Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring the Relationship between Elementary School Climate, School Types and Faculty's Employment Types: School Climate, School Types and Employment Types

This study explores the characteristics of Shanghai elementary school climate through faculty's perspectives and how faculty's employment type and school type influences faculty's perspectives of their school climate. 736 teachers from 39 elementary schools in Jiading district of Shanghai were participated in this study, finishing the measurement of School Climate Index. Results of this study indicates that Shanghai elementary teachers have higher evaluations in all three dimensions of their school climate. Among these three dimensions, students’ academic achievements have a more emphasis. Shanghai public school climate scores significantly lower than private school climate, and teachers with tenure display higher trust in their school leaders and their colleagues than the contract teachers.
Multigroup Analysis in Information Systems Research using PLS-PM

Heterogeneity is a pertinent issue in Information Systems (IS) research because human behavior often differs across groups. In the partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) context, several approaches have been proposed to investigate potential group differences. Despite the availability of numerous approaches, literature that compares their efficacy is sparse. Consequently, IS researchers lack guidance on which approach is best suited to detect group differences. We address this issue by presenting the results of an extensive Monte Carlo simulation study that juxtaposes the various approaches' behavior under numerous conditions. In doing so, we first provide an overview on existing approaches proposed for multigroup analysis (MGA) in the PLS-PM context. Moreover, we derive important implications for applied research: Firstly, we show that the omnibus test of group differences (OTG) and approaches based on the comparison of confidence intervals are not recommendable for MGA. Secondly, we provide detailed information as to which approaches are suitable for comparing one specific path coefficient and which are recommended if the complete structural model is compared across groups. Finally, we show that approaches which are designed to compare a single parameter require an adjustment for multiple comparisons when used to compare more than two groups.
Remote Electronic Voting in Uncontrolled Environments: A Classifying Survey

Remote electronic voting, often called online or Internet voting, has been subject to research for the last four decades. It is regularly discussed in public debates, especially in the context of enabling voters to conveniently cast their ballot from home using their personal devices. Since these devices are not under the control of the electoral authority and could be potentially compromised, this setting is referred to as an “uncontrolled environment” for which special security assumptions have to be considered. This paper employs general election principles to derive cryptographic, technical, and organizational requirements for remote electronic voting. Based on these requirements, we have extended an existing methodology to assess online voting schemes and develop a corresponding reference attacker model to support the preparation of tailored protection profiles for different levels of elections. After presenting a broad survey of different voting schemes, we use this methodology to assess and classify those schemes comparatively by leveraging four election-specific attacker models.
Comparison of early career researchers and senior career researchers as peer reviewers: A questionnaire survey in China

The article reports results that compare the self‐perceptions of Chinese early career researchers (ECRs) with those of senior career researchers (SCRs) as peer reviewers, aiming to show the characteristics of the increasing number of Chinese ECRs as reviewers. An investigation was conducted with 207 Chinese researchers (including 116 ECRs and 91 SCRs) using an online questionnaire from October to November 2021. The results show the differences and similarities between ECRs and SCRs in five dimensions: views, motivations, preferences, behaviours and self‐confidence. It was found that ECRs are more inclined than SCRs to regard peer review as an extra‐role responsibility. ECRs' self‐focused motivations for peer review are stronger than SCRs' self‐focused motivations, while other‐focused motivations of ECRs and SCRs are equally strong. ECRs are more willing to accept review invitations from high‐quality indexed journals (such as SCI/SSCI/A&HCI journals) than SCRs. In terms of peer review behaviour, ECRs and SCRs have a similar degree of conscientiousness and agreeableness. In addition, ECRs are more lacking in self‐confidence as reviewers than SCRs.
The Handbook of Matrices

A device including a unit adapted to hold a book in open condition for reading, and an elongated structure for adjustably supporting the book holding unit and adapted to be connected at a first end to a headboard of a bed or the like, and to carry the book holding unit at an opposite end of the elongated structure, with the structure being adjustable to various conditions between those ends in a manner changing the position and orientation of the book.
Editorial

In this themed ‘open’ issue – our first in Volume 22 – we present reports on the interplay between language(s) and culture(s) of learners who use languages in two different types of context: young people who are exposed to new language(s) and culture(s) while studying programmes at foreign universities; and children and teenagers who use their newly learned languages to communicate within their family setting after settling in a new country.
Physical training during nutritional recovery does not affect the muscular glucose metabolism in rats

This study had the main aim to assess the food intake, the weight gain, and the muscular glucose metabolism in rats submitted to aerobic training while recovering of protean malnutrition. For this, 60 male Wistar rats were separated in two groups: normoprotean (NP) and hypoprotean (HP), according to the diet: NP (17% protein), or HP (6% protein), respectively, which was received after the ablactation (21 days) on their 90th day of life. Then, very animal received the NP diet, and they were submitted or not (trained TRA; sedentary SED) to physical training that consisted in running on a treadmill for 25 m/min., 50 min/day for 5 days a week for 30 days, compounding the NP-SED, NP-TRA, HP/NP-SED, and HP/NP-TRA groups. The glucose metabolism was assessed in slices of the soleum muscle incubated in the presence of insulin (100 mU/L), and glucose (5.5 mM containing glucose [C14], and 2-deoxyglycose [H3]). The daily food intake (g/100 g of the body weight) for the HP/NP-TRA group (24.39 ± 4.07) was larger than the HP/NP-SED group (21.62 ± 4.69). The weight gain (g) was similar in both groups HP/NP-TRA (203.80 ± 34.03) and HP/NP-SED (214.43 ± 30.54). There was no difference between both groups in relation to the following parameters: glucose uptake and oxidation, and glycogen synthesis by the soleum muscle. Thus, it can be concluded that the aerobic training did not have any impact on the nutritional recovery, as there was no metabolic or somatic differences among recovered animals in the presence or absence of the training.
SANCUS: Staleness-Aware Communication-Avoiding Full-Graph Decentralized Training in Large-Scale Graph Neural Networks

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged due to their success at modeling graph data. Yet, it is challenging for GNNs to efficiently scale to large graphs. Thus, distributed GNNs come into play. To avoid communication caused by expensive data movement between workers, we propose Sancus, a staleness-aware communication-avoiding decentralized GNN system. By introducing a set of novel bounded embedding staleness metrics and adaptively skipping broadcasts, Sancus abstracts decentralized GNN processing as sequential matrix multiplication and uses historical embeddings via cache. Theoretically, we show bounded approximation errors of embeddings and gradients with convergence guarantee. Empirically, we evaluate Sancus with common GNN models via different system setups on large-scale benchmark datasets. Compared to SOTA works, Sancus can avoid up to 74% communication with at least 1.86X faster throughput on average without accuracy loss.
GARP complex controls Golgi physiology by stabilizing COPI machinery and Golgi v-SNAREs

GARP is an evolutionary conserved heterotetrameric protein complex that is thought to tether endosome-derived vesicles and promotes their fusion in the trans-Golgi network. We have previously discovered the GARP’s role in maintaining Golgi glycosylation machinery. To further investigate the importance of the GARP complex for Golgi physiology, we employed Airyscan superresolution and electron microscopy, as well as the unbiased quantitative proteomic analysis of Golgi in RPE1 cells. Both cis and trans-Golgi compartments were significantly enlarged in GARP deficient cells with pronounced alterations of TGN morphology. In GARP-KO cells, proteomic analysis revealed a depletion of a subset of Golgi resident proteins, including Ca2+ binding proteins, glycosylation enzymes, and v-SNAREs. We validated proteomics studies and discovered that two Golgi-resident proteins SDF4 and ATP2C1, related to Golgi calcium homeostasis, as well as intra-Golgi v-SNAREs GOSR1 and BET1L, are significantly depleted in GARP-KO cells. To test if SNARE depletion is responsible for the Golgi defects in GARP deficient cells, we created and analyzed GOSR1 and BET1L KO cell lines. Since GARP-KO was more deleterious to the Golgi physiology than SNARE-KOs, we have investigated other components of intra-Golgi vesicular trafficking, particularly COPI vesicular coat and its accessory proteins. We found that COPI is partially relocalized to the ERGIC compartment in GARP-KO cells. Moreover, COPI accessory proteins GOLPH3, ARFGAP1, GBF1 were displaced from the membrane and BIG1 was relocated to endolysosomal compartment in GARP-KO cells. We propose that the dysregulation of COPI machinery along with degradation of intra-Golgi v-SNAREs and alteration of Golgi Ca2+ homeostasis are the major driving factors for the instability of Golgi resident proteins and glycosylation defects in GARP deficient cells.
TIST: Transcriptome and Histopathological Image Integrative Analysis for Spatial Transcriptomics

Sequencing-based spatial transcriptomics (ST) is an emerging technique to study in situ gene expression patterns at the whole-genome scale. In addition to transcriptomic data, the technique usually generates matched histopathological images for the same tissue sample. ST data analysis is complicated by severe technical noise; matched histopathological images with high spatial continuity and resolution introduce complementary cellular phenotypical information and provide a chance to mitigate the noise in ST data. Hence, we propose a novel ST data analysis method called transcriptome and histopathological image integrative analysis for spatial transcriptomics (TIST), which integrates the information from sequencing-based ST data and histopathological images. TIST uses a Markov random field (MRF) model to learn the macroscopic cellular features from histopathological images and devises a random-walk-based strategy to integrate the extracted image features, the transcriptomic features and the location information for spatial cluster (SC) identification and gene expression enhancement. We tested TIST both on simulated datasets and on 33 real datasets; we found that TIST achieved superior performance on multiple tasks, which illustrates the utility of this method in facilitating the discovery of biological insights from sequencing-based ST data.
THINGS-data, a multimodal collection of large-scale datasets for investigating object representations in human brain and behavior

Understanding object representations requires a broad, comprehensive sampling of the objects in our visual world with dense measurements of brain activity and behavior. Here, we present THINGS-data, a multimodal collection of large-scale neuroimaging and behavioral datasets in humans, comprising densely sampled functional MRI and magnetoencephalographic recordings, as well as 4.70 million similarity judgments in response to thousands of photographic images for up to 1,854 object concepts. THINGS-data is unique in its breadth of richly annotated objects, allowing for testing countless hypotheses at scale while assessing the reproducibility of previous findings. Beyond the unique insights promised by each individual dataset, the multimodality of THINGS-data allows combining datasets for a much broader view into object processing than previously possible. Our analyses demonstrate the high quality of the datasets and provide five examples of hypothesis-driven and data-driven applications. THINGS-data constitutes the core public release of the THINGS initiative (https://things-initiative.org) for bridging the gap between disciplines and the advancement of cognitive neuroscience.
Regulation of the cell surface expression of classical and non-classical MHC proteins by the human cytomegalovirus UL40 and rhesus cytomegalovirus rh67 proteins

The signal sequences of the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) UL40 protein, and its rhesus CMV counterpart, Rh67, contain a peptide (VMAPRT[L/V][F/I/L/V]L, VL9) that can be presented by Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) antigen E. The CMV VL9 peptides replace VL9 peptides derived from classical MHC (Ia) signal sequences, which are lost when CMV disrupts MHC Ia expression, as well as antigen processing and presentation. This allows infected cells to maintain surface expression of MHC-E and escape killing by NK cells expressing the inhibitory NKG2A/CD94 receptor. We demonstrate that processing of the Rh67 VL9 peptide mirrors that of UL40, despite the lack of sequence conservation elsewhere in the two proteins. As previously shown for UL40, up-regulation of MHC-E expression by Rh67 only requires its signal sequence, with sequences upstream of VL9 critical for conferring independence from TAP, the Transporter Associated with Antigen Processing. Additionally, we show that processing of both VL9 peptides depends on cleavage of the signal sequences by the host protease Signal Peptide Peptidase. Notably, our results also reveal that the mature UL40 and Rh67 proteins contribute to CMV immune evasion by down-regulating surface expression of MHC Ia. Unexpectedly, while the Rh67 VL9 peptide is resistant to the effects of the Rh67 protein, the UL40 protein is able to counteract up-regulation of MHC-E expression mediated by its own VL9 peptide. This suggests differences in the mechanisms by which the two VL9 peptides up-regulate MHC-E, which may have implications for translating a RhCMV-vectored SIV vaccine to HIV-1 using HCMV as a vector. IMPORTANCE Cell surface MHC-E expression, which requires a peptide (VMAPRT[L/V][F/I/L/V]L, “VL9”) from the signal sequences of other MHC class I proteins, prevents cells from being killed by CD94/NKG2A-expressing Natural Killer cells. In cells infected with human CMV, the endogenous VL9 peptide is replaced by one from the signal sequence of the HCMV UL40 protein. We show that processing of the VL9 peptide of Rh67, the rhesus CMV equivalent of UL40, mirrors that of UL40, despite a lack of sequence homology between the two proteins. Of note, we also show that the mature UL40 and Rh67 proteins, which have no previously described function, contribute to CMV immune evasion by reducing classical MHC class I surface expression. Importantly, the mature UL40 protein, but not the mature Rh67 protein, can decrease the up-regulation of MHC-E mediated by its signal sequence VL9 peptide, which may have implications for HCMV as a vaccine vector.
Cortico-thalamo-cortical interactions modulate electrically evoked EEG responses in mice

Perturbational complexity analysis predicts the presence of consciousness in volunteers and patients by stimulating the brain with brief pulses, recording electroencephalographic (EEG) responses, and computing their spatiotemporal complexity. We examined the underlying neural circuits in mice by directly stimulating cortex while recording with EEG and Neuropixels probes during wakefulness and isoflurane anesthesia. When mice are awake, stimulation of deep cortical layers reliably evokes locally a brief pulse of excitation, followed by a bi-phasic sequence of 120 ms profound off period and a rebound excitation. A similar pattern, partially attributed to burst spiking, is seen in thalamic nuclei, and is associated with a pronounced late component in the evoked EEG. We infer that cortico-thalamo-cortical interactions drive the long-lasting evoked EEG signals elicited by deep cortical stimulation during the awake state. The cortical and thalamic off period and rebound excitation, and the late component in the EEG, are reduced during running and absent during anesthesia.
Kv2 conductances are not required for C-bouton mediated enhancement of motoneuron output

Neural motor systems have evolved complex circuits that afford animals a range of behaviours essential for survival. C-bouton synapses arising from cholinergic V0C interneurons amplify motoneuron activity via muscarine type 2 receptors, thus increasing muscle contraction force. Recent work in neonatal mouse motoneurons suggests that delayed rectifier currents carried by post-synaptically clustered KV2.1 channels are crucial to C-bouton amplification. Here we use a motoneuron conditional KV2.1 knockout to show that while KV2.1 modulates maximal firing in neonatal mice, its removal minimally affects either mature motoneuron firing or the enhanced firing rates in response to exogenously applied muscarine. In keeping with this, pharmacological blockade of KV2 currents has minimal electrophysiological effects on mature motoneurons. Furthermore, amplification of electromyography activity during high force tasks was unchanged following KV2.1 deletion. We next show that KV2.2 is also expressed by spinal motoneurons and colocalises with KV2.1 opposite C-boutons. We suggest that the primary function of KV2 proteins – KV2.1 and KV2.2 – is non-conducting in motoneurons, and that KV2.2 can function in the absence of KV2.1, perhaps to ensure the integrity of the synapse.
Process-Based Modeling of Infiltration, Soil Loss, and Dissolved Solids on Saline and Sodic Soils

Abstract. The Colorado River is a central socio-economic resource of the western U.S. but is vulnerable to excessive salt load. To improve knowledge of the surface processes controlling salt loading, a series of rainfall simulation experiments were conducted in saline rangelands of the upper Colorado River basin (UCRB). In this study, data from these rainfall simulation experiments were used to develop predictive equations for the process-based Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM). Runoff and soil loss prediction performances were assessed with the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), the coefficient of determination (R2), and the percent bias (PBIAS). Calibration on 36 individual plots, randomly selected to cover each treatment, yielded improved runoff prediction (NSE = 0.73, R2 = 0.74, and PBIAS = 6.93%) compared to the non-calibrated RHEM parameter estimation equation (NSE = 0.65, R2 = 0.68, and PBIAS = 32.03%) when a refined ground cover coefficient was used to estimate the effective hydraulic conductivity (Ke). Soil loss prediction with the calibration data was also improved compared to the non-calibrated parameter estimation equation (NSE = 0.94, R2 = 0.94, and PBIAS = 4.25% vs. NSE = 0.81, R2 = 0.85, and PBIAS = 6.47%) when the soil sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) was included in estimation of the sheet and splash erosion parameter (Kss). Improvements in runoff and soil loss predictions with the calibration data were maintained with an independent set of 36 plots from the original rainfall simulation dataset not used for calibration. Overall, soil sodicity was an important consideration in the performance of the newly developed Kss parameterization equation in this study. Performance on sodic soils (SAR ≥ 15) gained the most from the inclusion of SAR in the Kss estimation. Salt load was linearly related to soil loss (R2 = 0.94), and this linear model performed well in estimating runoff salt load from RHEM-predicted soil loss. These new developments will provide a physically based modeling scheme for land managers for predicting rainfall-driven soil and salt load to surface waters of the UCRB.
Resurrection genomics provides molecular and phenotypic evidence of rapid adaptation to salinization in a keystone aquatic species

Significance Rapid adaptation to human-induced environmental change is critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services into the future. A key question is whether populations of keystone species can rapidly adapt to maintain the ecosystems they support. We investigated rapid adaptation to anthropogenic salinization in Daphnia pulicaria, a keystone aquatic herbivore in lake ecosystems. By resuscitating decades-old resting eggs, we investigate genomic changes across an approximately 25-y temporal contrast from a severely salinized lake. We report that the genes showing signatures of natural selection throughout the genome are related to osmoregulation and ion regulation. Phenotyping clones for salinity tolerance revealed evidence that genetic changes may underlie rapid evolution. We provide molecular genomic and phenotypic evidence for rapid adaptation to salinity in D. pulicaria.