Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The self-reported relationship between a teacher's perception of learner characteristics for students with disabilities and a teacher's use of differentiated instruction in Georgia public schools grades 6-12

The purpose of this quantitative multivariate correlational study was to determine if there is a significant relationship between a general education teacher’s perception of learner characteristics for Students with Disabilities (SWD) and a teacher’s use of Differentiated Instruction (DI) in the general education classroom, grades 6-12. Since previous studies did not clearly support any significant benefits in utilizing segregated instruction for the teaching of students with exceptionalities, it was vital to identify research-based methods to facilitate the education of all students in the general education classroom. Sustained by research on student achievement, the proper and comprehensive implementation of DI has shown to benefit students of all ability levels. Therefore, the intention of this study was to add to the research concerning the importance of the classroom teacher in the successful implementation of DI. Fifty-two general education teachers from grades 6-12 who work with SWD from a large school district in Southeast Georgia participated in the study and completed a five-point Likert scale survey. A canonical correlation, used to analyze the relationship between the variables in the data, suggested that 10 out of 21 correlations were statistically significant. Of the remaining correlations, ten showed non-significant positive correlations and one showed a non-significant negative correlation between mean assessment and mean interest. Furthermore, the researcher did not find a statistically significant relationship between a teacher’s overall of identification of a student’s learning styles and a teacher’s overall frequency to differentiate instruction in the general education classroom, grades 6-12. Suggestions for future research are included.
Robust Object Tracking

We describe an object tracker robust to a number of ambient conditions which often severely degrade performance, for example partial occlusion. The robustness is achieved by describing the object as a set of related geometric primitives (lines, conics, etc.), and using redundant measurements to facilitate the detection of outliers. This improves the overall tracking performance. Results are given for frame rate tracking on image sequences.
Church Support as a Predictor of Children's Spirituality and Prosocial Behavior

Church affiliation has been associated with many developmental benefits for children and adolescents, including higher levels of prosocial behavior; however, research has only minimally explored the mechanisms mediating these relationships. The current study examines the extent to which social support at church (i.e., church support) predicts children's prosocial behavior independent of family religious practices and, subsequently, the extent to which the relationships between family religious practices, church support, and prosocial behavior are mediated by spirituality. Self-report survey data were collected from 279 church-going children between the ages of 6 and 13. Results of a structural equation model (SEM) analysis found that church support independently predicted spirituality and prosocial behavior after controlling for family religious practices. Spirituality partially mediated the relationship between church support and prosocial behavior. On average, boys reported significantly lower levels of church support, which in turn predicted lower levels of prosocial behavior both directly and indirectly via spirituality. Implications for parents and church leadership are discussed.
Membrane Anchoring and Interaction between Transmembrane Domains are Crucial for K+ Channel Function*

The small viral channel Kcv is a Kir-like K+ channel of only 94 amino acids. With this simple structure, the tetramer of Kcv represents the pore module of all complex K+ channels. To examine the structural contribution of the transmembrane domains (TMDs) to channel function, we performed Ala scanning mutagenesis of the two domains and tested the functionality of the mutants in a yeast complementation assay. The data reveal, in combination with computational models, that the upper halves of both TMDs, which face toward the external medium, are rather rigid, whereas the inner parts are more flexible. The rigidity of the outer TMD is conferred by a number of essential aromatic amino acids that face the membrane and probably anchor this domain in the bilayer. The inner TMD is intimately connected with the rigid part of the outer TMD via π···π interactions between a pair of aromatic amino acids. This structural principle is conserved within the viral K+ channels and also present in Kir2.2, implying a general importance of this architecture for K+ channel function.
A histogram-based classifier on overlapped bins

The subclass method is a classifier based on approximation of class regions. It assumes that all classes are separable (but not necessarily linear separable). We extend the method so as to meet cases in which class-conditional probability density functions (PDFs) overlap each other. In this extension, the method becomes a histogram approach for approximating PDFs, but the method allows overlapping of bins unlike usual histogram approaches. It is shown that this method is consistent in the sense that the error rate approaches the Bayes error rate as the number of samples tends to infinity. It is also shown that the convergence rate is faster than that using a previous MDL-based histogram approach in the range of practical number of samples.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Disagreement-based co-training

Recently, Semi-Supervised learning algorithms such as co-training are used in many domains. In co-training, two classifiers based on different subsets of the features or on different learning algorithms are trained in parallel and unlabeled data that are classified differently by the classifiers but for which one classifier has large confidence are labeled and used as training data for the other. In this paper, a new form of co-training, called Ensemble-Co-Training, is proposed that uses an ensemble of different learning algorithms. Based on a theorem by Angluin and Laird that relates noise in the data to the error of hypotheses learned from these data, we propose a criterion for finding a subset of high-confidence predictions and error rate for a classifier in each iteration of the training process. Experiments show that the new method in almost all domains gives better results than the state-of-the-art methods. Keywords-Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL), Co-training, Selftraining, Ensemble Learning, Disagreement learning.
Parenting as a Mediator of the Link between Parental Depressive Symptoms and Child Depressive Symptoms

Research indicates that parental depressive symptoms have significant implications for child depressive symptoms. However, little is known about parenting styles as a possible mediator of the link between parental and child depressive symptoms. This study examined the links between parental depressive symptoms, parenting behaviors including autonomy support and psychological control, and child depressive symptoms. Data was collected from 64 8-10 year olds via questionnaires administered at the Family Development Lab at the University of Vermont. High levels of autonomy support were found to predict lower levels of child depressive symptoms, and high levels of psychological control were found to predict higher levels of child depressive symptoms. No significant associations were found between parental depressive symptoms and child depressive symptoms, autonomy support, or psychological control. The results suggest that granting a child autonomy is one way to prevent them from developing depressive symptoms, whereas psychological control may enhance risk for depressive symptoms.
Transcriptional Responses of Leptospira interrogans to Host Innate Immunity: Significant Changes in Metabolism, Oxygen Tolerance, and Outer Membrane

Background Leptospira interrogans is the major causative agent of leptospirosis. Phagocytosis plays important roles in the innate immune responses to L. interrogans infection, and L. interrogans can evade the killing of phagocytes. However, little is known about the adaptation of L. interrogans during this process. Methodology/Principal Findings To better understand the interaction of pathogenic Leptospira and innate immunity, we employed microarray and comparative genomics analyzing the responses of L. interrogans to macrophage-derived cells. During this process, L. interrogans altered expressions of many genes involved in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, energy production, signal transduction, transcription and translation, oxygen tolerance, and outer membrane proteins. Among them, the catalase gene expression was significantly up-regulated, suggesting it may contribute to resisting the oxidative pressure of the macrophages. The expressions of several major outer membrane protein (OMP) genes (e.g., ompL1, lipL32, lipL41, lipL48 and ompL47) were dramatically down-regulated (10–50 folds), consistent with previous observations that the major OMPs are differentially regulated in vivo. The persistent down-regulations of these major OMPs were validated by immunoblotting. Furthermore, to gain initial insight into the gene regulation mechanisms in L. interrogans, we re-defined the transcription factors (TFs) in the genome and identified the major OmpR TF gene (LB333) that is concurrently regulated with the major OMP genes, suggesting a potential role of LB333 in OMPs regulation. Conclusions/Significance This is the first report on global responses of pathogenic Leptospira to innate immunity, which revealed that the down-regulation of the major OMPs may be an immune evasion strategy of L. interrogans, and a putative TF may be involved in governing these down-regulations. Alterations of the leptospiral OMPs up interaction with host antigen-presenting cells (APCs) provide critical information for selection of vaccine candidates. In addition, genome-wide annotation and comparative analysis of TFs set a foundation for further studying regulatory networks in Leptospira spp.
Workforce Diversity and Job Satisfaction of the Majority and the Minority

The structural approaches of workforce diversity note that the racial composition of work groups may affect work attitudes of racial/ethnic minority and White employees in different ways. Analyzing the data from the federal workforce, this study examines how the racial mixture of the agency affects job satisfaction of racial/ethnic minority and White employees. To do so, three models for all employees, Whites, and racial/ethnic minorities were tested using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions with agency-fixed effects. The results suggest that holding a minority status in their agency may bring lower job satisfaction to both racial/ethnic minority and White employees. Racial/ethnic minorities reported the lowest job satisfaction in predominantly White settings, while Whites expressed the lowest job satisfaction in minority–majority settings. In contrast, racial/ethnic minorities reported the highest job satisfaction when they hold a majority status in their agency (minority–majority settings). Interestingly, Whites seem to be most satisfied in White-majorities settings, which are less homogeneous than predominantly White settings. The finding for all employees showed that federal employees stated higher satisfaction in White-majorities settings than in others.
Effect of pain in pediatric inherited neuropathies

Objective: Assess the prevalence and impact of pain in children with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease. Methods: In this prospective cross-sectional study on children with CMT disease seen at study sites of the Inherited Neuropathy Consortium, we collected standardized assessments of pain (Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale) from 176 patients (140 children aged 8–18 years, and 36 children aged 2–7 years through parent proxies), along with standardized clinical assessments and quality-of-life (QOL) outcomes. We then developed a series of multivariate regression models to determine whether standardized measures of neuropathy severity, functional impact, or structural changes to the feet explained the observed pain scores. Results: The mean score on the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale was 2 (range 0–5). Increased pain strongly correlated with worse QOL scores but not with more severe neuropathy. Independent determinants of increased pain in children with CMT disease included measures of ankle inflexibility. Conclusion: Pain is present in children with CMT disease and negatively affects QOL. Pain scores do not positively correlate with neuropathy severity but do correlate in limited univariate analyses with measures of ankle inflexibility. Further studies to elucidate the mechanisms of pain may help identify treatments that can reduce pain and improve QOL in patients with CMT disease.
How could a rational analysis model explain?

Rational analysis is an influential but contested account of how probabilistic modeling can be used to construct non mechanistic but self-standing explanatory models of the mind. In this paper, I disentangle and assess several possible explanatory contributions which could be attributed to rational analysis. Although existing models suffer from evidential problems that question their explanatory power, I argue that rational analysis modeling can complement mechanistic theorizing by providing models of environmental affordances
An attention based spatial adaptation scheme for H.264 videos on mobiles

When browsing videos in mobile devices, people often feel that resolution greatly affects their perceptual experience in the limited screen size. In this paper, an attention based spatial video adaptation scheme is proposed to overcome display constraints by producing the region of interest. According to the size of the target display, we automatically detect and crop the informative region in each frame to generate a smooth sequence. To avoid costly fully encoding operations, we employ a set of transcoding techniques based on the H.264 standard. Experimental results show that this approach not only improves the perceptual quality but also saves the bandwidth and computation, especially for the videos which are not well edited
Surface Contribution to Planetary Albedo Variability in Cryosphere Regions

Climatological planetary albedo obtained from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) D-series flux dataset is broken down into contributions from the surface and atmosphere in cryosphere regions. The atmosphere accounts for much more of climatological planetary albedo ( 75%) than the surface at all times of the year. The insignificance of the surface contribution over highly reflective cryosphere regions is attributed mostly to the damping effect of the atmosphere. The overlying atmosphere attenuates the surface’s contribution to climatological planetary albedo by reducing the number of solar photons initially reaching the surface and the number of photons initially reflected by the surface that actually reach the top of the atmosphere. The ISCCP datasets were also used to determine the relative contributions of the surface and atmosphere to seasonal and interannual planetary albedo variability in cryosphere regions. Even damped by the atmosphere to the same degree as in the climatological case, the surface contribution dominates the variability in planetary albedo on seasonal and interannual time scales. The surface accounts for about 75% of the change in climatological planetary albedo from one season to another with similar zenith angle and more than 50% of its interannual variability at nearly all times of the year, especially during seasons with extensive snow and sea ice extent. The dominance of the surface in planetary albedo variability is because surface albedo variability associated with snow and ice fluctuations is significantly larger than atmospheric albedo variability due to cloud fluctuations. The large effect of snow and ice variations on planetary albedo variability suggests that if cloud fields do not change much in a future warmer climate, a retreat of snow cover or sea ice would lead to a significant increase in net incoming solar radiation, resulting in an enhancement of high-latitude climate sensitivity.
Virtual model control for quadrupedal trunk stabilization

Legged robots have the advantage of being able to access a large variety of terrain types. In unstructured environments, where only a number of discrete footholds are possible (disaster sites, construction sites, forests, etc.), legged quadrupedal systems can utilize static stability crawl gaits or dynamic stability –often ZMP-based– gaits. In environments where smooth, continuous support is available (flats, fields, roads, etc.), where exact foot placement is not crucial for the success of the behaviour, legged systems can utilize a variety of more dynamic gaits, e.g. trotting, galloping. In this work we focus on a trotting controller for the hydraulically actuated quadruped HyQ [1]. The trot is a symmetrical gait in which diagonally opposite legs swing in unison. This allows a desirable division of the total force that the leg actuators should be able to provide when supporting the weight of the robot, when thrusting and when receiving impact forces at touchdown. In addition, the center of gravity of the system is on average kept above or very close to the line of support that the stance legs define. This leads to a more stable gait with respect to the robot’s attitude, in contrast to bounding and pacing. In practice implementing trotting controllers in real world quadrupeds has proven a challenging task, especially for large robots such as the HyQ (∼75kg). This is due to a number of factors, the most significant two being the need for compliance when legs are touching down, both for impact absorption and surface uncertainty handling, and the need for accurate control, both for foot placement during swing and attitude stabilization during the stance phase of each leg pair. In this extended abstract we present our efforts towards a trotting controller with an explicit trunk stabilization goal. Trunk stabilization serves to reduce oscillations of the body in the vertical direction, that often lead to increased load for the leg actuators, while also allows for more accurate foot placement of the swing legs. In addition, trunk stability is crucial for the successful operation of higher order onboard sensory modalities, such as lidars or stereo cameras, that are essential for perceptual processes as mapping and localization.
GENE-GENE INTERACTION BETWEEN SEROTONIN TRANSPORTER (SLC6A4) AND CLOCK MODULATES THE RISK OF METABOLIC SYNDROME IN ROTATING SHIFTWORKERS

Serotonergic neurotransmission and the master circadian CLOCK gene are physiological modulators of the circadian system. In addition, both are involved in the physiopathology of metabolic syndrome (MS). The authors sought to examine the potential effect of the gene-gene interaction between the functional 44-bp insertion/deletion polymorphism in the promoter region (serotonin-transporter-linked promoter region polymorphism or 5-HTTLPR) of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) and common variants of the gene CLOCK on the genetic risk underlying MS of shift-workers. To test this hypothesis, 856 men were studied; 518 dayworkers were compared with 338 rotating shiftworkers. Medical history, health examination including anthropometric and arterial blood pressure measurements, a questionnaire on health-related behaviors, and biochemical determinations were obtained from every participant. 5-HTTLPR genotypes were determined using polymerase chain reaction followed by gel electrophoresis. Six tag single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the CLOCK gene with a minor allele frequency >10 % (rs1554483 C/G, rs11932595 A/G, rs4580704 C/G, rs6843722 A/C, rs6850524 C/G, and rs4864548 A/G), encompassing 117 kb of chromosome 4 and representing 115 polymorphic sites (r2 > .8), were genotyped. A significant interaction between the 5-HTTLPR variant and the haplotype rs1554483–rs4864548 of the CLOCK gene was detected for diastolic (p = .0058) and systolic blood pressure (p = .0014), arterial hypertension (p = .033), plasma triglycerides levels (p = .033), and number of MS components (p = .01). In all these cases, the higher values were observed in rotating shiftworkers homozygous for the SLC6A4 S allele and carrying the haplotype composed by the CLOCK rs1554483 G and rs4864548 A variants. In conclusion, these data suggest a potential interaction (epistatic effect) of serotonin transporter and CLOCK gene variation on the genetic susceptibility to develop MS by rotating shiftworkers. (Author correspondence: cpirola@ciudad.com.ar or pirola.carlos@lanari.fmed.uba.ar)
Human Cytomegalovirus and Human Herpesvirus 6 Genes That Transform and Transactivate

SUMMARY This review is an update on the transforming genes of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6). Both viruses have been implicated in the etiology of several human cancers. In particular, HCMV has been associated with cervical carcinoma and adenocarcinomas of the prostate and colon. In vitro transformation studies have established three HCMV morphologic transforming regions (mtr), i.e., mtrI, mtrII, and mtrIII. Of these, only mtrII (UL111A) is retained and expressed in both transformed and tumor-derived cells. The transforming and tumorigenic activities of the mtrII oncogene were localized to an open reading frame (ORF) encoding a 79-amino-acid (aa) protein. Furthermore, mtrII protein bound to the tumor suppressor protein p53 and inhibited its ability to transactivate a p53-responsive promoter. In additional studies, the HCMV immediate-early protein IE86 (IE2; UL122) was found to interact with cell cycle-regulatory proteins such as p53 and Rb. However, IE86 exhibited transforming activity in vitro only in cooperation with adenovirus E1A. HHV-6 is a T-cell-tropic virus associated with AIDS-related and other lymphoid malignancies. In vitro studies identified three transforming fragments, i.e., SalI-L, ZVB70, and ZVH14. Of these, only SalI-L (DR7) was retained in transformed and tumor-derived cells. The transforming and tumorigenic activities of SalI-L have been localized to a 357-aa ORF-1 protein. The ORF-1 protein was expressed in transformed cells and, like HCMV mtrII, bound to p53 and inhibited its ability to transactivate a p53-responsive promoter. HHV-6 has also been proposed to be a cofactor in AIDS because both HHV-6 and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) have been demonstrated to coinfect human CD4+ T cells, causing accelerated cytopathic effects. Interestingly, like the transforming proteins of DNA tumor viruses such as simian virus 40 and adenovirus, ORF-1 was also a transactivator and specifically up-regulated the HIV-1 long terminal repeat when cotransfected into CD4+ T cells. Finally, based on the interactions of HCMV and HHV-6 transforming proteins with tumor suppressor proteins, a scheme is proposed for their role in oncogenesis.