Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Living the differences : ethnicity, gender and social work

This thesis concerns the entry of black women into local authority social service departments as qualified social workers in the 1980s. It argues that this entry needs to be understood in the context of a moment of racial formation and social regulation in which specific black populations were managed through a regime of governmentality in which 'new black subjects' were formed. These 'new black subjects' were constituted as 'ethnic-minorities' out of an earlier form of being as 'immigrants'. Central to this process of reconstitution was a discourse of black family forms as pathological and yet governable through the intervention of state agencies. As such, social work as a specific form of state organised intervention, articulated to a discourse of 'race' and black family formations. This articulation suggested that the management of those black families who could be defined as pathological or 'in need required a specific 'ethnic' knowledge and in this way a space for the entry of black women into qualified social work was created. This process also intersected with a time of riotous rebellion in many inner city areas and a moment of municipal socialism in which demands on the part of social movements for social reparation for inequality had been incorporated into the manifestos of political parties. This made it incumbent on such authorities to promote equality of employment opportunity within their departments. Whilst the discourses of 'race'/ethnicity and equal opportunities provided the impetus for the employment of black women as qualified social workers the understanding and experience of this employment was mediated through a sense of organisational and managerial exclusion. Thus the thesis ends with a consideration of the accounts of numerous black women social workers and their multi-racial, female and male managers.
Striatal Medium Spiny Neurons Terminate in a Distinct Region in the Lateral Hypothalamic Area and Do Not Directly Innervate Orexin/Hypocretin- or Melanin-Concentrating Hormone-Containing Neurons

Neuronal circuits including medium spiny neurons (MSNs) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH)-containing neurons in the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) are hypothesized to play an important role in hedonic feeding. A reciprocal connection between NAc MSNs and MCH-containing neurons is proposed to form a neuronal circuit that is involved in hedonic feeding. Although NAc MSNs have been shown to receive projection from MCH-containing neurons, it is not known whether MCH-containing neurons in the LHA also receive direct inputs from NAc MSNs. Here, we developed a genetic approach that allows us to visualize almost all striatal MSNs including NAc MSNs. We demonstrate that striatal MSNs terminate in a distinct region within the anterior LHA, and that the terminal area of striatal MSNs in this region contains glutamatergic neurons and is distinctly separate from orexin/hypocretin- or MCH-containing neurons. These observations suggest that NAc MSNs do not directly innervate MCH-containing neurons, but may indirectly signal MCH-containing neurons via glutamatergic neurons in the anterior LHA.
Towards a biological basis for predicting nutrient partitioning: the dairy cow as an example.

Prediction of nutrient partitioning is a long-standing problem of animal nutrition that has still not been solved. Another substantial problem for nutritional science is how to incorporate genetic differences into nutritional models. These two problems are linked as their biological basis lies in the relative priorities of different life functions (growth, reproduction, health, etc.) and how they change both through time and in response to genetic selection. This paper presents recent developments in describing this biological basis and evidence in support of the concepts involved as they relate to nutrient partitioning. There is ample evidence that at different stages of the reproductive cycle various metabolic pathways, such as lipolysis and lipogenesis, are up or down regulated. The net result of such changes is that nutrients are channelled to differing extents to different organs, life functions and end-products. This occurs not as a homeostatic function of changing nutritional environment but rather as a homeorhetic function caused by the changing expression of genes for processes such as milk production through time. In other words, the animal has genetic drives and there is an aspect of nutrient partitioning that is genetically driven. Evidence for genetic drives other than milk production is available and is discussed. Genetic drives for other life functions than just milk imply that nutrient partitioning will change through lactation and according to genotype - i.e. it cannot be predicted from feed properties alone. Progress in describing genetic drives and homeorhetic controls is reviewed. There is currently a lack of good genetic measures of physiological parameters. The unprecedented level of detail and amounts of data generated by the advent of microarray biotechnology and the fields of genomics, proteomics, etc. should in the long-term provide the necessary information to make the link between genetic drives and metabolism. However, gene expression, protein synthesis etc, have all been shown to be environmentally sensitive. Thus, a major challenge in realising the potential afforded by this new technology is to be able to be able to distinguish genetically driven and environmentally driven effects on expression. To do this we need a better understanding of the basis for the interactions between genotypes and environments. The biological limitations of traditional evaluation of genotype × environment interactions and plasticity are discussed and the benefits of considering these in terms of trade-offs between life functions is put forward. Trade-offs place partitioning explicitly at the centre of the resource allocation problem and allow consideration of the effects of management and selection on multiple traits and on nutrient partitioning.
Extracting meaningful speech features to support diagnostic feedback: an ECD approach to automated scoring

Although the operational scoring of the TOEFL iBT speaking section features the overall judgment of an examinee's speaking ability, the evaluation of specific components of speech such as delivery (pace and clarity of speech) and language use (vocabulary and grammar use) may be a promising approach to providing diagnostic information to learners. This study used an evidence-centered design approach (ECD) to extract features that provide evidence about the quality of responses to TOEFL iBT speaking tasks through the use of speech and NLP technologies. The computed features were identified through a detailed explication of the rubrics and confirmed by content specialists. Classification trees were developed to model human holistic scores and delivery and language use scores, and validated on independent samples. We will discuss the feasibility of extracting meaningful speech features amenable to diagnostic feedback. Introduction The speaking section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-Based Test (TOEFL ® iBT) is designed to measure the academic English speaking proficiency of non-native speakers who plan to study at universities where English is spoken. This test represents an important advancement in the large-scale assessment of productive skills. However, it poses particular challenges to learners in parts of the world where opportunities to learn speaking skills are limited. First, the learning environments in those countries may not be optimal for acquiring speaking skills. Second, English teachers in those parts of the world may not be adequately trained to teach speaking skills and to provide reliable feedback on their students' speaking performance. This calls for research that would support the design of effective learning products that can serve the diverse needs of learners, promote better learning, and improve teaching practices. An important requirement for such learning products is that they be capable of providing instant feedback to learners. This project explores automated evaluation of TOEFL ® iBT speaking performances that supports instant feedback capabilities for potential speaking products. Previous work The technologies that support automated evaluation of speaking proficiency are automated speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP) tools (for a survey of these technologies see, e.g., Jurafsky & Martin, 2000). The application of these technologies to responses to the TOEFL ® iBT Speaking test poses challenges because this test elicits spontaneous speech and the scoring rubrics, based on which the responses are evaluated, draw on models of communicative competence. In addition, TOEFL ® iBT speaking has been developed to …
A QoS-Guaranteed Adaptive Resource Allocation Algorithm with Low Complexity in OFDMA System

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technique is considered in this paper. We do research on the subcarrier, bit and power allocation algorithm in it and propose the novel dynamic subcarrier and bit allocation algorithm - QoS-guaranteed adaptive resource allocation algorithm with low complexity for real-time services when the instantaneous channel gain is considered. Then we can derive the better system performance when the adaptive algorithm is used in the resource allocation scheme, and it can derive the lower power and complexity in contrast to other existing algorithms
The Swedish tax reform: An introduction

The papers in this issue of Swedish Economic Policy Review derive from an evaluation of the Swedish 1990-91 tax reform commissioned by the Ministry of Finance. The evaluation project has resulted in a summary report available in Swedish,' and a large number of specialised studies published by the Economic Council of Sweden in a series of Tax Evaluation Reports. The Swedish reform is one of the most far-reaching tax reforms undertaken in any industrialised country. According to its proponents the reform would avoid the classical goal conflict between efficiency and income distribution. In spite of drastic marginal tax cuts in highincome brackets, high-income earners were not supposed to gain relative to other groups; all strata in society would gain as a result of a generally more efficient economy. The proverbial free lunch would materialise. Five years have passed since the tax reform was implemented, and it seems natural to ask whether the expectations have been fulfilled. A superficial answer appears to be negative. Since 1990 production has fallen, unemployment has increased, income inequality has grown and the government budget deficit has reached record heights. A growing number of critical voices now put part of the blame on the tax reform. The papers presented here attempt to disentangle the effects of the reform from other shocks that hit the Swedish economy in the early 1990s.
Indifference Pricing: Theory and Applications

This is the first book about the emerging field of utility indifference pricing for valuing derivatives in incomplete markets. Rene Carmona brings together a who's who of leading experts in the field to provide the definitive introduction for students, scholars, and researchers. Until recently, financial mathematicians and engineers developed pricing and hedging procedures that assumed complete markets. But markets are generally incomplete, and it may be impossible to hedge against all sources of randomness. Indifference Pricing offers cutting-edge procedures developed under more realistic market assumptions. The book begins by introducing the concept of indifference pricing in the simplest possible models of discrete time and finite state spaces where duality theory can be exploited readily. It moves into a more technical discussion of utility indifference pricing for diffusion models, and then addresses problems of optimal design of derivatives by extending the indifference pricing paradigm beyond the realm of utility functions into the realm of dynamic risk measures. Focus then turns to the applications, including portfolio optimization, the pricing of defaultable securities, and weather and commodity derivatives. The book features original mathematical results and an extensive bibliography and indexes. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Pauline Barrieu, Tomasz R. Bielecki, Nicole El Karoui, Robert J. Elliott, Said Hamadene, Vicky Henderson, David Hobson, Aytac Ilhan, Monique Jeanblanc, Mattias Jonsson, Anis Matoussi, Marek Musiela, Ronnie Sircar, John van der Hoek, and Thaleia Zariphopoulou. - The first book on utility indifference pricing -Explains the fundamentals of indifference pricing, from simple models to the most technical ones - Goes beyond utility functions to analyze optimal risk transfer and the theory of dynamic risk measures - Covers non-Markovian and partially observed models and applications to portfolio optimization, defaultable securities, static and quadratic hedging, weather derivatives, and commodities - Includes extensive bibliography and indexes - Provides essential reading for PhD students, researchers, and professionals
Feasibility of transcranial Doppler and single photon emission computed tomography in compound neuroactivation task

The aim of this study was to test feasibility of transcranial Doppler (TCD) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) during compound neuroactivation task. The study was performed in 60 healthy right-handed volunteers. Cerebral blood flow velocity was measured by TCD in both middle cerebral arteries (MCA) at baseline and during computer game. The same stimulus and response pattern was used in 15 subjects that additionally underwent brain SPECT. Percentage differences between measurements were determined through quantitative result assessment. Both methods detected a statistically significant cerebral blood flow increase during neuroactivation. Correlation of TCD and SPECT showed statistically significant correlation only for the increase of cerebral blood flow velocity in the right MCA and for the right-sided cerebral blood flow increase, demonstrating that both methods partially measure similar cerebral blood flow changes that occur during neuroactivation. Comparison of TCD and SPECT showed TCD to be inadequately sensitive method for evaluation of cerebral blood flow during complex activation paradigm.
Efficacy of Maxforce Bait for Control of the Argentine Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in Haleakala National Park, Maui, Hawaii

In an effort to develop a chemical control strategy for the invasive Argentine ant, Linepithema humile (Mayr), in Haleakala National Park, Maxforce, which is formulated with 0.9% hydramethylnon, was used in test plots to determine the efficacy of the ant bait in the field. Initially, Maxforce was tested at 2 application rates: broadcast at 2.25 kg/ha (2 lb/acre) and 4.5 kg/ha (4 lb/acre). Later, the following treatments were also tested: a Maxforce and honey granule mix, Maxforce with 0.5% hydramethylnon, Maxforce with a different solvent, Maxforce distributed in exposed piles, and Maxforce distributed in covered piles. Although there were significant differences in the magnitude of ant reduction among the various treatments, all yielded the same general result. Foraging ant numbers at monitoring bait stations declined an average maximum of 97.0% in the test plots, with no plots achieving 100% reduction. At 2 mo after treatment the mean number of foraging ants was reduced by 92.1%. Nest survival in the plots appeared to be affected to a lesser degree, but could not be monitored accurately over the longer term because of the phenomenon of nest movement. A 2nd identical application 1 mo after the initial application in plots treated with Maxforce at 2.25 and 4.5 kg/ha did not result in eradication. Bait molding, quick mortality, and toxicant breakdown from UV radiation created a short exposure time to the bait and toxicant, which may have been the main obstacle to achieving eradication.
Gesture Analysis Using 3D Camera, Shape Features and Particle Filters

This paper presents a framework of gesture recognition and tracking using 3D camera, edge features and particle filters. A target gesture is modeled with perceptual shape features qualitatively. The perceptual model is used to guide tracking based on a particle filtering method to achieve reliable results. The system has been applied to a video game control application, Interactive Dart Game, where dart throwing gesture is modeled by learning from a training data set. The experiments are provided to demonstrate the proposed system which has a great potential for gesture analysis applications, such as sensor based video game and patient monitoring system.
Polyribosome targeting to microtubules: enrichment of specific mRNAs in a reconstituted microtubule preparation from sea urchin embryos

A subset of mRNAs, polyribosomes, and poly(A)-binding proteins copurify with microtubules from sea urchin embryos. Several lines of evidence indicate that the interaction of microtubules with ribosomes is specific: a distinct stalk-like structure appears to mediate their association; ribosomes bind to microtubules with a constant stoichiometry through several purification cycles; and the presence of ribosomes in these preparations depends on the presence of intact microtubules. Five specific mRNAs are enriched with the microtubule- bound ribosomes, indicating that translation of specific proteins may occur on the microtubule scaffolding in vivo.
Cooperation diversity in multihop wireless networks using opportunistic driven multiple access

Cooperation among users in a multihop wireless network adds diversity to the system and thus it allows the overall transmit power to be reduced. However, cooperation requires signaling among users and this reduces the overall rate gain. We provide the optimal coding strategy for meshed wireless networks, where more links are active simultaneously, assuming as optimality criterion the rates of all the links. This is a multi-objective optimization problem that has interesting applications in multihop and ad-hoc networks. We evaluate the optimal codes in closed form for the case where there are two pairs of users acting simultaneously and we provide an iterative algorithm for the general case. Then we evaluate the loss, in terms of information rate, resulting from simultaneous cooperation.
Depression and Anxiety Levels in Armenian Crohn's Disease Patients

The Zung self-depression scale and Beck Anxiety Inventory were used to study the depression and anxiety levels of Armenian Crohn’s disease patients, as well as to reveal the relation between emotional status and placebo effect of these patients. Despite of registered high levels of depression and anxiety, the high placebo rate during investigations was described. The importance of use of psychotherapies for optimal outcomes during treatments of Crohn’s disease is obvious. Keywords—Crohn’s disease, emotional disorders, placebo, psychotherapy.
Wage, Price, and Unemployment Dynamics and the Convergence to Purchasing Power Parity in the Euro Area

The paper discusses the determination of wages, prices, productivity and unemployment in the Euro-wide area in the post Bretton Woods period. The econometric results provide strong evidence on a regime shift at the start of the EMS and the empirical analysis is done separately for the two regimes. Two variables, measuring different aspects of the convergence towards European purchasing power parity, are shown to be crucial for explaining inflation and unemployment behavior in the more recent regime. The results point to the importance of being on a sustainable ppp level when fixing the exchange rates.
Paramedicine and Social Work: Case Studies in Authentic Student Recruitment

Selling the course experience to future students has been corporatised across the Higher Education sector. At many universities marketing and sales specialists, such as ECU’s Student Recruitment Team, rather than academic staff, field prospective student enquiries. Representing courses authentically is crucial to matching future students with an appropriate course experience and career, as well is managing future students’ expectations. A challenge for academics is communicating the course/career experience to university sales agents (recruiters). A challenge for recruiters is conveying an authentic course experience to future students when they have not taken a course themselves. This paper selects two ECU courses, Social Work and Paramedicine, and examines the relationship between academics and recruiters. Particular emphasis is placed on authentic representation of the course experience to future students. The 360 Degree Authenticity (360da) framework was used to examine the quality of authenticity in communication and sales techniques through convergent interviewing. Findings indicated that authentic representation of the course experience depended on a professional trust between individual academics and individual recruiters. Findings also indicated that academics and sales agents emphasised different aspects of the University to future students; but both used credibility markers such as accreditation. Academics were more focused on the career experience, recruiters were more focused on the university and course experience
Combined spatial and transform domain analysis for rectangle detection

We describe and compare methods for detecting rectangles in images using Hough and Radon transforms. Locating rectangles in a new image involves an alternating scheme of transform peak extraction and peak filtering. During the step of peak extraction, we apply the hough/radon transform on the target image and extract peaks (corresponding to line segments) from the transformed image. We filter these peaks based on certain geometric constraints in the transform and spatial constraints on the coordinate (or image) domain such that every set of 4 filtered peaks correspond to a rectangle in the image. We explore the effect of model parameters on system performance and show that the proposed methods achieves good accuracy for rectangle detection on several synthetic and real datasets.
The Pentatricopeptide Repeat Protein PPR5 Stabilizes a Specific tRNA Precursor in Maize Chloroplasts

ABSTRACT Genes for pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins are found in all eukaryotic genomes analyzed but are particularly abundant in land plants. The majority of analyzed PPR proteins play a role in the processing or translation of organellar RNAs. Few PPR proteins have been studied in detail, and the functional repertoire and mechanisms of action of proteins in the PPR family are poorly understood. Here we analyzed a maize ortholog of the embryo-essential Arabidopsis thaliana gene AtPPR5. A genome-wide analysis of chloroplast RNAs that coimmunoprecipitate with Zea mays PPR5 (ZmPPR5) demonstrated that ZmPPR5 is bound in vivo to the unspliced precursor of trnG-UCC. Null and hypomorphic Zmppr5 insertion mutants are embryo viable but are deficient for chloroplast ribosomes and die as seedlings. These mutants show a dramatic decrease in both spliced and unspliced trnG-UCC RNAs, while the transcription of trnG-UCC is unaffected. These results, together with biochemical data documenting the sequence-specific binding of recombinant PPR5 to the trnG-UCC group II intron, suggest that PPR5 stabilizes the trnG-UCC precursor by directly binding and protecting an endonuclease-sensitive site. These findings add to the evidence that chloroplast-localized PPR proteins that are embryo essential in Arabidopsis typically function in the biogenesis of the plastid translation machinery.