Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A National Sample of Eighth-Grade Students: The Impact of Middle Grade Schools on Academic and Psychosocial Competence

This study evaluates the effect of attending a U.S. public middle or junior high school as compared with a K-8 school on eighth graders’ academic and psychosocial outcomes. In a national sample, we conducted propensity score weighted regression analysis. Initial findings indicated that for eighth-grade students, attending a middle or junior high school negatively affected teacher- and self-reported reading/writing competence. After applying population weights, only reading self-concept remained negatively affected by middle school enrollment. Exploratory analysis revealed the negative effects of attending a middle grade school may be present only for the students who enter kindergarten not at risk as measured by socioeconomic status (SES) or academic performance. Taken together, results suggest that negative impacts of middle grade schooling may be limited to teacher- and self-reported reading/writing competence, more pronounced in middle versus junior high school, and more salient for less disadvantaged students. Implications for theory, policy, and practice are discussed.
Developmental dyslexia: Gray matter abnormalities in the occipitotemporal cortex

Functional neuroimaging studies have consistently demonstrated less activation of the left occipitotemporal cortex in dyslexic readers. This region is considered critical for skilled reading and damage to it in adult readers leads to severe deficits in reading ability. In contrast to these findings, structural abnormalities in the occipitotemporal cortex were not consistently found to date. We used optimized Voxel Based Morphometry with T1 weighted MR images to investigate gray matter volume in 13 dyslexic and 15 nonimpaired reading adolescents (age 14–16). Less gray matter volume for dyslexic readers was found in the left and right fusiform gyrus, the bilateral anterior cerebellum and in the right supramarginal gyrus. Decreased gray matter volume in the left and right fusiform gyrus of dyslexic readers highlights the importance of this brain region for developmental dyslexia. The structural abnormalities in the right occipitotemporal cortex suggest that dyslexia may be such a persistent disorder because an occipitotemporal reading area, critical for skilled reading, cannot develop in any hemisphere. The extended areas of reduced gray matter volume in dyslexic readers in the cerebellum suggest that structural abnormalities in the cerebellum are also strongly associated with dyslexia and warrant further investigation. Hum Brain Mapp, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
When is compress-and-forward optimal?

In many known examples where compress-and-forward (CF) for relay networks is capacity achieving, it is only trivially so, i.e., it falls back to hashing without quantization. A potentially better strategy is to decode as much as possible and to compress the residual information, i.e., a combination of decode-and-forward (DF) and CF (Cover and El Gamal's Theorem 7). Indeed such a strategy was shown to be optimal by Kang and Ulukus for a certain class of diamond relay networks consisting of a source, a noisy relay, a noiseless relay, and a destination. In this paper, we discuss why it can be optimal for such channels. Furthermore, we generalize the result to a certain class of tree networks with an arbitrary number of nodes consisting of multiple cascaded diamond relay networks. We show that a combination of DF and CF is optimal for the network and its capacity is given by a simple expression. As in the diamond channel, the capacity is strictly less than the cut-set bound.
Health and Quality of Life Outcomes

Background: At least some forms of breast cancer are increasingly being viewed as a chronic illness, where an emphasis is placed on meeting the various ongoing needs of people living with cancer, their families and other members of their social support networks. This commentary outlines some approaches to the evaluation of cancer-related support groups, with a particular emphasis on those designed to provide long-distance support, via the internet, for women with breast cancer. Discussion: The literature on evaluations of community-based cancer support groups indicates that they offer a number of benefits, and that it is more reasonable to expect an impact of such interventions on psychosocial functioning and/or health-related quality of life than on survival. The literature on both face-to-face and online social support groups suggests that they offer many advantages, although evaluation of the latter delivery mechanism presents some ethical issues that need to be addressed. Many popular online support groups are peer-moderated, rather than professionally-moderated. In an evaluation of online support groups, different models of the role of the "navigator" need to be taken into account. Some conceptual models are outlined for the evaluation of the "navigator role" in meeting the informational, decisional and educational needs of women with breast cancer. The Breast-Cancer Mailing List, an example of an unmoderated internet-based peer-support group, is considered within the context of a Shared or Tacit Model of the navigator role. Conclusion: Application of the concept of a "navigator role" to support groups in general, and to unmoderated online ones in particular, has received little or no attention in the research literature. The navigator role should be taken into account in research on this increasingly important aspect of cancer communication. Background Cancer communication can be regarded as an attribute of good-quality care [1]. And, a critically-important arena of cancer outcomes research is quality of care, including ways to disseminate the results of relevant outcomes research to users [1]. Increasingly, care is moving from hospitals to ambulatory care settings, to community facilities, and the home [2]. Such shifts in the locus of care can have major implications for those for whom access to institutional settings may be restricted, for reasons such as geographical location or socioeconomic status. The increasing private and public availability of internet-conPublished: 1 May 2003 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003, 1:16 Received: 18 March 2003 Accepted: 1 May 2003 This article is available from: http://www.hqlo. com/content/1/1/16 © 2003 Till; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL.
On the probability of microlensing in gamma-ray burst afterglows

The declining light curve of the optical afterglow of gamma-ray burst (GRB) GRB000301C showed rapid variability with one particularly bright feature at about t−t0=3.8 d. This event was interpreted as gravitational microlensing by Garnavich, Loeb & Stanek and subsequently used to derive constraints on the structure of the GRB optical afterglow. In this paper, we use these structural parameters to calculate the probability of such a microlensing event in a realistic scenario, where all compact objects in the universe are associated with observable galaxies. For GRB000301C at a redshift of z=2.04, the a posteriori probability for a microlensing event with an amplitude of Δm0. 95 mag (as observed) is 0.7 per cent (2.7 per cent) for the most plausible scenario of a flat Λ-dominated Friedmann–Robertson–Walker (FRW) universe with Ωm=0.3 and a fraction f∗=0.2 (1.0) of dark matter in the form of compact objects. If we lower the magnification threshold to Δm0. 10 mag, the probabilities for microlensing events of GRB afterglows increase to 17 per cent (57 per cent). We emphasize that this low probability for a microlensing signature of almost 1 mag does not exclude that the observed event in the afterglow light curve of GRB000301C was caused by microlensing, especially in light of the fact that a galaxy was found within 2 arcsec from the GRB. In that case, however, a more robust upper limit on the a posteriori probability of ≈5 per cent is found. It does show, however, that it will not be easy to create a large sample of strong GRB afterglow microlensing events for statistical studies of their physical conditions on microarcsec scales.
Subsampling Receivers with Applications to Software Defined Radio Systems

There are currently a large number of different communication standards, due to the widespread acceptance of wireless technologies. As a consequence, there is a tendency to design transceivers for multiple standards [1-8]. A similar problem arises in the test industry, where providers of testing and certification services to the wireless communication industry need multi-standard receivers, in order to reduce the cost in testing equipment.
Travelling concepts and universal particularisms: A reappraisal of gentrification’s global reach

Some concepts travel worldwide, although they remain unobtrusively attached to the contexts in which they were produced and, therefore, are insufficiently abstract and general. Gentrification is a travelling concept with lingering attachments to the Anglo-American urban context. Three issues related to gentrification’s global reach are discussed in this paper. The first is the definition of gentrification. The simple definition adopted by the current gentrification research agenda leads us to accept gentrification’s global reach literally by definition. The second issue is the question of contextual boundaries. Boundaries that are too broad and ill-defined – such as the metropolis of the Global North versus the metropolis of the Global South – conceal what contextual difference may be about. The third issue is the reification of cultural differences, which may lead to them being used to explain attitudes towards gentrification, even though such attitudes could be explained by more prosaic socioeconomic motives compatible with Western rationalism. This paper concludes that the metamorphoses of gentrification through its different waves in the Anglophone world do not provide the script for understanding other cities’ urban histories and making sense of their urban restructuring processes. These cities must realize that new processes emerging under increasingly neoliberal policy orientations are regressive compared with previous arrangements, especially when they tend to exclude political alternatives. The Anglo-American world may have been a pioneering laboratory for the application of gentrification policies, but other parts of the world have shown more effective resistance that can be an asset in future struggles and sociopolitical arrangements and make a difference in people’s lives.
FURTHER RESULTS ON OUTPUT REGULATION BY PURE ERROR FEEDBACK

Abstract This work addresses the design of internal model-based regulators for nonlinear systems by error feedback in the general “non-equilibrium” framework proposed in (Byrnes and Isidori, 2003). The material presented here is specifically meant to complement the work in (Byrnes and Isidori, 2004) where a procedure for designing nonlinear internal model-based regulators was presented for systems having relative degree 1.
What are real SPARQL queries like?

We present statistics on real world SPARQL queries that may be of interest for building SPARQL query processing engines and benchmarks. In particular, we analyze the syntactical structure of queries in a log of about 3 million queries, harvested from the DBPedia SPARQL endpoint. Although a sizable portion of the log is shown to consist of so-called conjunctive SPARQL queries, non-conjunctive queries that use SPARQL's union or optional operators are more than substantial. It is known, however, that query evaluation quickly becomes hard for queries including the non-conjunctive operators union or optional. We therefore drill deeper into the syntactical structure of the queries that are not conjunctive and show that in 50% of the cases, these queries satisfy certain structural restrictions that imply tractable evaluation in theory. We hope that the identification of these restrictions can aid in the future development of practical heuristics for processing non-conjunctive SPARQL queries.
Binaries at the Bottom of the Main Sequence and below

Long-term radial-velocity surveys of G, K and M dwarfs of the solar neighbourhood are presented. The inferred orbital elements are discussed, focusing on the (e; log P) diagram, the mass-ratio and secondary mass distributions, and on the binary frequency of the studied samples. The proportion of companions to M dwarfs is found to be not signiicantly diierent from the binary frequency among G-and K-dwarf primaries. The mass function of stellar and planetary companions to solar-type stars strongly suggests diierent formation and evolution mechanisms for the two populations. Finally, beautiful mass-luminosity relations are obtained from low-mass binaries with high-precision radial-velocity measurements and adaptive optics visual data.
Towards method-independent knowledge acquisition

Abstract Rapid prototyping and tool reusability have pushed knowledge acquisition research to investigate method-specific knowledge acquisition tools appropriate for predetermined problem-solving methods. We believe that method-dependent knowledge acquisition is not the only approach. The aim of our research is to develop powerful yet versatile machine learning mechanisms that can be incorporated into general-purpose but practical knowledge acquisition tools. This paper shows through examples the practical advantages of this approach. In particular, we illustrate how existing knowledge can be used to facilitate knowledge acquisition through analogy mechanisms within a domain and across domains. Our sample knowledge acquisition dialogues with a domain expert illustrate which parts of the process are addressed by the human and which parts are automated by the tool, in a synergistic cooperation for knowledge-base extension and refinement. The paper also describes briefly the EXPECT problem-solving architecture that facilitates this approach to knowledge acquisition.
Human parechovirus infections in Dutch children and the association between serotype and disease severity.

BACKGROUND Human parechoviruses (HPeVs) are members of the family Picornaviridae and are classified into 3 known serotypes: HPeV1, HPeV2, and the recently identified HPeV3. HPeV1 and HPeV2 infections are most commonly associated with mild respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms and occasionally with severe disease conditions, such as flaccid paralysis and encephalitis. HPeV3 infection has been associated with transient paralysis and neonatal infection and has until now only been reported in Japan and Canada. METHODS Culture isolates considered to be enterovirus on the basis of cell culture but that were found to be enterovirus negative by 5' untranslated region reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (5'UTR RT-PCR) during the period December 2000 through January 2005 were selected. Isolates were tested by HPeV 5'UTR RT-PCR and were genotyped by sequencing the VP1 region. Phylogenetic analysis was performed, and the association with clinical symptoms was established. RESULTS Thirty-seven (12%) of the 303 isolates that tested positive for enterovirus by cell culture were in fact HPeV. The majority of the HPeV-positive isolates (n = 27) could be identified as HPeV1. The remaining 10 isolates, which were grown from samples obtained in 2001, 2002, and 2004, could be typed as the recently identified HPeV3. HPeV was exclusively detected in children aged < 3 years. Children infected with HPeV3 were significantly younger than children infected with HPeV1, and sepsis-like illness and central nervous system involvement were more frequently reported in children infected with HPeV3. CONCLUSIONS We report HPeV infections in young children during the period of 2000-2005 and show an association between HPeV3 infection and sepsis-like illness and central nervous system involvement in neonates.
Exploring the Relationship between Secularity and Marital Behavior

ABSTRACT The higher religiosity of women is a longstanding feature of the religious landscape in the Western World. With the recent vibrancy of secular movements, the greater religiosity of women is reflected in a gender imbalance within the secular groups. For instance, more than three quarters of American atheists are male. Given the effects of both religiosity and secularity on worldview and lifestyle, this gender imbalance is likely consequential for marital behavior and outcomes. Using the latest cycle of the Canadian General Social Survey focused on family, this paper examines how marital behavior of individuals without any tie with religion or spirituality compares with others. Secular males are found appreciably more likely to experience marital dissolution, whereas their female counterparts are shown no different from others. This result lends support to the theories that posit religiosity as a complementary marital trait, requiring the mating of the like. The analysis also indicates that union formation behavior of secular females manifests a larger shift away from the traditional conceptions of marriage compared with secular males. Various explanations are explored.
Differentiation of Mycobacterium, Nocardia, and related taxa by thin-layer chromatographic analysis of whole-organism methanolysates.

Summary: introduction Few simple and reliable tests are available for the differentiation of Mycobacterium, Nocardia and related taxa. There is some evidence to indicate that chemical markers will be useful for the identification of such actinomycetes (Goodfellow, 1973; Staneck & Roberts, 1974). Lipids characteristic of nocardiae (LCN-As) can be detected by thin-layer chromatographic analysis of ethanol-diethyl ether (I: I, v/v) extracts of nocardiae, true corynebacteria and rhodochrous strains, but are generally absent from mycobacteria, rothiae and actinomadurae (Mordarska, Mordarski & Goodfellow, 1972; Goodfellow, 1973; Goodfellow et al. 1974). LCN-As have been identified as free mycolic acids (Goodfellow et al. 1973) with the general structural formula where r+s+t+u lies between o and 4, and m, n, 0, p and q are all greater than I (Maurice, Vacheron & Michel, 1971; Minnikin, Pate1 & Goodfellow, 1974). The mycolic acids frommycobacteria also contain components with oxygen functions, e.g. >C=O, CH-OCH, COOH, in addition to the 3-hydroxyacid unit (Etkmadi, 1967). Thin-layer chromatography (t.1.c.) of the methyl esters of the total mycolic acids from mycobacteria can therefore be expected to produce a multiple spot pattern, while those from strains classified in the other taxa should only form a single spot. This paper demonstrates that the pattern of spots corresponding to mycolic esters obtained on t.1. c. analysis of whole-organism methanolysates provides a means of distinguishing mycobacteria and other taxa containing mycolic acids. The technique is rapid, simple, requires no expensive equipment, and should be applicable in routine clinical laboratories.
Household Exposure to Pesticides and Risk of Childhood Hematopoietic Malignancies: The ESCALE Study (SFCE)

Objectives We investigated the role of household exposure to pesticides in the etiology of childhood hematopoietic malignancies. Methods The national registry-based case–control study ESCALE (Etude sur les cancers de l’enfant) was carried out in France over the period 2003–2004. Population controls were frequency matched with the cases on age and sex. Maternal household use of pesticides during pregnancy and paternal use during pregnancy or childhood were reported by the mothers in a structured telephone questionnaire. Insecticides (used at home, on pets, or for garden crops), herbicides, and fungicides were distinguished. We estimated odds ratios (ORs) using unconditional regression models closely adjusting for age, sex, degree of urbanization, and type of housing (flat or house). Results We included a total of 764 cases of acute leukemia (AL), 130 of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), 166 of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and 1,681 controls. Insecticide use during pregnancy was significantly associated with childhood AL [OR = 2.1; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.7–2.5], both lymphoblastic and myeloblastic, NHL (OR = 1.8; 95% CI, 1.3–2.6), mainly for Burkitt lymphoma (OR = 2.7; 95% CI, 1.6–4.5), and mixed-cell HL (OR = 4.1; 95% CI, 1.4–11.8), but not nodular sclerosis HL (OR = 1.1; 95% CI, 0.6–1.9). Paternal household use of pesticides was also related to AL (OR = 1.5; 95% CI, 1.2–1.8) and NHL (OR = 1.7; 95% CI, 1.2–2.6); but for AL the relationships did not remain after adjustment for maternal pesticide use during pregnancy. Conclusion The study findings strengthen the hypothesis that domestic use of pesticides may play a role in the etiology of childhood hematopoietic malignancies. The consistency of the findings with those of previous studies on AL raises the question of the advisability of preventing pesticide use by pregnant women.
A Zero-Copy Shared Memory Framework for Host-Guest Data Sharing in KVM

Virtualization is a technology pervading various application domains, spanning nowadays from cloud computing to embedded systems. One of the most important features in virtualization is the possibility of data/memory sharing between virtual machines, between the host system, virtual machines. Such capability is as an example extremely important in the para-virtualization of programmable parallel accelerators, such as GPUs, where huge memory buffers are allocated in virtual machines, need to be shared with the actual device in order to be processed. Various techniques enable the communication between the guest, the host, but most of them are designed to exchange small amounts of data, or rely on a socket-based paradigm where a copy of the data is performed between guest, host adding the need for serialization/de-serialization of data at each endpoint. Data copies, serialization/de-serialization are a major source of overhead in virtualization, especially in the embedded domain where lower performance processors are used. This work presents a zero-copy shared memory mechanism for host-guest memory sharing in KVM. The zero-copy framework exploits features of the KVM hypervisor to let a host application map a memory buffer allocated in the guest environment. This feature leads to a zero-overhead communication, thus helps reducing the overall overhead of software based virtualization techniques. This paper will also introduce a use case scenario for the exploitation of the zero-copy framework,, present some preliminary performance results.