Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Small-Group Learning on Undergraduates in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology: A Meta-Analysis

Recent calls for instructional innovation in undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) courses and programs highlight the need for a solid foundation of education research at the undergraduate level on which to base policy and practice. We report herein the results of a meta-analysis that integrates research on undergraduate SMET education since 1980. The meta-analysis demonstrates that various forms of small-group learning are effective in promoting greater academic achievement, more favorable attitudes toward learning, and increased persistence through SMET courses and programs. The magnitude of the effects reported in this study exceeds most findings in comparable reviews of research on educational innovations and supports more widespread implementation of small-group learning in undergraduate SMET.
β-Pix Modulates Actin-Mediated Recruitment of Synaptic Vesicles to Synapses

Presynaptic compartments are formed through the recruitment of preassembled clusters of proteins to points of cell—cell contact, however, the molecular mechanism(s) underlying this process remains unclear. We demonstrate that clusters of polymerized actin can recruit and maintain synaptic vesicles to discrete sites along the axon, and that cadherin/β-catenin/scribble/β-pix complexes play an important role in this event. Previous work has demonstrated that β-catenin and scribble are important for the clustering of vesicles at synapses. We demonstrate that β-pix, a Rac/Cdc42 guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF), forms a complex with cadherin, β-catenin, and scribble at synapses and enhances localized actin polymerization in rat hippocampal neurons. In cells expressing β-pix siRNA or dominant-negative β-pix that lacks its GEF activity, actin polymerization at synapses is dramatically reduced, and synaptic vesicle localization is disrupted. This β-pix phenotype can be rescued by cortactin overexpression, suggesting that β-pix-mediated actin polymerization at synapses regulates vesicle localization.
Investigation of terrigenous input and phytoplankton in Lake Baikal (RU) using SeaWiFS Ocean Colour data

* Corresponding author: Birgit Heim; biggi.heim@web.de ** This research was supported by the European Commission under contract EVK2-CT-2000-00057. Abstract SeaWiFS data (2001-2002) of Lake Baikal (Siberia, RU) has been investigated to support multi-disciplinary limnological investigation within the frame of the paleoclimate project CONTINENT. Using adapted SeaDAS processing for Lake Baikal, the OC2 chlorophyll algorithm performed adequately for Case 1 surface waters. On the other hand, for the case of high organic terrigenous input (Case 2 waters), there occurs a distinct switch in the spectral peak position and a chlorophyll overestimation. SPM is quantified by the regression of the SeaDAS attenuation coefficient, and field data. Applying these methods, the resulting chlorophyll and terrigenous input maps provide information as how to interrelate the findings from sediment trap and field data with the autochthonous and allochthonous material at the CONTINENT coring sites.
High performers are not superheroes: bridging exclusive and inclusive talent management approaches for law firm sustainability

ABSTRACT This paper elucidates findings in relation to bridging exclusive and inclusive approaches to talent management at law firms that could promote the revision of the up-or-out career model. We explore the competencies required for career success, and we describe high-performing lawyers and their peers’ profiles. We surveyed 358 lawyers and stakeholders of the lawyering role in 12 European and Latin American countries. The stakeholders noted that high performance in an array of competencies is necessary for a lawyer’s career success, but they still valued legal skills the most. Debunking the superhero myth, we argue that high performers have a narrow focus on legal skills as the driver for innovative solutions for clients, but lack strength in interpersonal competencies. In contrast, their peers have more adaptable mindsets and are more relational and focused on quality. Rather than challenging the up-or-out career model, which overvalues the role of high performers, we propose that the talent management exclusive approach is a good fit, and therefore promotes only a minimum of change. For talent management that ensures business sustainability, we support a more inclusive approach linked with strategic talent mapping and assessments that use several competency profiles and present several possible career paths.
Supernova Ia and Galaxy Cluster Gas Mass Fraction Constraints on Dark Energy

We use the Riess et al.(2004) supernova Ia apparent magnitude versus redshift data and the Allen et al.(2004) galaxy cluster gas mass fraction versus redshift data to constrain dark energy models. These data provide complementary constraints that when combined together ignificantly restrict model parameters and favor lowly-evolving dark energy density models, close to the Einstein cosmological constant limit of dark energy.
Coronary Driving Pressure and Vasomotor Tonus as Determinants of Coronary Blood Flow

A method is described that measures the contribution of coronary vasomotor tonus and extracoronary factors in the regulation of coronary blood flow. Coronary flow was measured from the bypassed right heart when the left ventricle pumped the entire systemic flow (method “A”) and when a heart-lung machine generated systemic pressure (method “B”). In method “B,” the mechanical activity and the oxygen consumption of the heart could be dissociated from systemic pres sure by the use of a balloon in the ventricle. Control measurements were performed in “uninjured” hearts; when a balloon was inflated to a left ventricular diastolic pressure of 15 mm. Hg or more, a state of “cardiac injury” supervened. The arterial oxygen content was kept above 20 to 21 vol. per cent, but the cardiac oxygen consumption varied over a wide range. Whenever hemodynamic factors changed, coronary flow was a highly correlated, straight-line function of the difference between the aortic pressure and the left ventricular pressure, which we call the “coronary driving pressure. ” In “injured” hearts this linearity and high correlation persisted, but the slope of the regression line increased. We conclude that coronary flow is determined by the integrated difference between the propulsive force (the fluctuating pressure head at the coronary ostia) and opposing forces (intramyocardial pressure, which is known to oppose local coronary flow whenever and wherever it exceeds intravascular pressures). Cardiac oxygen consumption and coronary blood flow were not significantly related and were, therefore, coordinated by purely mechanical pressure differentials and not by changes of coronary vasomotor tonus. However, coronary vasomotor tonus decreased markedly during arterial anoxia or after various types of cardiac injury; it increased after Pitressin.
A Graphical Transformation for Belief Propagation: Maximum Weight Matchings and Odd-Sized Cycles

We study the Maximum Weight Matching (MWM) problem for general graphs through the max-product Belief Propagation (BP) and related Linear Programming (LP). The BP approach provides distributed heuristics for finding the Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) assignment in a joint probability distribution represented by a Graphical Model (GM) and respective LPs can be considered as continuous relaxations of the discrete MAP problem. It was recently shown that a BP algorithm converges to the correct MWM assignment under a simple GM formulation of MAP/MWM as long as the corresponding LP relaxation is tight. First, under the motivation for forcing the tightness condition, we consider a new GM formulation of MWM, say C-GM, using non-intersecting odd-sized cycles in the graph: the new corresponding LP relaxation, say C-LP, becomes tight for more MWM instances. However, the tightness of C-LP now does not guarantee such convergence and correctness of the new BP on C-GM. To address the issue, we introduce a novel graph transformation applied to C-GM, which results in another GM formulation of MWM, and prove that the respective BP on it converges to the correct MAP/MWM assignment as long as C-LP is tight. Finally, we also show that C-LP always has half-integral solutions, which leads to an efficient BP-based MWM heuristic consisting of making sequential, `cutting plane', modifications to the underlying GM. Our experiments show that this BP-based cutting plane heuristic performs as well as that based on traditional LP solvers.
Optimal Life-Cycle Asset Allocation: Understanding the Empirical Evidence

We show that a life-cycle model with realistically calibrated uninsurable labor income risk and moderate risk aversion can simultaneously match stock market participation rates and asset allocation decisions conditional on participation. The key ingredients of the model are Epstein–Zin preferences, a fixed stock market entry cost, and moderate heterogeneity in risk aversion. Households with low risk aversion smooth earnings shocks with a small buffer stock of assets, and consequently most of them (optimally) never invest in equities. Therefore, the marginal stockholders are (endogenously) more risk averse, and as a result they do not invest their portfolios fully in stocks.
Innovation beyond Firm Boundaries: Strategic Alliances and Corporate Innovation

We analyze the role of common equity blockholders in fostering the formation of strategic alliances, establish a positive causal effect of strategic alliances on corporate innovation, and analyze the channels through which strategic alliances foster innovation. Our findings may be summarized as follows. First, there is a positive relation between the fraction of a firm's industry peers with which it shares common blockholders and the number of strategic alliances that it enters into. Second, there is a positive relation between the RD and second, by using an instrumental variables approach. Fifth, we establish that an important channel through which strategic alliances foster greater innovation is through the more efficient redeployment of human capital (inventors) across alliance partners.
On the Expressiveness of Purely Functional I/O Systems

Functional programming languages have traditionally lacked complete, exible, and yet ref-erentially transparent I/O mechanisms. Previous proposals for I/O have used either the notion of lazy streams or continuations to model interaction with the external world. We discuss and generalize these models and introduce a third, which we call the systems model, to perform I/O. The expressiveness of the styles are compared by means of an example. We then give a series of surprisingly simple translations between the three models, demonstrating that they are not as diierent as their programming styles suggest, and implying that the styles could be mixed within a single program. The need to express non-deterministic behavior in a functional language is well recognized. So is the problem of doing so without destroying referential transparency. We survey past approaches to this problem, and suggest a solution in the context of the I/O models described. The I/O system of the purely functional language Haskell is presented. The system includes a rich set of operations, and distinguishes between le and channel I/O. The approach to non-determinism is also presented. A useful aspect of the design is that it includes a rigorous speciication of the behaviour of the operating system, thus precisely xing the semantics of the various I/O operations. The Haskell I/O system is capable of supporting many other paradigms of concurrent computation in a natural way. We demonstrate this through the emulation of Actors, UNITY, CSP, CCS and Linda.
Abnormal White Matter Integrity in Adolescents with Internet Addiction Disorder: A Tract-Based Spatial Statistics Study

Background Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is currently becoming a serious mental health issue around the globe. Previous studies regarding IAD were mainly focused on associated psychological examinations. However, there are few studies on brain structure and function about IAD. In this study, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate white matter integrity in adolescents with IAD. Methodology/Principal Findings Seventeen IAD subjects and sixteen healthy controls without IAD participated in this study. Whole brain voxel-wise analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA) was performed by tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) to localize abnormal white matter regions between groups. TBSS demonstrated that IAD had significantly lower FA than controls throughout the brain, including the orbito-frontal white matter, corpus callosum, cingulum, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, and corona radiation, internal and external capsules, while exhibiting no areas of higher FA. Volume-of-interest (VOI) analysis was used to detect changes of diffusivity indices in the regions showing FA abnormalities. In most VOIs, FA reductions were caused by an increase in radial diffusivity while no changes in axial diffusivity. Correlation analysis was performed to assess the relationship between FA and behavioral measures within the IAD group. Significantly negative correlations were found between FA values in the left genu of the corpus callosum and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders, and between FA values in the left external capsule and the Young's Internet addiction scale. Conclusions Our findings suggest that IAD demonstrated widespread reductions of FA in major white matter pathways and such abnormal white matter structure may be linked to some behavioral impairments. In addition, white matter integrity may serve as a potential new treatment target and FA may be as a qualified biomarker to understand the underlying neural mechanisms of injury or to assess the effectiveness of specific early interventions in IAD.
Visualising and analysing online social networks

The immense popularity of online social networks generates sufficient data, that when carefully analysed, can reveal unexpected realities. People are using them to establish relationships in the form of friendships. Based on data collected, students' networks were extracted, visualized and analysed to reflect the connections among South African communities using Gephi. The analysis revealed a slow progress in terms of connections among communities from different ethnic groups in South Africa. This was facilitated through analysis of data collected through Netvizz as well as by using Gephi to visualize social media network structures.
Interleukin-7 Worsens Graft-vs-Host Disease

Impaired immune reconstitution has moved to the forefront of clinical problems limiting progress in allogeneic BMT. The identification of therapies which can enhance immune reconstitution by increasing thymopoiesis is critical to solving this problem. IL-7 is the most potent thymopoietic cytokine identified thus far. In order to study the effects of IL-7 on immune reconstitution and GVHD following allogeneic BMT, we administered rhIL-7 in a murine parent into F1 model. Results showed that rhIL-7 therapy lowered the “threshold” T cell dose required to induce both clinical signs of GVHD as well as lethal GVHD. Histologic analysis of GVHD target tissues revealed that rhIL-7 increased the degree of inflammation and tissue damage observed at all T cell doses studied, but did not change the pattern of organs effected or the histologic appearance of the GVHD within target organs. In addition, we evaluated the capacity for rhIL-7 to enhance thymopoiesis in the setting of allogeneic T cell depleted (TCD) and T cell replete BMT. We observed that rhIL-7 therapy enhanced thymic function in TCD allogeneic BMT recipients, but not in animals which received even modest doses of T cells presumably due to thymic toxicity of the GVH reaction. Thus, caution must be exercised as IL-7 is developed clinically as an immunorestorative agent for use in the setting of allogeneic BMT. These results suggest that IL-7’s use should be limited to the setting of TCD BMT in order to obtain the greatest benefit on immune competence with the least toxicity.
On multilinear fractional integrals

In Rn, we prove Lp1 ×· · ·×LpK boundedness for the multilinear fractional integrals Iα(f1, . . . , fK)(x) = R f1(x− θ1y) . fK(x− θKy)|y|α−n dy where the θj ’s are nonzero and distinct. We also prove multilinear versions of two inequalities about fractional integrals and a multilinear Lebesgue differentiation theorem.
Altered Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase Targeting and Conformation and Caveolin-1 Expression in the Diabetic Kidney

Experimental diabetes is associated with complex changes in renal nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability. We explored the effect of diabetes on renal cortical protein expression of endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) with respect to several determinants of its enzymatic function, such as eNOS expression, membrane localization, phosphorylation, and dimerization, in moderately hyperglycemic streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats compared with nondiabetic control rats and diabetic rats with intensive insulin treatment to achieve near-normal metabolic control. We studied renal cortical expression and localization of caveolin-1 (CAV-1), an endogenous modulator of eNOS function. Despite similar whole-cell eNOS expression in all groups, eNOS monomer and dimer in membrane fractions were reduced in moderately hyperglycemic diabetic rats compared with control rats; the opposite trend was apparent in the cytosol. Stimulatory phosphorylation of eNOS (Ser1177) was also reduced in moderately hyperglycemic diabetic rats. eNOS colocalized and interacted with CAV-1 in endothelial cells throughout the renal vascular tree both in control and moderately hyperglycemic diabetic rats. However, the abundance of membrane-localized CAV-1 was decreased in diabetic kidneys. Intensive insulin treatment reversed the effects of diabetes on each of these parameters. In summary, we observed diabetes-mediated alterations in eNOS and CAV-1 expression that are consistent with the view of decreased bioavailability of renal eNOS-derived NO.
Unsupervised segmentation of task activated regions in fMRI

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has become a central measuring modality to quantify functional activiation of the brain in both task and rest. Most analysis used to quantify functional activation requires supervised approaches as employed in statistical parametric mapping (SPM) to extract maps of task induced functional activations. This requires strong knowledge and assumptions on the BOLD response as a function of activitation while smoothing in general enhances the statistical power but at the cost of spatial resolution. We propose a fully unsupervised approach for the extraction of task activated functional units in multi-subject fMRI data that exploits that regions of task activation are consistent across subjects and can be more reliably inferred than regions that are not activated. We develop a non-parametric Gaussian mixture model that apriori assumes activations are smooth using a Gaussian Process prior while assuming the segmented functional maps are the same across subjects but having individual time-courses and noise variances. To improve inference we propose an enhanced split-merge procedure. We find that our approach well extracts the induced activity of a finger tapping fMRI paradigm with maps that well corresponds to a supervised group SPM analysis. We further find interesting regions that are not activated time locked to the paradigm. Demonstrating that we in a fully unsupervised manner are able to extract the task-induced activations forms a promising framework for the analysis of task fMRI and resting-state data in general where strong knowledge of how the task induces a BOLD response is missing.
N-Glycomic and Microscopic Subcellular Localization Analyses of NPP1, 2 and 6 Strongly Indicate that trans-Golgi Compartments Participate in the Golgi to Plastid Traffic of Nucleotide Pyrophosphatase/Phosphodiesterases in Rice

Nucleotide pyrophosphatase/phosphodiesterases (NPPs) are widely distributed N-glycosylated enzymes that catalyze the hydrolytic breakdown of numerous nucleotides and nucleotide sugars. In many plant species, NPPs are encoded by a small multigene family, which in rice are referred to NPP1–NPP6. Although recent investigations showed that N-glycosylated NPP1 is transported from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER)–Golgi system to the chloroplast through the secretory pathway in rice cells, information on N-glycan composition and subcellular localization of other NPPs is still lacking. Computer-assisted analyses of the amino acid sequences deduced from different Oryza sativa NPP-encoding cDNAs predicted all NPPs to be secretory glycoproteins. Confocal fluorescence microscopy observation of cells expressing NPP2 and NPP6 fused with green fluorescent protein (GFP) revealed that NPP2 and NPP6 are plastidial proteins. Plastid targeting of NPP2–GFP and NPP6–GFP was prevented by brefeldin A and by the expression of ARF1(Q71L), a dominant negative mutant of ADP-ribosylation factor 1 that arrests the ER to Golgi traffic, indicating that NPP2 and NPP6 are transported from the ER–Golgi to the plastidial compartment. Confocal laser scanning microscopy and high-pressure frozen/freeze-substituted electron microscopy analyses of transgenic rice cells ectopically expressing the trans-Golgi marker sialyltransferase fused with GFP showed the occurrence of contact of Golgi-derived membrane vesicles with cargo and subsequent absorption into plastids. Sensitive and high-throughput glycoblotting/mass spectrometric analyses showed that complex-type and paucimannosidic-type glycans with fucose and xylose residues occupy approximately 80% of total glycans of NPP1, NPP2 and NPP6. The overall data strongly indicate that the trans-Golgi compartments participate in the Golgi to plastid trafficking and targeting mechanism of NPPs.
Rural Hospital Wages and the Area Wage Index

We examined data on hospital hourly wages and the prospective payment system (PPS) wage index from 1990 to 1997, to determine if incremental changes to the index have improved its precision and equity as a regional cost adjuster. The differential between average rural and urban PPS hourly wages has declined by almost one-fourth over the 8-year study period. Nearly one-half of the decrease is attributable to regulatory and reporting changes in the annual hospital wage survey. Patterns of within-market wage variation across rural-urban continuum codes identify three separate sub-markets within the State-level aggregates defining rural labor markets. Geographic reclassification decisions appear to eliminate one of the three. Remaining systematic within-market rural wage differences work to the reimbursement advantage of hospitals in the smaller and more isolated communities.