Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Emergence of the Teacher's Voice: Implications for the New Reform

The second phase of 1980s school reform shares a great sameness with the first phase, circa 1983 same rhetoric of risk and excellence, and at least in some formulations, same warning of economic peril. ’ Yet there is a startling difference too. Whereas the key 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, implicitly took teachers to be dumb instruments of school policy, the key 1986 report, that of the Carnegie Task Force, takes them to be its chief agents.2 How did such a difference arise from such undifferentiated rhetorical terrain, and in only three years? A first answer is that the cause must be failure of top-down policy initiatives born of the earlier phase. The problem with this answer is that many such initiatives are just now reaching the stage of full implementation.3 They cannot be perceived to have failed yet -unless some shift in the part of our collective imagination reserved for evaluating social policy has doomed them before their time. A second answer is economic: The popular notion of the value of teachers must have risen in proportion to the rising talk of teacher shortages. A Rand study has suggested that this connection may involve the unwillingness of American women in a more feminist society to be recruited into teaching under the work conditions that now prevail there.4 Drawn to teaching, but with career opportunities elsewhere, these younger women, according to this argument, are in a better position than their counterparts of the teacher shortage in the 1960s to demand change as the price of their entry. The change they demand is that as teachers they be given a voice in the running of the schools. The problem with this second answer, at least currently, is that there is still simply too small a manifestation of teacher shortage and thus too little leverage among teaching candidates for them to have such a significant impact on policy direction. 5 So both the first and the second answers, plausible and even compelling though they may seem, founder on a question of timeliness: The causes they suggest come too late to fit the effect. This inadequacy points toward a third answer, which is the one I offer in this article.
3D Imaging of Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells in the Living Human Retina

Purpose Dysfunction of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) underlies numerous retinal pathologies, but biomarkers sensitive to RPE change at the cellular level are limited. In this study, we used adaptive optics optical coherence tomography (AO-OCT) in conjunction with organelle motility as a novel contrast mechanism to visualize RPE cells and characterize their 3-dimensional (3D) reflectance profile. Methods Using the Indiana AO-OCT imaging system (λc = 790 nm), volumes were acquired in the macula of six normal subjects (25–61 years). Volumes were registered in 3D with subcellular accuracy, layers segmented, and RPE and photoreceptor en face images extracted and averaged. Voronoi and two-dimensional (2D) power spectra analyses were applied to the images to quantify RPE and cone packing and cone-to-RPE ratio. Results Adaptive optics OCT revealed two distinct reflectance patterns at the depth of the RPE. One is characterized by the RPE interface with rod photoreceptor tips, the second by the RPE cell nuclei and surrounding organelles, likely melanin. Increasing cell contrast by averaging proved critical for observing the RPE cell mosaic, successful in all subjects and retinal eccentricities imaged. Retinal pigment epithelium mosaic packing and cell thickness generally agreed with that of histology and in vivo studies using other imaging modalities. Conclusions We have presented, to our knowledge, the first detailed characterization of the 3D reflectance profile of individual RPE cells and their relation to cones and rods in the living human retina. Success in younger and older eyes establishes a path for testing aging effects in larger populations. Because the technology is based on OCT, our measurements will aid in interpreting clinical OCT images.
Dynamic Assessment of Reading Disabilities.

Effective assessment of reading dis ability requires three kinds of infor mation on which to base appropriate remediation: the student's particular strengths and weaknesses in reading, that person's potential for progress in reading, and the conditions under which that progress can be made. Current diagnostic procedures are best at estimating the child's skills knowledge; estimates of potential remain problematic; and information about the conditions under which progress can be made is rarely collected. The work of Reuven Feuerstein (Feuerstein, Rand, and Hoffman, 1979) in intellectural assessment, however, provides insight into how we might shift the emphasis in diagnosis from looking at the child's current status to discovering the conditions under which the child will succeed in reading. Feuerstein con trasts traditional static assessment with dynamic assessment, which as sumes that cognitive behavior is plastic or modifiable and seeks to identify the conditions under which the child's ability to learn can be altered. While Feuerstein's work has been in intellectual assessment, much of his theory is particularly useful for diagnosing children having difficulty in learning to read.
Database Updates through Abduction

The problem of view updates in deductive databases is studied by casting this in a naturally associated abductive framework. It is shown that this abductive approach deals successfully, in a simple yet powerful way, with the difficulties related to the presence of negation in the database and provides a uniform common procedure for insert and delete update requests. This procedure is formally defined and its correctness and completeness is investigated. The abductive formalization of the update problem allows for a natural generalization of the basic update procedure in various ways. One important such extension is the fact the integrity checking asssociated with any update request can be dynamically incorporated into the update procedure so that potential inconsistent solutions to the request are trapped and rejected during their generation. It is also possible to extend the abductive approach to handle general non ground requests using constructive abduction and an associated form of constructive negation.
Learning outcome-discriminative dynamics in multivariate physiological cohort time series

Model identification for physiological systems is complicated by changes between operating regimes and measurement artifacts. We present a solution to these problems by assuming that a cohort of physiological time series is generated by switching among a finite collection of physiologically-constrained dynamical models and artifactual segments. We model the resulting time series using the switching linear dynamical systems (SLDS) framework, and present a novel learning algorithm for the class of SLDS, with the objective of identifying time series dynamics that are predictive of physiological regimes or outcomes of interest. We present exploratory results based on a simulation study and a physiological classification example of decoding postural changes from heart rate and blood pressure. We demonstrate a significant improvement in classification over methods based on feature learning via expectation maximization. The proposed learning algorithm is general, and can be extended to other applications involving state-space formulations.
GrOWL: A Tool for Visualization and Editing of OWL Ontologies

In an effort to optimize visualization and editing of OWL ontologies we have developed GrOWL-a browser and visual editor for OWL that accurately visualizes the underlying DL semantics of OWL ontologies while avoiding the difficulties of the verbose OWL syntax. In this paper, we discuss GrOWL visualization model and the essential visualization techniques implemented in GrOWL.
Muscle contractions induce interleukin‐6 mRNA production in rat skeletal muscles

1 The present study explored the hypothesis that interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) might be locally produced in response to skeletal muscle contractions and whether the production might reflect the type of muscle contraction performed. Rats were anaesthetized and the calf muscles of one limb were stimulated electrically for concentric or eccentric contractions (4 × 10 contractions with 1 min of rest between the 4 series, 100 Hz). The contralateral muscles served as unstimulated controls. The mRNA levels for IL‐6, the glucose transport protein GLUT‐4 and β‐actin in the rat muscles (white and red gastrocnemius and soleus) were quantified by quantitative competitive RT‐PCR. 2 The IL‐6 mRNA level, measured 30 min after the stimulation, increased after both eccentric and concentric contractions and there were no significant differences in IL‐6 mRNA levels between the different muscle fibre types. No significant increase in IL‐6 mRNA level was seen in the unstimulated contralateral muscle fibres. 3 No increase in GLUT‐4 mRNA level was detected, indicating that the increase in IL‐6 mRNA level was not due to general changes in transcription. 4 We conclude that IL‐6 is locally produced after muscle contraction, with no significant differences between different muscle fibre types. This local production of IL‐6 is not due to general changes in transcription, since no changes in the level of GLUT‐4 mRNA were found. The fact that increased IL‐6 mRNA levels were seen after both concentric and eccentric contractions indicates that the production of IL‐6 is not solely due to muscle damage, seen primarily after eccentric exercise.
NEW MEDIA AND NATURAL DISASTERS

This article examines the role of blogs during the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Using a blog created by South Asian journalists as a case study, the article argues that new media has the potential to be a democratizing agent in lesser developed countries. The article argues that some tsunami-related blogs give regional, subaltern journalists a medium to transcend exploitative accounts of the tsunami's aftermath. The article is also able to use tsunami-related blogs to help highlight questions surrounding new media and disaster reporting in lesser developed countries in general, including discussions of the digital divide.
Who Goes Early?: A Multi-Level Analysis of Enrolling via Early Action and Early Decision Admissions

Background/Context Several studies have identified that applicants who apply to college via early admissions programs tend to be White and affluent. Because researchers have also identified benefits with applying early, akin to a 100 point boost on the SAT, such programs raise questions around equity in the college admissions process. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study/Research Design We used cross-classified hierarchical generalized linear modeling to examine predictors of enrolling due to being admitted through an early decision or early action program in a national dataset of 88,086 students. Although research has investigated the types of institutions that tend to offer early action and early decision programs, the types of students who apply to these programs, and the types of high schools that they come from, no prior study has examined these three contexts simultaneously. Findings/Results When controlling for high school, individual, and institutional characteristics, receiving private college counseling was the strongest predictor of enrolling due to early admissions. We suggest that elevated levels of cultural capital help explain why White and affluent students are more likely to enroll via early admissions. Conclusions/Recommendations Our findings indicate that early admissions programs, and in particular, early decision, perpetuate social privilege and stratification. At a minimum, institutions need to look inward and ask serious questions about the patterns of who applies and is accepted via early policies, and the implications of offering advantages to students who generally already are advantaged in the admissions process.
WHY PEOPLE BLOG: AN EXPECTANCY THEORY ANALYSIS

The evolution of Internet offers new tools allowing ordinary people to become content creators. One of the latest popular tools is the Internet-based blog. Few previous studies explored and examined user motivations of blogging. In this study, expectancy theory is applied to construct a conceptual framework as well as a measurable model on bloggers’ motivation to blogging. Expert interviews and survey instrument were used in this study. Interviews with bloggers were first performed to verify the questionnaire items of the attractiveness of possible outcomes resulting from blogging. After the construction of the questionnaire, a survey was conducted and 177 bloggers were asked to respond the questionnaire. From the 10 motivations examined in this study, bloggers ranked pouring out feelings and connecting with people respectively, as their two most valued rewards. They also assigned the highest probabilities to these rewards. The collected data shows that bloggers with high (both intrinsic and extrinsic) motivation for rewards have higher level of blogging intention. A blogger with higher blogging intention is willing to take more time to maintain their blog and post more articles on the blog.
Web and Personal Image Annotation by Mining Label Correlation With Relaxed Visual Graph Embedding

The number of digital images rapidly increases, and it becomes an important challenge to organize these resources effectively. As a way to facilitate image categorization and retrieval, automatic image annotation has received much research attention. Considering that there are a great number of unlabeled images available, it is beneficial to develop an effective mechanism to leverage unlabeled images for large-scale image annotation. Meanwhile, a single image is usually associated with multiple labels, which are inherently correlated to each other. A straightforward method of image annotation is to decompose the problem into multiple independent single-label problems, but this ignores the underlying correlations among different labels. In this paper, we propose a new inductive algorithm for image annotation by integrating label correlation mining and visual similarity mining into a joint framework. We first construct a graph model according to image visual features. A multilabel classifier is then trained by simultaneously uncovering the shared structure common to different labels and the visual graph embedded label prediction matrix for image annotation. We show that the globally optimal solution of the proposed framework can be obtained by performing generalized eigen-decomposition. We apply the proposed framework to both web image annotation and personal album labeling using the NUS-WIDE, MSRA MM 2.0, and Kodak image data sets, and the AUC evaluation metric. Extensive experiments on large-scale image databases collected from the web and personal album show that the proposed algorithm is capable of utilizing both labeled and unlabeled data for image annotation and outperforms other algorithms.
Transparent conducting films from NbSe3 nanowires

We have developed methods to disperse and partially size separate NbSe3 nanowires in aqueous surfactant solutions. These dispersions can easily be formed into thin films. Optical and electrical studies show these films to display sheet resistances and transmittances ranging from (, 22%) to (, 79%) depending on thickness. For thicker films, we measured the transparent conducting figure of merit to be σDC, B/σOp = 0.32, similar to graphene networks. Thickness measurements gave individual values of σOp = 17 800 S m − 1 and σDC, B = 5700 S m − 1. Films thinner than ∼ 70 nm displayed reduced DC conductivity due to percolative effects.
A Hybrid Approach for Automatic Classification of Chinese Unknown Verbs

本論文合併兩種方法預測未知動詞的詞類。 第一種方法為規則法,即從訓練 語料中歸納出未知動詞組成的構詞規律,分成兩個主要的判斷方式:一、依 照未知動詞的組成的關鍵字決定其分類。 二、依照未知動詞的構成組合決定 其分類。 關鍵字法首先將動詞依長度分為四組。 第一組為二字詞、三字詞、四字詞、 五字以上的詞彙。 在對實際語料的觀察下,發現不同詞長的動詞結構相異, 因此將語料依詞長分組。 例如:三字詞可訓練出「好」、「出」兩條規則決 定動詞的詞類,其他長度的未知動詞並沒有這兩條規則,另外「化」規則不 適用於二字動詞。 規則法的第二部分為依照構成組合決定其分類。 在觀察未知動詞時,發現有 部分未知動詞的組合很具有規律,我們就將訓練語料中未知動詞的組合做個 歸納,得到九種組合。 在十次實驗中,規則法可以處理的未知動詞平均約為 23.19%,猜測正確的比例為 91.67%。 二、相似法為利用與未知動詞相似的例子來預測未知動詞的詞類。 相似法主 要利用知網與中央研究院中文句結構樹資料庫 1.0 作為語意與詞類相似度測 量的工具。 藉由計算未知動詞與已知動詞的相似度來預測未知動詞的詞類, 未知動詞的詞類為與其相似度最高的相似例子的詞類。 * 中央研究院資訊所,曾慧馨 E-mail: huihsin@iis.sinica. edu.tw 陳克健 E-mail: kchen@iis.sinica. edu.tw + 政治大學資訊系 E-mail: chaolin@ nccu.edu.tw ** 台灣大學外文系 E-mail: zmgao@ccms.ntu. edu.tw
Characterizing the Branch Miss Prediction Penalty

Despite years of study, branch mispredictions remain as a significant performance impediment in pipelined superscalar processors. This paper characterizes the causes and major components of the branch misprediction penalty. In general, the branch misprediction penalty can be substantially larger than the frontend pipeline length (which is often equated with the misprediction penalty). We identify and quantify five contributors to the branch misprediction penalty: (i) the frontend pipeline length, (ii) the number of instructions since the last miss event (branch misprediction, I-cache miss, long D-cache miss)—this is related to the burstiness of miss events, (iii) the inherent ILP of the program, (iv) the functional unit latencies, and (v) the number of short (L1) D-cache misses. The characterizations done in this paper are driven by ‘interval analysis’, an analytical approach that models superscalar processor performance as a sequence of inter-miss intervals.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Religion and self : notions from a cultural psychological perspective

After a brief introduction of a cultural psychological perspective, this paper turns to the concept of self. The paper proposes to conceive of that reality to which the concepts of self refer as a narrative, employing especially autobiographies and other ego-documents in empirical exploration. After discussing some psychological theories about “self,” the paper points out that they may well be applied in research on personal religiosity.
Time-based Location Techniques Using Inexpensive, Unsynchronized Clocks in Wireless Networks

The ability to measure location using time of flight in IEEE 802.11 networks is impeded by the standard clock resolution, imprecise synchronization of the 802.11 protocol, and the inaccuracy of available clocks. To achieve real-time location with accuracy goals of a few meters, we derive new consensus synchronization techniques for free-running clocks. Using consensus synchronization, we improve existing time of arrival (TOA) techniques and introduce new time difference of arrival (TDOA) techniques. With this common basis, we show how TOA is theoretically superior to TDOA. Using TOA measurements, we can locate wireless nodes that participate in the location system, and using TDOA measurements, we can locate nodes that do not participate. We demonstrate applications using off-the-shelf 802.11 hardware that can determine location to within 3m using simple, existing optimization methods. The synchronization techniques extend existing ones providing distributed synchronization for free-running clocks to cases where send times cannot be controlled and adjusted precisely, as in 802.11 networks. These location and synchronization techniques may be applied to transmitting wireless nodes using any communication protocol where cooperating nodes can produce send and receive timestamps.
Functional analysis of hemolin gene from silkworm, Bombyx mori - immune and development.

Hemolin, an immunoglobulin-like protein, is involved in the immunity and development of Lepi-doptera, but its exact functions are still unclear. In this work, the quantitative PCR and Western blot analysis were used to study the effects of exogenous substances on hemolin transcription and transla-tion in the silkworm midgut. Also, RNA interference was used to examine the effects of hemolin on wing disc development of silkworm. we found that the transcription and expression of hemolin gene could be up-regulated effectively after injection of inactive Escherichia coli and cell wall components (LPS and PGN) into silkworm midgut. However, no any changes in transcription and expression of hemolin were observed by the injection of BmNPV (Bombyx mori nuclear polyhydrosis virus). The protein-protein interaction between hemolin and yippee was verified by Co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) in silkworm wing discs. In addition, the silence of hemolin gene by RNA interference could lead to adult wing hy-poplasia in most hatched moths. Our study provides some useful information regarding the functions of hemolin associated with the immune and developmental mechanisms in silkworm.
Inhibition of tactile information on visual spatial attention: An fMRI study

Visual orienting attention is well researched by using a visual cue. But in the tactile orienting of the visual, Due to technical reasons, the explanations of the tactile information effect of visual attention is no clear, and just have few research to devoted to this part. Visual cue in the top-down attention mechanism was investigated that it could effectively improve the target cognition reaction quality. Recent brain studies showed that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) played an important role to keep the task-relevant information and task rule during tasks. In our study, We used a top-down attention paradigm in which a visual cue directs the attention of participants to both visual and tactile target stimulus in a spatial (attention was directed to unilateral target distinctly) in visual spatial attention task and tactile-visual spatial attention task. And the attention was manipulated to visual spatial orienting by a visual cue, tactile target stimulus was told to be ignored. Subjects were also scanned during a resting baseline condition in which subjects clicked the reaction key ten times. The reaction time for spatial location attention is faster than that with the tactile stimulus. Behavioral results of reaction time no have any significant difference between the two tasks. But the RTs of the VS task is faster than VtS task. So we thought that the tactile information may affecting the visual spatial attention neural network. Brain-imaging data showed that IPL (inferior parietal lobe) and MFG (middle frontal gyrus) were activated in the visual spatial attention task and the activation was enhanced during the task with the tactile stimulus.
Causality tests using basic and optimally-pruned extreme learning machines

This study explores the application of artificial intelligence on the causal relationship between mining production index and electricity load. The data used is the total mining production index and total electricity consumption in the mining sector sampled on a monthly basis from January 1985 to December 2011 in South Africa. Optimally-pruned and basic extreme learning machines were used to develop nonlinear models on the datasets under consideration. This work introduces the use of extreme learning machines for modeling. It was found that, using OP-ELM, there is statistically significant improvement in forecasting error of the electricity load by using both the mining production index and the electricity load on the conditioning set and the same set showed no improvement in predicting the production index. ELM results showed no improvement for both electricity load and production index. It was concluded that the OP-ELM models showed a unidirectional granger causal relationship running from the mining production to electricity load.