Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Race and Histories: Examining Culturally Relevant Teaching in the U.S. History Classroom

Abstract In this practitioner research study, the author, a White social studies teacher, examined the intersection between his students’ race/ethnicity and their experiences learning history. Using critical race theory as a lens, the author employed mixed methods, analyzing teacher journaling, classroom artifacts, and student reflections, as well as survey and interview data from the students of color. The results showed that the teacher's attempt to use culturally relevant pedagogy had a positive impact on his students of color, but his pedagogy could also be improved with a greater inclusion of more ethnic and racial histories and examinations of U.S. history from international perspectives. This study highlights the importance of White teachers listening to the voices of their students of color when planning instruction.
Demo of DANTE : A Self-Adaptable Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Network

We propose a demo of DANTE, an unstructured peer-to-peer network with self-adapting capabilities. DANTE is able to adapt its topology to the traffic on the network. The adaptation mechanism drives the system to an optimal topology when the network is under very high or very low load conditions. We have developed both a simulator of DANTE and a graphical application that allows to see the network topology evolution. The goal of this demo is to introduce the fundamentals of DANTE, and use our software to show it at work.
The Contribution of the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System (DPICS) Warm-Up Segments in Assessing Parent-Child Interactions

This study evaluated the inclusion of uncoded segments in the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System, an analogue observation of parent-child interactions. The relationships between warm-up and coded segments were assessed, as well as the segments’ associations with parent ratings of parent and child behaviors. Sixty-nine non-referred parent-child dyads engaged in the observation. Parents completed measures about their parenting and children's behaviors. Significant differences were observed between the first situation's warm-up and coded segments, whereas minimal differences were found for the second situation. Findings suggest that the second warm-up segment may not be necessary for optimal assessment of parent-child interactions.
Imposing deviant immunity on the presensitized state.

Delayed hypersensitivity (DH) is an important immune effector modality that successfully wards off intracellular pathogens and many parasites, but also causes immunopathogenic injury to vital tissues. Particularly in the eye, DH has devastating effects that can lead to blindness. Ags injected into the anterior chamber of the eye of naive mice elicit a deviant form of systemic immunity in which DH is selectively down-regulated. Expression of DH in this model system is curtailed by regulatory CD8+ T cells. At present, we have determined whether injection of Ag into the anterior chamber of eyes of specifically sensitized mice also impairs DH expression. Our results indicate that DH is blunted or eliminated in previously primed mice when heterologous proteins, retinal autoantigens, or minor histocompatibility Ags are injected into the anterior chamber. Suppression is achieved in this system by Ag-specific CD8+ T cells, and failed DH can be imposed on immunized mice by i.v. injections of peritoneal exudate cells pulsed with Ag in vitro in the presence of TGF-beta. Thus, the immune regulatory mechanisms that operate to protect the eye from immunogenic inflammation can be invoked in previously sensitized mice. In addition, tolerance could not be generated in presensitized mice by either i.v. injection of soluble Ag or painting of hapten on UVB-exposed skin. It seems that the strategies used by the eye to create a deviant state of immunity in the face of pre-existing conventional immunity may be unique.
Structural Validation of a French Food Frequency Questionnaire of 94 Items

Background Food frequency questionnaires (FFQs) are used to estimate the usual food and nutrient intakes over a period of time. Such estimates can suffer from measurement errors, either due to bias induced by respondent’s answers or to errors induced by the structure of the questionnaire (e.g., using a limited number of food items and an aggregated food database with average portion sizes). The “structural validation” presented in this study aims to isolate and quantify the impact of the inherent structure of a FFQ on the estimation of food and nutrient intakes, independently of respondent’s perception of the questionnaire. Methods A semi-quantitative FFQ (n = 94 items, including 50 items with questions on portion sizes) and an associated aggregated food composition database (named the item-composition database) were developed, based on the self-reported weekly dietary records of 1918 adults (18–79 years-old) in the French Individual and National Dietary Survey 2 (INCA2), and the French CIQUAL 2013 food-composition database of all the foods (n = 1342 foods) declared as consumed in the population. Reference intakes of foods (“REF_FOOD”) and nutrients (“REF_NUT”) were calculated for each adult using the food-composition database and the amounts of foods self-reported in his/her dietary record. Then, answers to the FFQ were simulated for each adult based on his/her self-reported dietary record. “FFQ_FOOD” and “FFQ_NUT” intakes were estimated using the simulated answers and the item-composition database. Measurement errors (in %), spearman correlations and cross-classification were used to compare “REF_FOOD” with “FFQ_FOOD” and “REF_NUT” with “FFQ_NUT”. Results Compared to “REF_NUT,” “FFQ_NUT” total quantity and total energy intake were underestimated on average by 198 g/day and 666 kJ/day, respectively. “FFQ_FOOD” intakes were well estimated for starches, underestimated for most of the subgroups, and overestimated for some subgroups, in particular vegetables. Underestimation were mainly due to the use of portion sizes, leading to an underestimation of most of nutrients, except free sugars which were overestimated. Conclusion The “structural validation” by simulating answers to a FFQ based on a reference dietary survey is innovative and pragmatic and allows quantifying the error induced by the simplification of the method of collection.
When consensus fails: an analysis of the schism within the Italian Communist Party (1991)

Schisms within groups are extremely widespread, yet the phenomenon has been virtually ignored within social psychology. Indeed prominent theories of group process virtually exclude the possibility of schism by presupposing the unitary nature of group identity. In this paper we offer a social psychological approach to the schismatic process based on the idea that, while group members may expect to achieve consensus, the issue of where that consensus should reside may be a matter of argument. When differing constructions cannot be reconciled such that what one faction considers to represent group identity is seen by the another to contradict group identity, then the basis for schism exists. This approach is illustrated using an analysis of the 1991 split of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) into two organizations, the PDS and RC. Interviews with 26 members of these two organizations show that they produce different arguments concerning the identity of the categories involved. However, all the arguments are structured so as to construe the ingroup faction as consonant with the true identity of the PCI and the outgroup faction as dissonant with that identity. The implication of this analysis both for a social psychology of schism and for the conceptualization of group consensus are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Intermittent Androgen Suppression: Estimating Parameters for Individual Patients Based on Initial PSA Data in Response to Androgen Deprivation Therapy

When a physician decides on a treatment and its schedule for a specific patient, information gained from prior patients and experience in the past is taken into account. A more objective way to make such treatment decisions based on actual data would be useful to the clinician. Although there are many mathematical models proposed for various diseases, so far there is no mathematical method that accomplishes optimization of the treatment schedule using the information gained from past patients or “rapid learning” technology. In an attempt to use this approach, we integrate the information gained from patients previously treated with intermittent androgen suppression (IAS) with that from a current patient by first fitting the time courses of clinical data observed from the previously treated patients, then constructing the prior information of the parameter values of the mathematical model, and finally, maximizing the posterior probability for the parameters of the current patient using the prior information. Although we used data from prostate cancer patients, the proposed method is general, and thus can be applied to other diseases once an appropriate mathematical model is established for that disease.
Performance capture from sparse multi-view video

This paper proposes a new marker-less approach to capturing human performances from multi-view video. Our algorithm can jointly reconstruct spatio-temporally coherent geometry, motion and textural surface appearance of actors that perform complex and rapid moves. Furthermore, since our algorithm is purely meshbased and makes as few as possible prior assumptions about the type of subject being tracked, it can even capture performances of people wearing wide apparel, such as a dancer wearing a skirt. To serve this purpose our method efficiently and effectively combines the power of surface- and volume-based shape deformation techniques with a new mesh-based analysis-through-synthesis framework. This framework extracts motion constraints from video and makes the laser-scan of the tracked subject mimic the recorded performance. Also small-scale time-varying shape detail is recovered by applying model-guided multi-view stereo to refine the model surface. Our method delivers captured performance data at high level of detail, is highly versatile, and is applicable to many complex types of scenes that could not be handled by alternative marker-based or marker-free recording techniques.
An Integrated Simulator and Dataset that Combines Grasping and Vision for Deep Learning

Deep learning is an established framework for learning hierarchical data representations. While compute power is in abundance, one of the main challenges in applying this framework to robotic grasping has been obtaining the amount of data needed to learn these representations, and structuring the data to the task at hand. Among contemporary approaches in the literature, we highlight key properties that have encouraged the use of deep learning techniques, and in this paper, detail our experience in developing a simulator for collecting cylindrical precision grasps of a multi-fingered dexterous robotic hand.
Children's Memory for News: A Comparison of Three Presentation Media

A study was conducted to compare children's learning of news information from television versus from audio-only or printed text presentations of the same narrative content. Although previous research among adults has yielded contradictory findings, research with children has found that they consistently remember news better from television than from print. The experiment extended this work by comparing children's recall of news information from different presentation media and investigating whether the effectiveness of the different media is dependent on expectation of a memory test and the children's reading proficiency. A sample of 166 male and female 10- and 11-year-olds was presented with a sequence of news stories taken from a children's news program either in their original televised form, in soundtrack only, or in a print version. Half of the children were led to expect a memory test, and half were not. The results of the cued recall test indicated that children learned more from television news than from the print and audio versions, regardless of their reading proficiency. The advantage of television was found only for information that had been accompanied by semantically redundant pictures in the televised version, providing support for the dual-coding hypothesis
The Semantic Wildcard Rada

The IRSLO (Information Retrieval using Semantic and Lexical Operators) project aims at integrating semantic and lexical information into the retrieval process, in order to overcome some of the impediments currently encountered with today’s information retrieval systems. This paper introduces the semantic wildcard, one of the most powerful operators implemented in IRSLO, which allows for searches along general-specific lines. The semantic wildcard, denoted with #, acts in a manner similar with the lexical wildcard, but at semantic levels, enabling the retrieval of subsumed concepts. For instance, a search for animal# will match any concept that is of type animal, including dog, goat and so forth, thereby going beyond the explicit knowledge stated in texts. This operator, together with a lexical locality operator that enables the retrieval of paragraphs rather than entire documents, have been both implemented in the IRSLO system and tested on requests of information run against an index of 130,000 documents. Significant improvement was observed over classic keyword-based retrieval systems in terms of precision, recall and success rate.
Experience-Dependent Modification of Primary Sensory Synapses in the Mammalian Olfactory Bulb

Experience-dependent changes in neural circuits have traditionally been investigated several synapses downstream of sensory input. Whether experience can alter the strength of primary sensory synapses remains mostly unknown. To address this issue, we investigated the consequences of odor deprivation on synapses made by olfactory sensory axons in the olfactory bulb of rats. Odor deprivation triggered an increase in the probability of glutamate release from olfactory sensory neuron synapses. Deprivation also increased the amplitude of quantal synaptic currents mediated by AMPA- and NMDA-type glutamate receptors, as well as the abundance of these receptors in the glomerular region. Our results demonstrate that sensory experience is capable of modulating synaptic strength at the earliest stages of information transfer between the environment and an organism. Such compensatory experience-dependent changes may represent a mechanism of sensory gain control.
Rethinking Power in Schools

Understanding facilitative aspects of power is necessary for analyzing processes and outcomes in today's schools. Facilitative, interactive power has become commonplace when no single individual or role commands decision-making control without dependence on expert knowledge and cooperation of colleagues. Specific examples of such circumstances include the individualized educational program process in special education and current practices in clinical supervision. These demonstrate the limitations of traditional concepts of power and the usefulness of facilitative power for capturing the essential nature of professional interactions between principals, staff, and nonprofessionals in schools.
Targeting Antigen to MHC Class II Molecules Promotes Efficient Cross-Presentation and Enhances Immunotherapy1

An efficient pathway of cross-presentation common to a range of dendritic cell (DC) populations was identified by targeting Ag to MHC class II molecules. This finding was achieved by conjugating Ag to M1, which is a modified version of the superantigen streptococcal mitogenic exotoxin Z-2 that binds to MHC class II molecules but cannot directly stimulate T cells. M1 conjugates were efficiently presented to CD4+ and CD8+ T cells by bone marrow-derived DC and Langerhans cells in vitro. Whereas nonconjugated Ag was preferentially cross-presented by splenic CD8α+ DC in vivo, M1-conjugated Ag was cross-presented by all dendritic subtypes assessed. Potent effector T cell responses with antitumor activity were elicited when M1 conjugates were injected together with an adjuvant. This method of Ag delivery has significant potential in therapeutic applications.
Multiscale saliency detection using principle component analysis

In this paper, we propose a new multiscale saliency detection algorithm based on principal component analysis. To measure saliency of pixels in a given image, we first segment the image into patches and then use the principal component analysis to reduce the dimensions, in which it throw out dimensions that are noises with respect to the saliency calculation. The saliency of a patch is computed as the dissimilarities of colors and the spatial distance between it and other patches. Finally, we implement our algorithm through multiple scales so it can further decrease the saliency of background. Our method was compared with other saliency detection approaches using two public image datasets. Experimental results show that our method outperforms current state-of-the-art methods on predicting human fixations and salient object segmentation.
Susceptibility to motion sickness is not increased following spinal cord injury.

BACKGROUND There are two leading theories on the origin of motion sickness. One, the sensory conflict theory, states that sensory information provided by one sensory channel does not match the expected input from another channel; commonly, these two inputs originate in the vestibular system and the eyes. The second theory - the postural instability theory - states that motion sickness comes about not through sensory conflict, but through an inability to control one's posture. OBJECTIVE Given that people with a motor-complete spinal cord injury cannot control their muscles below the level of the spinal lesion, we predicted that susceptibility to motion sickness would be higher in individuals who have suffered a spinal cord injury. METHODS Twenty-one people living with chronic spinal cord injury (9 quadriplegics, 12 paraplegics) completed the Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire (MSSQ), via an online survey, to compare susceptibility to motion sickness before and after injury. RESULTS Spinal cord injury, regardless of level, did not produce an increase in susceptibility to motion sickness. CONCLUSION We have tested the general validity of the postural-instability theory by assessing susceptibility to motion sickness in individuals with spinal cord injury. Despite the loss of postural control, there was no increase in motion sickness susceptibility.
Apolipoprotein A1 Inhibits TGF-β1–Induced Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition of Alveolar Epithelial Cells

Background Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive and lethal lung disease characterized by the accumulation of excessive fibroblasts and myofibroblasts in the extracellular matrix. The transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1)–induced epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is thought to be a possible source of fibroblasts/myofibroblasts in IPF lungs. We have previously reported that apolipoprotein A1 (ApoA1) has anti-fibrotic activity in experimental lung fibrosis. In this study, we determine whether ApoA1 modulates TGF-β1–induced EMT in experimental lung fibrosis and clarify its mechanism of action. Methods The A549 alveolar epithelial cell line was treated with TGF-β1 with or without ApoA1. Morphological changes and expression of EMT-related markers, including E-cadherin, N-cadherin, and α-smooth muscle actin were evaluated. Expressions of Smad and non-Smad mediators and TGF-β1 receptor type 1 (TβRI) and type 2 (TβRII) were measured. The silica-induced lung fibrosis model was established using ApoA1 overexpressing transgenic mice. Results TGF-β1–treated A549 cells were changed to the mesenchymal morphology with less E-cadherin and more N-cadherin expression. The addition of ApoA1 inhibited the TGF-β1–induced change of the EMT phenotype. ApoA1 inhibited the TGF-β1–induced increase in the phosphorylation of Smad2 and 3 as well as that of ERK and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase mediators. In addition, ApoA1 reduced the TGF-β1–induced increase in TβRI and TβRII expression. In a mouse model of silica-induced lung fibrosis, ApoA1 overexpression reduced the silica-mediated effects, which were increased N-cadherin and decreased E-cadherin expression in the alveolar epithelium. Conclusion Our data demonstrate that ApoA1 inhibits TGF-β1–induced EMT in experimental lung fibrosis.
Establishment of a voluntary electronic Chlamydia trachomatis laboratory surveillance system in Germany, 2008 to 2014

Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) infections are not reportable in Germany and limited data on prevalence are available. CT screening has been offered free of charge to pregnant women since 1995 and to all women under 25 years since 2008. For symptomatic women and men, diagnostic testing is covered by statutory health insurance. We describe the establishment of a nationwide, laboratory-based, voluntary sentinel that electronically collects information on all performed CT tests with test results, test reason and patient information. The sentinel represents one third of all performed CT tests in Germany. In the period from 2008 to 2014, 3,877,588 CT tests were reported, 93% in women. Women aged 20–24 years and men aged 25–29 years were the most frequently tested age groups. The overall proportion of positive tests (PPT) among women was 3.9% and among men 11.0%. The highest PPT among women was in the age groups 15–19 (6.8%) and 20–24 years (5.9%), and among men in the age groups 20–24 (19.2%), 15–19 (15.4%) and 25–29 years (14.8%). The PPT for CT was high among women and men younger than 25 years. Prevention is urgently needed. Monitoring of CT infection in Germany should be continued.
CT Image Denoising with Perceptive Deep Neural Networks

Increasing use of CT in modern medical practice has raised concerns over associated radiation dose. Reduction of radiation dose associated with CT can increase noise and artifacts, which can adversely affect diagnostic confidence. Denoising of low-dose CT images on the other hand can help improve diagnostic confidence, which however is a challenging problem due to its ill-posed nature, since one noisy image patch may correspond to many different output patches. In the past decade, machine learning based approaches have made quite impressive progress in this direction. However, most of those methods, including the recently popularized deep learning techniques, aim for minimizing mean-squared-error (MSE) between a denoised CT image and the ground truth, which results in losing important structural details due to over-smoothing, although the PSNR based performance measure looks great. In this work, we introduce a new perceptual similarity measure as the objective function for a deep convolutional neural network to facilitate CT image denoising. Instead of directly computing MSE for pixel-to-pixel intensity loss, we compare the perceptual features of a denoised output against those of the ground truth in a feature space. Therefore, our proposed method is capable of not only reducing the image noise levels, but also keeping the critical structural information at the same time. Promising results have been obtained in our experiments with a large number of CT images.