Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring and Enhancing Student Engagement With Learning

• Bring together people who were most likely to apply new ideas into practice • Critically review existing practices of student engagement • Relate New Zealand initiatives to international practice • Generate ideas for possible future practice • Apply the knowledge gained to curriculum and enhancement of the student learning experience • Explore how these initiatives might be applied to quality assurance processes • Record findings, outcomes and next steps.
Joint Source-Channel Coding for Correlated Gaussian Sources Over a Gaussian MAC with Side Information

We consider the transmission of correlated Gaussian sources over a Gaussian multiple access channel (GMAC) with side information. Three joint source-channel coding schemes: Amplify and Forward (AF), Separation based (SB) and a coding scheme developed by Lapidoth and Tinguely (LT) are studied. Various methods are proposed to effectively utilize the side information with these schemes such that the sum of the distortions is minimized. The performance of the three schemes is also compared. It is found that AF is the best at low SNR but the worst under high SNR. Also, decoder side information is more useful than encoder side information.
CRD-BP/IMP1 Expression Characterizes Cord Blood CD34+ Stem Cells and Affects c-myc and IGF-II Expression in MCF-7 Cancer Cells*

The coding region determinant-binding protein/insulin-like growth factor II mRNA-binding protein (CRD-BP/IMP1) is an RNA-binding protein specifically recognizing c-myc, leader 3′ IGF-II and tau mRNAs, and the H19 RNA. CRD-BP/IMP1 is predominantly expressed in embryonal tissues but is de novo activated and/or overexpressed in various human neoplasias. To address the question of whether CRD-BP/IMP1 expression characterizes certain cell types displaying distinct proliferation and/or differentiation properties (i.e. stem cells), we isolated cell subpopulations from human bone marrow, mobilized peripheral blood, and cord blood, all sources known to contain stem cells, and monitored for its expression. CRD-BP/IMP1 was detected only in cord blood-derived CD34+ stem cells and not in any other cell type of either adult or cord blood origin. Adult BM CD34+ cells cultured in the presence of 5′-azacytidine expressed de novo CRD-BP/IMP1, suggesting that epigenetic modifications may be responsible for its silencing in adult non-expressing cells. Furthermore, by applying the short interfering RNA methodology in MCF-7 cells, we observed, subsequent to knocking down CRD-BP/IMP1, decreased c-myc expression, increased IGF-II mRNA levels, and reduced cell proliferation rates. These data 1) suggest a normal role for CRD-BP/IMP1 in pluripotent stem cells with high renewal capacity, like the CB CD34+ cells, 2) indicate that altered methylation may directly or indirectly affect its expression in adult cells, 3) imply that its de novo activation in cancer cells may affect the expression of c-Myc and insulin-like growth factor II, and 4) indicate that the inhibition of CRD-BP/IMP1 expression might affect cancer cell proliferation.
The Evolution of Transgenerational Integration of Information in Heterogeneous Environments

An organism’s phenotype can be influenced by maternal cues and directly perceived environmental cues, as well as by its genotype at polymorphic loci, which can be interpreted as a genetic cue. In fluctuating environments, natural selection favors organisms that efficiently integrate different sources of information about the likely success of phenotypic alternatives. In such situations, it can be beneficial to pass on maternal cues that offspring can respond to. A maternal cue could be based on environmental cues directly perceived by the mother but also partly on cues that were passed on by the grandmother. We have used a mathematical model to investigate how the passing of maternal cues and the integration of different sources of information evolve in response to qualitatively different kinds of temporal and spatial environmental fluctuations. The model shows that the passing of maternal cues and the transgenerational integration of sources of information readily evolve. Factors such as the degree of temporal autocorrelation, the predictive accuracy of different environmental cues, and the level of gene flow strongly influence the expression of adaptive maternal cues and the relative weights given to different sources of information. We outline the main features of the relation between the characteristics of environmental fluctuations and the adaptive systems of phenotype determination and compare these predictions with empirical studies on cue integration.
On context-dependent neural networks and speaker adaptation

This paper describes evaluation of a neural network based hybrid LVCSR system. The novelty of the evaluated hybrid system lies in speaker adaptation techniques that are employed to increase performance of neural networks for context-dependent phonetic units modeling. The performance comparison is done as follows. First, performances of different hybrid systems employing either a context-independent neural network or a context-dependent neural network are compared. Second, the influence of the recently published speaker adaptation technique called MELT is evaluated. Furthermore, several possible approaches to conversion of posterior probabilities into observation likelihoods, which are necessary for a hybrid LVSCR systems, are described and discussed in this paper.
Mesolimbic dopamine projections mediate cue-motivated reward seeking but not reward retrieval in rats

Efficient foraging requires an ability to coordinate discrete reward-seeking and reward-retrieval behaviors. We used pathway-specific chemogenetic inhibition to investigate how rats’ mesolimbic and mesocortical dopamine circuits contribute to the expression and modulation of reward seeking and retrieval. Inhibiting ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons disrupted the tendency for reward-paired cues to motivate reward seeking, but spared their ability to increase attempts to retrieve reward. Similar effects were produced by inhibiting dopamine inputs to nucleus accumbens, but not medial prefrontal cortex. Inhibiting dopamine neurons spared the suppressive effect of reward devaluation on reward seeking, an assay of goal-directed behavior. Attempts to retrieve reward persisted after devaluation, indicating they were habitually performed as part of a fixed action sequence. Our findings show that complete bouts of reward seeking and retrieval are behaviorally and neurally dissociable from bouts of reward seeking without retrieval. This dichotomy may prove useful for uncovering mechanisms of maladaptive behavior.
Visual words selection based on class separation measures

Bag of Visual Words is one of the most effective image representations. One of the optimization methods for BoVW is the selection of the most informative visual words, which leads to more compact visual dictionaries and more accurate categorization. In this paper we investigate the problem of feature selection in the Bag of Visual Words framework. The main contribution is the presentation of two novel methods for visual word selection. The first one choses the features which are the best at separating one class from the rest (MFM1 one-vs-all). In the second method, the features which are the best at separating class pairs are selected (MSF6 one-vs-one). The effectiveness of the proposed methods is verified empirically on two different image datasets.
Characterization and Analysis of a Stable Serotype-Associated Membrane Protein (P30) of Mycoplasma agalactiae

ABSTRACT The gene for a 30-kDa immunodominant antigen, P30, ofMycoplasma agalactiae was cloned from type strain PG2 and expressed in Escherichia coli. P30 is encoded on a monocistronic operon determined by two −10 boxes and a possible −35 region constituting the potential promoter, and a transcription termination site. The gene for the 266-amino-acid protein is preceded by a polypurine-rich region designed as the consensus sequence for a ribosome-binding site. Analysis of the amino acid sequence of P30 revealed the presence of a recognition site for a prokaryotic signal peptidase II at amino acid (aa) 24, indicating that P30 is a transmembrane protein. Moreover, Triton X-114 phase partitioning ofM. agalactiae PG2 total antigen revealed that P30 is strongly hydrophobic and hence a possible membrane component. Immunoblot analysis using the monospecific polyclonal anti-P30-His serum indicated that P30 is specific to M. agalactiae. Furthermore, PCR amplification with specific primers forp30 and Southern blot analysis revealed the presence of the gene in all M. agalactiae strains tested and its absence in the other mycoplasma species. Among 27 strains of M. agalactiae studied, 20 strains belonging to the common serotypes A to D, including PG2, expressed P30 or part of it as detected by the monospecific polyclonal anti-P30 antibodies. The other seven strains belonging to the rarely isolated serotypes E to H were negative for P30. The p30 gene was sequenced in 15 strains of M. agalactiae, 10 of which expressed P30 or at least part of it and 5 of which did not express P30. The negative strains carried mutations in both −10 boxes of the promoters. These mutations seem to be responsible for the lack of P30 expression in these strains. Analysis of sera from sheep that were experimentally infected with M. agalactiae revealed that P30 induced a strong and persistent immune response which was still very high two months after infection. In contrast, currently used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay serology gave only low titers.
The Formation of Recent and Remote Memory Is Associated with Time-Dependent Formation of Dendritic Spines in the Hippocampus and Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Although hippocampal–cortical interactions are crucial for the formation of enduring declarative memories, synaptic events that govern long-term memory storage remain mostly unclear. We present evidence that neuronal structural changes, i.e., dendritic spine growth, develop sequentially in the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex (aCC) during the formation of recent and remote contextual fear memory. We found that mice placed in a conditioning chamber for one 7 min conditioning session and exposed to five footshocks (duration, 2 s; intensity, 0.7 mA; interstimulus interval, 60 s) delivered through the grid floor exhibited robust fear response when returned to the experimental context 24 h or 36 d after the conditioning. We then observed that their fear response at the recent, but not the remote, time point was associated with an increase in spine density on hippocampal neurons, whereas an inverse temporal pattern of spine density changes occurred on aCC neurons. At each time point, hippocampal or aCC structural alterations were achieved even in the absence of recent or remote memory tests, thus suggesting that they were not driven by retrieval processes. Furthermore, ibotenic lesions of the hippocampus impaired remote memory and prevented dendritic spine growth on aCC neurons when they were performed immediately after the conditioning, whereas they were ineffective when performed 24 d later. These findings reveal that gradual structural changes modifying connectivity in hippocampal–cortical networks underlie the formation and expression of remote memory, and that the hippocampus plays a crucial but time-limited role in driving structural plasticity in the cortex.
An Experimental Survey on Correlation Filter-based Tracking

Over these years, Correlation Filter-based Trackers (CFTs) have aroused increasing interests in the field of visual object tracking, and have achieved extremely compelling results in different competitions and benchmarks. In this paper, our goal is to review the developments of CFTs with extensive experimental results. 11 trackers are surveyed in our work, based on which a general framework is summarized. Furthermore, we investigate different training schemes for correlation filters, and also discuss various effective improvements that have been made recently. Comprehensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the surveyed CFTs, and comparisons have been made with other competing trackers. The experimental results have shown that state-of-art performance, in terms of robustness, speed and accuracy, can be achieved by several recent CFTs, such as MUSTer and SAMF. We find that further improvements for correlation filter-based tracking can be made on estimating scales, applying part-based tracking strategy and cooperating with long-term tracking methods.
Instruction packing: Toward fast and energy-efficient instruction scheduling

Traditional dynamic scheduler designs use one issue queue entry per instruction, regardless of the actual number of operands actively involved in the wakeup process. We propose Instruction Packing---a novel microarchitectural technique that reduces both delay and power consumption of the issue queue by sharing the associative part of an issue queue entry between two instructions, each with, at most, one nonready register source operand at the time of dispatch. Our results show that this technique results in 40% reduction of the IQ power and 14% reduction in scheduling delay with negligible IPC degradations.
Adsorption Characteristics of Coals with Special Reference to the Gething Formation, Northeast British Columbia

There are two major coal-bearing formations in the Peace River Coalfield in northeastern British Columbia, The Gates and the Gething. The younger Gates Formation hosts to the two major coal mines that have operated in the area; therefore there is some coalbed methane (CBM) information available for the formation. In contrast there is very little CBM information available for the older Gething Formation. This paper presents some coal adsorption data for the Gething Formation.
The applicability of WHODAS 2.0 in adolescents in China.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This study was designed to examine the applicability of World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0) in adolescents in China for internal consistency and factorial validity. BACKGROUND The conceptualisation of impairments, activity limitation and participation restriction as disability underpins WHODAS 2.0. Available evidence is mainly about the use of WHODAS 2.0 in adults with little attention to adolescents. DESIGN Survey design. METHODS A total 314 adolescent inpatients were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy and self-measured with a range of scales related to puberty development, family function, 36-item WHODAS 2.0, extended version of Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (Ext-SDQ). The same amount of junior high school student data was randomly selected to facilitate the model invariance examination through confirmatory factor analysis with the assistance of amos 19 and spss 19. RESULTS Adolescents (mean, 14.07; SD, 2.866) varied greatly in demography, health conditions, body mass index, puberty development, family function, disability and difficulties as well as prosocial status. After the removal of the item on sexual activity, the internal consistency for the 35-item WHODAS is satisfactory, overall and dimensional. The six-factor WHODAS model was found to be a good model fit, moderately correlated with the overall difficulty measured by the 20-item four-factor SDQ, with the ability to differentiate the group of adolescent inpatients and junior high school students. CONCLUSION The 35-item WHODAS is useful with adolescents with satisfactory internal reliability and factorial validity. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE This study supports the use of 35-item WHODAS in adolescents with or without health conditions in school and hospital settings, which paves the way for a better understanding about and health service delivery to adolescents during the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Mathematics Difficulty with and without Reading Difficulty: Findings and Implications from a Four-Year Longitudinal Study

An overarching question guided this study: What is mathematics difficulty (MD) independent of reading difficulty (RD)? The sample included 203 children whom the researchers followed from kindergarten to third grade. The researchers used latent growth modeling to investigate the relationship between MD and measures of working memory, short-term memory, cognitive processing speed, early numerical skills, and phonological processing, independent of reading. Two main findings emerged: (a) deficits in early numerical skills were a defining feature of MD with or without RD, and (b) early numerical skills and phonological processing influenced growth in mathematics from kindergarten to third grade. These results indicate that future MD research should focus on numerical and language-based skills, including whether the mathematics disorder in MD—specific or otherwise—reflects underlying language and/or numerical deficits.
The Effects of Altered Nutritional Status upon Insulin-Like Growth Factors and their Binding Proteins in Neonatal Rats

ABSTRACT: To investigate the role of nutrition in the regulation of IGFs during the perinatal period, 10-d-old rats were infused intravenously with various concentrations of nutrients for 24 h. Breast-fed litter mates served as controls. The effect of caloric intake on concentrations of IGF-I and IGF-II as well as IGF-binding proteins in serum, liver, and brain of neonatal rats was studied. A total of 45 rats from 10 litters was infused with solutions ranging from a caloric intake of 0 (saline) to 75% (glucose, amino acids, and lipids) of the estimated intake of control rats. In serum, both IGF-I and -II concentrations fell markedly in response to fasting. Serum IGF-II levels were linearly related to caloric intake in the pooled data from all groups. Concentrations of IGF-II, but not IGF-I, in liver and brain were depressed by caloric restriction. In contrast to the fall in IGF concentrations, activity of IGF-associated binding proteins rose in serum and in liver cytosol 2- to 4-fold in response to decreased nutrient intake. In serum, but not liver, the rise in binding protein activity was inversely related to caloric intake. In liver cytosol, but not serum, the rise in binding protein activity was inversely related to total serum amino acid concentration. Thus, IGF concentrations in preweanling rats change in response to alterations of nutrient intake. The fasting induced decrements in IGF levels, as well as the elevations in IGF-associated binding protein activity, may serve as a protective mechanism to depress growth in times of caloric restriction.
Cultural adaptation in cross border e-commerce: A study of German companies

The standardization vs. adaptation debate in international marketing is still ongoing, yet, in the online realm the discussion is only just emerging. While practitioners are excited to jump on the online communication and commerce bandwagon, empirical research on the issue of online standardization vs. adaptation is still relatively limited and mostly concerns US firms. This paper explores 100 German companies' domestic, U.S., U.K. and Latin American websites and employs a cultural value analysis. We build on Hofstede's and Hall's cultural framework. Findings suggest that cultural value depiction is not very strong in the relevant markets, thus a certain degree of 'cultural alienation' takes place. It is suggested that to engage better with their customer and reach better cultural congruency companies need to work harder on developing culturally adapted websites.
Two cell cycle blocks caused by iron chelation of neuroblastoma cells: separating cell cycle events associated with each block

Studies have presented evidence that besides the well described S phase block, treatment of cancer cell lines with the iron chelator deferrioxamine (DFO) also results in an earlier block in G1 phase. In this article, measurements of cell cycle regulatory proteins define this block at a very specific point in G1. DFO treatment results in markedly decreased cyclin A protein levels. Cyclin E levels that accumulate in early to mid‐G1 are increased in cells treated with DFO as compared to the resting cells. The DFO S phase block is shown after cells are arrested at G1/S by (aphidicolin) then released into DFO. The same S phase block occurs with DFO treatment of a neuroblastoma cell line relatively resistant to the G1 DFO block. These experiments clearly differentiate the S phase DFO block from the earlier block pinpointed to a point in mid‐G1, before G1/S when cyclin E protein increases but before increased cyclin A synthesis. Apoptosis was observed in cells inhibited by DFO at both cell cycle arrest points.
Efficacy of continuous epidural block in acute herpes zoster

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate efficacy of continuous epidural block for prevent postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) progression in cases of acute herpes zoster with severe pain and also to identify predictive factors for PHN in such conditions.We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of patients with herpes zoster who underwent continuous epidural block between March 2013 and October 2015. Time points were set as 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after zoster onset. PHN was defined as the presence of pain with NRS ≥3 at certain time points.The incidence of developing PHN was 38.1%, 27.0%, and 19.0% 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after zoster onset, respectively. Age and duration of catheterization were predictive factors for PHN at 1 month. Age, duration of catheterization, and NRS at first visit were identified as predictive factors for PHN at 3 months. Presence of diabetes, duration of catheterization, and NRS during catheterization were significant predictive factors for PHN at 6 months.The incidence of PHN is higher in zoster patients with severe pain that requires continuous epidural block compared to incidence in the general population. Advanced age and severe initial pain intensity were predictive factors of PHN development. Prolonged catheterization resulting from weak response to treatment strongly suggested progression to PHN.
Genetic Competence Drives Genome Diversity in Bacillus subtilis

Abstract Prokaryote genomes are the result of a dynamic flux of genes, with increases achieved via horizontal gene transfer and reductions occurring through gene loss. The ecological and selective forces that drive this genomic flexibility vary across species. Bacillus subtilis is a naturally competent bacterium that occupies various environments, including plant-associated, soil, and marine niches, and the gut of both invertebrates and vertebrates. Here, we quantify the genomic diversity of B. subtilis and infer the genome dynamics that explain the high genetic and phenotypic diversity observed. Phylogenomic and comparative genomic analyses of 42 B. subtilis genomes uncover a remarkable genome diversity that translates into a core genome of 1,659 genes and an asymptotic pangenome growth rate of 57 new genes per new genome added. This diversity is due to a large proportion of low-frequency genes that are acquired from closely related species. We find no gene-loss bias among wild isolates, which explains why the cloud genome, 43% of the species pangenome, represents only a small proportion of each genome. We show that B. subtilis can acquire xenologous copies of core genes that propagate laterally among strains within a niche. While not excluding the contributions of other mechanisms, our results strongly suggest a process of gene acquisition that is largely driven by competence, where the long-term maintenance of acquired genes depends on local and global fitness effects. This competence-driven genomic diversity provides B. subtilis with its generalist character, enabling it to occupy a wide range of ecological niches and cycle through them.