Our objective is to use all the information provided by the market to determine the systematic risk.
Healthcare resource use and costs associated with renal impairment in US patients with bone metastases from solid tumors

Introduction During cancer progression, more than half of patients develop renal insufficiency, including chronic kidney disease. The primary and secondary objectives of this study were to estimate healthcare resource use and costs, respectively, associated with renal impairment in patients with bone metastases from solid tumors in the United States. Methods and materials This was a retrospective, observational cohort study conducted using administrative claims data for individuals with solid tumors and bone metastases. Control patients were matched to renal impairment patients using propensity scores (ratio up to 3:1) based on demographics, clinical characteristics, and baseline costs. Average per-patient per-year healthcare resource utilization and costs (total costs and cost components; 2013 dollars) were reported. Results In total, 2616 renal impairment patients were matched to 7211 control patients. Renal impairment patients had greater healthcare resource use compared with controls, including a greater mean number of hospital admissions (4.4 versus 2.1), longer average stay per hospital admission (7.4 versus 6.5 days), as well as greater mean number of physician office visits (22.9 versus 18.8), emergency department visits (3.1 versus 2.0), and hospital-based outpatient visits (18.8 versus 16.0) compared with control patients. Total costs were > $50,000 higher among renal impairment patients ($142,267 versus $88,839; P < 0.001), with hospital costs accounting for $72,557 for renal impairment patients, and $27,858 for control patients (P < 0.001). Conclusion The healthcare resource use and costs associated with renal impairment in patients with bone metastases from solid tumors is high; efforts to reduce renal impairment in this population, including the potential avoidance of nephrotoxic agents, are warranted.
Response to "Comments on 'Formal Methods Application: An Empirical Tale of Software Development'"

We respond to criticism by D. Berry and W. Tichy of our paper that appeared in the March 2002 issue of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. Many of the supposed faults they identify in our experiment are a result of a misunderstanding on their part, while others are inherent aspects of an educational experiment. We present counterarguments that explain why our experiment is valid.
Fire emissions from C3 and C4 vegetation and their influence on interannual variability of atmospheric CO2 and δ13CO2

Measurements of atmospheric trace gases provide evidence that fire emissions increased during the 1997/1998 El Niño event and these emissions contributed substantially to global CO2, CO, CH4, and δ13CO2 anomalies. Interpretation and effective use of these atmospheric observations to assess changes in the global carbon cycle requires an understanding of the amount of biomass consumed during fires, the molar ratios of emitted trace gases, and the carbon isotope ratio of emissions. Here we used satellite data of burned area, a map of C4 canopy cover, and a global biogeochemical model to quantitatively estimate contributions of C3 and C4 vegetation to fire emissions during 1997–2001. We found that although C4 grasses contributed to 31% of global mean emissions over this period, they accounted for only 24% of the interannual emissions anomalies. Much of the drought and increase in fire emissions during the 1997/1998 El Niño occurred in tropical regions dominated by C3 vegetation. As a result, the δ13CO2 of the global fire emissions anomaly was depleted (−23.9‰), and explained approximately 27% of the observed atmospheric decrease in δ13CO2 between mid‐1997 and the end of 1998 (and 61% of the observed variance in δ13CO2 during 1997–2001). Using fire emissions that were optimized in an atmospheric CO inversion, fires explained approximately 57% of the observed atmospheric δ13CO2 decrease between mid‐1997 and the end of 1998 (and 72% of the variance in δ13CO2 during 1997–2001). The severe drought in tropical forests during the 1997/1998 El Niño appeared to allow humans to ignite fires in forested areas that were normally too moist to burn. Adjacent C4 grasses (in woodlands and moist savannas) also burned, but emissions were limited, in part, by aboveground biomass levels that were 2 orders of magnitude smaller than C3 biomass levels. Reduced fuel availability in some C4 ecosystems may have led to a negative feedback on emissions.
The Effects of Ca2+ and MgADP on Force Development during and after Muscle Length Changes

The goal of this study was to compare the effects of Ca2+ and MgADP activation on force development in skeletal muscles during and after imposed length changes. Single fibres dissected from the rabbit psoas were (i) activated in pCa2+4.5 and pCa2+6.0, or (ii) activated in pCa2+4.5 before and after administration of 10 mM MgADP. Fibres were activated in sarcomere lengths (SL) of 2.65 µm and 2.95 µm, and subsequently stretched or shortened (5%SL at 1.0 SL.s−1) to reach a final SL of 2.80 µm. The kinetics of force during stretch were not altered by pCa2+ or MgADP, but the fast change in the slope of force development (P1) observed during shortening and the corresponding SL extension required to reach the change (L1) were higher in pCa2+6.0 (P1 = 0.22±0.02 Po; L1 = 5.26±0.24 nm.HS.1) than in pCa2+4.5 (P1 = 0.15±0.01 Po; L1 = 4.48±0.25 nm.HS.1). L1 was also increased by MgADP activation during shortening. Force enhancement after stretch was lower in pCa2+4.5 (14.9±5.4%) than in pCa2+6.0 (38.8±7.5%), while force depression after shortening was similar in both Ca2+ concentrations. The stiffness accompanied the force behavior after length changes in all situations. MgADP did not affect the force behavior after length changes, and stiffness did not accompany the changes in force development after stretch. Altogether, these results suggest that the mechanisms of force generation during and after stretch are different from those obtained during and after shortening.
DjiNN and Tonic: DNN as a service and its implications for future warehouse scale computers

As applications such as Apple Siri, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana, and Amazon Echo continue to gain traction, webservice companies are adopting large deep neural networks (DNN) for machine learning challenges such as image processing, speech recognition, natural language processing, among others. A number of open questions arise as to the design of a server platform specialized for DNN and how modern warehouse scale computers (WSCs) should be outfitted to provide DNN as a service for these applications. In this paper, we present DjiNN, an open infrastructure for DNN as a service in WSCs, and Tonic Suite, a suite of 7 end-to-end applications that span image, speech, and language processing. We use DjiNN to design a high throughput DNN system based on massive GPU server designs and provide insights as to the varying characteristics across applications. After studying the throughput, bandwidth, and power properties of DjiNN and Tonic Suite, we investigate several design points for future WSC architectures. We investigate the total cost of ownership implications of having a WSC with a disaggregated GPU pool versus a WSC composed of homogeneous integrated GPU servers. We improve DNN throughput by over 120× for all but one application (40× for Facial Recognition) on an NVIDIA K40 GPU. On a GPU server composed of 8 NVIDIA K40s, we achieve near-linear scaling (around 1000× throughput improvement) for 3 of the 7 applications. Through our analysis, we also find that GPU-enabled WSCs improve total cost of ownership over CPU-only designs by 4-20×, depending on the composition of the workload.
A Probabilistic Peeling Decoder to Efficiently Analyze Generalized LDPC Codes Over the BEC

In this paper, we analyze the tradeoff between coding rate and asymptotic performance of a class of generalized low-density parity-check (GLDPC) codes constructed by including a certain fraction of generalized constraint (GC) nodes in the graph. The rate of the GLDPC ensemble is bounded using classical results on linear block codes, namely, Hamming bound and Varshamov bound. We also study the impact of the decoding method used at GC nodes. To incorporate both bounded-distance (BD) and maximum likelihood (ML) decoding at GC nodes into our analysis without resorting on multi-edge type of degree distributions (DDs), we propose the probabilistic peeling decoding (P-PD) algorithm, which models the decoding step at every GC node as an instance of a Bernoulli random variable with a successful decoding probability that depends on both the GC block code and its decoding algorithm. The P-PD asymptotic performance over the BEC can be efficiently predicted using standard techniques for LDPC codes such as density evolution (DE) or the differential equation method. Furthermore, for a class of GLDPC ensembles, we demonstrate that the simulated P-PD performance accurately predicts the actual performance of the GLPDC code under ML decoding at GC nodes. We illustrate our analysis for GLDPC code ensembles with regular and irregular DDs. In all cases, we show that a large fraction of GC nodes is required to reduce the original gap to capacity, but the optimal fraction is strictly smaller than one. We then consider techniques to further reduce the gap to capacity by means of random puncturing, and the inclusion of a certain fraction of generalized variable nodes in the graph.
Staying or Leaving the Course: Non-Completion and Retention.

Contents Foreword to the Second Edition Preface Acknowledgments Part 1: What Do We Know About Retention and Withdrawal Rates? The Context 3 Terminology, Definitions and Interpretations 21 Data Collection: Scope, Methods and Purposes 33 Non-completion Rates 50 Variables Affecting Completion Rates 61 Part 2 What Do We Know About the Reasons for Non-Completion? Research and Institutional Evidence 85 Variations and Common Findings 102 Part 3 Strategies for Improving Retention Re-course Contact and Transition 121 On-course Support 131 Academic Support 145 Provision of Student Support Services 158 Conclusions 168 Bibliography 183 Appendices 192 Index 197
Polyelectrolyte precipitation of proteins: I. The effect of reactor conditions

Lysozyme was recovered from egg white by continuous precipitation with polyacrylic acid (molecular weight of 4 × 106). Precipitator residence time and shear rate had significant effects on the size distribution of the precipitate, but no clear effects on the compositions. Precipitate mean size increased with higher shear, indicating growth phenomena predominating over breakage. Also, an enhancement of growth rate at small sizes was noted. The Camp number successfully characterized the interaction of shear rate and residence time on the particle size.
The debated mind : evolutionary psychology versus ethnography

In a further development of the nature-nurture debate, this collection of articles questions how the human mind influences the content and organization of culture. In the study of mental activity, can the effects of evolution and history be teased apart? Evolutionary psychologists argue that cultural transmission is constrained by our genetic inheritance. Few social and cultural anthropologists have found this argument to be relevant to their work and many would doubt its validity. This book uniquely pitches the arguments for innatism against ethnographic perspectives that call into question the theoretical foundations of orthodox evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Ultimately the aim of the debate is to create an original set of mutually compatible theories that will open up new areas for interdisciplinary research.
Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of carcinoid tumours. Part 1: The gastrointestinal tract. A statement from a Canadian National Carcinoid Expert Group

Carcinoid tumours are relatively rare and, in general, slow growing. They can be “non-functioning” tumours, presenting as a tumour mass, or “functioning” tumours secondary to the production of several biopeptides leading to the carcinoid syndrome. Though these tumours represent 0.25% of an oncology practice, a proper understanding of the clinical course of the disease and of the importance of appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic measures is very important. Proper patient management can lead to cure, particularly if the tumour can be fully resected, or to long-term palliation with medical treatment or cytoreductive surgery, or both, with significant prolongation of survival. A good understanding of the use of somatostatin analogues to achieve effective symptomatic control and of the importance of adequate follow-up and cardiac monitoring to prevent or effectively treat cardiac complications can contribute significantly to optimal control of this complex disease, ultimately improving the quality of life of affected patients. This article, developed by a group of Canadian experts, provides a framework that will assist clinicians in taking an optimal approach to managing their patients with carcinoid tumour.
The Anticancer Activity Compared Between Triptorelin and a New Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone Analogue

Gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) plays a key role in reproduction. This decapeptide is synthesized and released by hypothalamus and induces the pituitary gonadotrop cells to release pituitary gonadotropin hormones. In some extrapituitary compartments GnRH and its receptor act as part of the autocrine regulatory system of cell proliferation. The anticancer activity of GnRH and its analogues has been observed by many researchers. In this study the anticancer activity of a new analogue of GnRH and triptorelin was investigated by cell proliferation assay. Results indicate that proliferation of human breast and ovarian cancer cell lines are dose-dependently inhibited. The inhibitory efficiency of the new analogue is proved to be higher than the original triptorelin. In addition to its antimitogenic activity, evidence was found for the involvement of the apoptotic mechanism in the action of the new analogue and triptorelin. In conclusion, the new analogue can be considered as a good pharmaceutical candidate.
Preparation of Polyaminopyridines Using a CuI/l-Proline-Catalyzed C-N Polycoupling Reaction

Polyaminopyridines (PAPy) were chemically prepared from amino-bromopyridines by a CuI/L-proline-catalyzed C-N polycondensation reaction. The formation of the polymer was confirmed by GPC, XRD, XRF, FTIR, UV-vis (λmax = 400 nm), 1 H and 13 C NMR. The number-average molecular weights (Mn) were estimated by end-group analysis using X-ray fluorescence (up to 6000 Da). TGA analysis of PAPy with higher Mn showed greater thermal stability up to 170 o C. Viscosity measurements of polymer in formic acid at 30 o C indicated a polyelectrolyte nature of PAPy solutions. Furthermore, the amorphicity of the material was observed by X-ray diffraction analysis.
Calculating the fetal fraction for noninvasive prenatal testing based on genome‐wide nucleosome profiles

While large fetal copy number aberrations can generally be detected through sequencing of DNA in maternal blood, the reliability of tests depends on the fraction of DNA that originates from the fetus. Existing methods to determine this fetal fraction require additional work or are limited to male fetuses. We aimed to create a sex‐independent approach without additional work.
Learning to speciate: The biased learning of mate preferences promotes adaptive radiation

Bursts of rapid repeated speciation called adaptive radiations have generated much of Earth's biodiversity and fascinated biologists since Darwin, but we still do not know why some lineages radiate and others do not. Understanding what causes assortative mating to evolve rapidly and repeatedly in the same lineage is key to understanding adaptive radiation. Many species that have undergone adaptive radiations exhibit mate preference learning, where individuals acquire mate preferences by observing the phenotypes of other members of their populations. Mate preference learning can be biased if individuals also learn phenotypes to avoid in mates, and shift their preferences away from these avoided phenotypes. We used individual‐based computational simulations to study whether biased and unbiased mate preference learning promotes ecological speciation and adaptive radiation. We found that ecological speciation can be rapid and repeated when mate preferences are biased, but is inhibited when mate preferences are learned without bias. Our results suggest that biased mate preference learning may play an important role in generating animal biodiversity through adaptive radiation.
A Novel Integrated Score Index of Echocardiographic Indices for the Evaluation of Left Ventricular Diastolic Function

Background We propose a novel integrated score index, which could be used to quantify and grade left ventricular (LV) diastolic function. Methods We enrolled 629 participants [393 healthy subjects, 145 with hypertension (HTN), 24 with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), and 67 with coronary artery disease (CAD)]. This score index was with a score of 1 for an E/A ratio < 1, a score of 1 for a septal e’/a’ ratio ≤ 0.8, a score of 2 for a lateral e’/a’ ratio ≤ 1, a score of 2 for a septal E/e’ ratio ≥10–15, a score of 3 for a lateral E/e’ ratio ≥8–15, and a score of 1 for a deceleration time >240 ms. The sum of each score was considered as the final value in this scoring method (either a septal or a lateral E/e’ ratio > 15 was given a total score of 10, regardless of the other measurements). Results After analysis, the AUROC of this integrated score index for predicting any diastolic dysfunction (discriminated by the American Society of Echocardiography guidelines) was 0.962, and the AUROC of the method from the logistic regression was 0.970. The mean values of the score index for the groups were 3.81 ± 0.12 in healthy, 6.48 ± 0.19 in HTN, 7.35 ± 0.46 in HCM, and 6.62 ± 0.29 in CAD. Using the score index, the healthy subjects obtained lower scores compared with those of HTN (p = 0.00), HCM (p = 0.00), and CAD (p = 0.00). Therefore, this score index could discriminate patients with diseases with impaired diastolic function from the healthy subjects when the total sum of the score was equal to or greater than 4. Conclusions If the presently used methods cannot allow the clear diagnosis of LV diastolic dysfunction, this integrated score index might be helpful for discriminating diseases with impaired diastolic function.
Incremental learning of latent structural SVM for weakly supervised image classification

Visual learning with weak supervision is a promising research area, since it offers the possibility to build large image datasets at reasonable cost. In this paper, we address the problem of weakly supervised object detection, where the goal is to predict the label of the image using object position as latent variable. We propose a new method that builds upon the Latent Structural SVM (LSSVM) formalism. Specifically, we introduce an original coarse-to-fine approach that limits the evolution of the latent parameter subspace. This incremental strategy drives the learning towards better solutions, providing a model with increased predictive accuracy. In addition, this leads to a significant speed up during learning and inference compared to standard sliding window methods. Experiments carried out on Mammal dataset validate the good performances and fast training of the method compared to state-of-the-art works.
Of Disasters and Dragon Kings: A Statistical Analysis of Nuclear Power Incidents and Accidents

We perform a statistical study of risk in nuclear energy systems. This study provides and analyzes a data set that is twice the size of the previous best data set on nuclear incidents and accidents, comparing three measures of severity: the industry standard International Nuclear Event Scale, the Nuclear Accident Magnitude Scale of radiation release, and cost in U.S. dollars. The rate of nuclear accidents with cost above 20 MM 2013 USD, per reactor per year, has decreased from the 1970s until the present time. Along the way, the rate dropped significantly after Chernobyl (April 1986) and is expected to be roughly stable around a level of 0.003, suggesting an average of just over one event per year across the current global fleet. The distribution of costs appears to have changed following the Three Mile Island major accident (March 1979). The median cost became approximately 3.5 times smaller, but an extremely heavy tail emerged, being well described by a Pareto distribution with parameter α = 0.5–0.6. For instance, the cost of the two largest events, Chernobyl and Fukushima (March 2011), is equal to nearly five times the sum of the 173 other events. We also document a significant runaway disaster regime in both radiation release and cost data, which we associate with the “dragon‐king” phenomenon. Since the major accident at Fukushima (March 2011) occurred recently, we are unable to quantify an impact of the industry response to this disaster. Excluding such improvements, in terms of costs, our range of models suggests that there is presently a 50% chance that (i) a Fukushima event (or larger) occurs every 60–150 years, and (ii) that a Three Mile Island event (or larger) occurs every 10–20 years. Further—even assuming that it is no longer possible to suffer an event more costly than Chernobyl or Fukushima—the expected annual cost and its standard error bracket the cost of a new plant. This highlights the importance of improvements not only immediately following Fukushima, but also deeper improvements to effectively exclude the possibility of “dragon‐king” disasters. Finally, we find that the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) is inconsistent in terms of both cost and radiation released. To be consistent with cost data, the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters would need to have between an INES level of 10 and 11, rather than the maximum of 7.