Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beyond Bad Dogs: Toward a Pedagogy of Engagement of Male Students

As Student Affairs has developed as a profession, scholars and practitioners have identified deficiencies in classical identity development theory pertaining to women; gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or trans-gendered people; people of color, people with disabilities; and other historically underrepresented identities. Further, the school of thought is that student development theory is primarily based on research subjects who are middle/upper-class Caucasian men and thus is applicable to this population primarily. Thus, newer scholarship has emerged to explain identity development in particular minority groups and women. This project argues that classical theory not only fails to capture salient developmental processes of marginalized groups, but in fact fails to capture elements of male identity development. While the theories are gendered male per se (due to the subjects studied), they are resonant with hegemonic (socially constructed and imposed) masculinity rather than an authentic human masculine identity. There are consequences to this for men and women. The Student Affairs field has established knowledge, values, and best practices, which is inculcated into new practitioners through the professional socialization process. The purpose of this constructivist inquiry was to examine this process, its underlying values and norms, and its effect on professionals’ conceptions of male students. Seventeen Residence Hall Directors with graduate degrees in Student Development or related disciplines were interviewed about their socialization into the field, thoughts about male students, and reactions to a case example depicting an incident on a college campus. Findings suggest a lack of theoretical or conceptual understanding of male gender identities, and consequently a difficulty in viewing male students developmentally. Moreover, without such understanding, new professionals’ conception of marginalized identities can unwittingly reify rather than interrupt stratification and privilege.
Sequential Maximum Entropy Coding as Efficient Indexing for Rapid Navigation through Large Image Repositories

In this paper, we present a storage-efficient and computationally fast method for rapid navigation/browsing through large image repositories and for content-based image retrieval. In the developed system, multiple resolution and orientation achromatic and opponent chromatic channels are sequentially encoded by a maximal information sensory encoding model, which conveniently and effectively indexes the images into a binary tree data structure and represents the images by n-bit binary keys. Content-based image retrieval, database navigation and image browsing are done very efficiently and rapidly by manipulating the n-bit binary keys in the binary tree data structure. We present experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Implementation Factors that Predict Positive Outcomes in a Community-based Intervention Program for at-Risk Adolescents

espanolEste estudio examina la influencia de las variables de la aplicacion del programa “Construyendo mi futuro” en el indice de asistencia y el cambio en competencias personales, de resolucion de problemas y comunitarias. El programa se ofrece desde los Servicios Sociales de Castilla y Leon, Espana, brindando oportunidades para que adolescentes propongan y lleven a cabo actividades en su comunidad. Se recogieron datos de 356 participantes, la mayoria en situacion de riesgo psicosocial, que asistieron a un total de 32 grupos desde el ano 2013 hasta el ano 2016. Mediante analisis de regresion logistica binaria y regresion jerarquica lineal, los resultados indican que tener un facilitador con menos experiencia (mas joven), asistir a grupos mas grandes, disfrutar de un alto nivel de participacion familiar y realizar menos modulos y menos actividades adicionales predecian un mayor indice de asistencia. Estas variables predijeron ademas una mayor orientacion hacia la tarea y cambios positivos en autoconcepto, realizacion social y resolucion de problemas. El hecho de ser joven, de zona urbana y tener un facilitador con menor experiencia profesional predecia una mayor puntuacion en integracion comunitaria. Estos resultados nos revelan como determinados componentes de la aplicacion del programa pueden contribuir al desarrollo y a la eficacia del mismo, pudiendo igualmente ser considerados en otros muchos programas en este ambito de intervencion. EnglishThis study examines the impact of the Building My Future program’s implementation variables on attendance rate and on changes in personal, problem-solving, and community competencies. The program is run by local Social Services from Castile and Leon, Spain, and offers opportunities for adolescents to propose and carry out youth-led activities in their community. Data were accumulated from 356 participants, the majority experiencing negative psychosocial conditions, attending a total of 32 groups from 2013 to 2016. Using binary logistic regression and hierarchical linear regression analyses, results showed that having a facilitator with less professional experience, attending larger groups, having a high level of family involvement, and performing fewer modules and fewer extra activities predicted higher attendance rates and more positive task orientation, self-concept, social realization, and problem-solving competencies. Being younger, from an urban area, and having a facilitator with less professional experience predicted a higher score in community integration. These findings reveal that several program implementation components can contribute to the program’s development and effectiveness and can also be considered across multiple programs in this field of practice.
Experience and the developing prefrontal cortex

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) receives input from all other cortical regions and functions to plan and direct motor, cognitive, affective, and social behavior across time. It has a prolonged development, which allows the acquisition of complex cognitive abilities through experience but makes it susceptible to factors that can lead to abnormal functioning, which is often manifested in neuropsychiatric disorders. When the PFC is exposed to different environmental events during development, such as sensory stimuli, stress, drugs, hormones, and social experiences (including both parental and peer interactions), the developing PFC may develop in different ways. The goal of the current review is to illustrate how the circuitry of the developing PFC can be sculpted by a wide range of pre- and postnatal factors. We begin with an overview of prefrontal functioning and development, and we conclude with a consideration of how early experiences influence prefrontal development and behavior.
Assembly of the nuclear pore: biochemically distinct steps revealed with NEM, GTP gamma S, and BAPTA

A key event in nuclear formation is the assembly of functional nuclear pores. We have used a nuclear reconstitution system derived from Xenopus eggs to examine the process of nuclear pore assembly in vitro. With this system, we have identified three reagents which interfere with nuclear pore assembly, NEM, GTP gamma S, and the Ca++ chelator, BAPTA. These reagents have allowed us to determine that the assembly of a nuclear pore requires the prior assembly of a double nuclear membrane. Inhibition of nuclear vesicle fusion by pretreatment of the membrane vesicle fraction with NEM blocks pore complex assembly. In contrast, NEM treatment of already fused double nuclear membranes does not block pore assembly. This indicates that NEM inhibits a single step in pore assembly--the initial fusion of vesicles required to form a double nuclear membrane. The presence of GTP gamma S blocks pore assembly at two distinct steps, first by preventing fusion between nuclear vesicles, and second by blocking a step in pore assembly that occurs on already fused double nuclear membranes. Interestingly, when the Ca2+ chelator BAPTA is added to a nuclear assembly reaction, it only transiently blocks nuclear vesicle fusion, but completely blocks nuclear pore assembly. This results in the formation of a nucleus surrounded by a double nuclear membrane, but devoid of nuclear pores. To order the positions at which GTP gamma S and BAPTA interfere with pore assembly, a novel anchored nuclear assembly assay was developed. This assay revealed that the BAPTA-sensitive step in pore assembly occurs after the second GTP gamma S-sensitive step. Thus, through use of an in vitro nuclear reconstitution system, it has been possible to biochemically define and order multiple steps in nuclear pore assembly.
Power-Aware ON/OFF Switching Strategies of ENodeB for Green LTE Networks

Enormous growth in broadband communications over the last decade has propelled the ICT sector to become one of the main industries that drain large percentage of annual global energy consumption. This has coincided with an era which is witnessing declining availability of traditional energy resources and proactive research for renewable green/clean sources of energy. In cellular communications, base stations are typically responsible for nearly 60 percent of energy demand associated with cellular services. Accordingly, recent research on energy efficient strategies to manage base station operation has become of the ultimate essence. In this paper, two new strategies for ON/OFF switching of eNodeB in LTE based on transmission power requirements are proposed. The first proposed strategy termed Power-Based (PB) strategy assigns switching OFF priority for eNodeB that exhibit the highest power requirement to support user equipment (UE) within the corresponding cell. The second proposed Power Ratio-Based (PRB) strategy, on the other hand, ranks candidate eNodeB for switching OFF on the basis of ratio between its transmission power requirements and the power that shall be consumed by neighboring eNodeB in order to handle its offloaded traffic. Simulation results conducted over different scenarios and various traffic mixes indicate that the proposed strategies enhance power savings when compared to recent strategies proposed in the literature that rank candidate eNodeB for switching OFF based on of average distance between eNodeB and UE under their supervision.
Real-time Imaging Orientation Determination System to Verify Imaging Polarization Navigation Algorithm

Bio-inspired imaging polarization navigation which can provide navigation information and is capable of sensing polarization information has advantages of high-precision and anti-interference over polarization navigation sensors that use photodiodes. Although all types of imaging polarimeters exist, they may not qualify for the research on the imaging polarization navigation algorithm. To verify the algorithm, a real-time imaging orientation determination system was designed and implemented. Essential calibration procedures for the type of system that contained camera parameter calibration and the inconsistency of complementary metal oxide semiconductor calibration were discussed, designed, and implemented. Calibration results were used to undistort and rectify the multi-camera system. An orientation determination experiment was conducted. The results indicated that the system could acquire and compute the polarized skylight images throughout the calibrations and resolve orientation by the algorithm to verify in real-time. An orientation determination algorithm based on image processing was tested on the system. The performance and properties of the algorithm were evaluated. The rate of the algorithm was over 1 Hz, the error was over 0.313°, and the population standard deviation was 0.148° without any data filter.
A Case for Kernel Level Implementation of Inter Process Communication Mechanisms

Distributed systems must provide some kind of inter process communication (IPC) mechanisms to enable communication between local and especially geographically dispersed and physically distributed processes. These mechanisms may be implemented at different levels of distributed systems namely at application level, library level, operating system interface level, or kernel level. Upper level implementations are intuitively simpler to develop but are less efficient. This paper provides hard evidence on this intuition. It considers two renowned IPC mechanisms, one implemented at library level, called MPI, and the other implemented at kernel level, called DIPC. It shows that the time taken to calculate the Pi number by a distributed system that uses MPI to program and run the calculation of Pi number in parallel is on average 35% slower than by the same distributed system that uses DIPC to program and run the calculation of Pi number in parallel. It is concluded that if distributed systems are to become an appropriate platform for high performance scientific computing of all kinds, it is necessary to try harder and implement IPC mechanisms at kernel level, even ignoring so many other factors in favor of kernel level implementations like safety, privilege, reliability, and primitiveness.
Researches of Chinese sentence similarity based on HowNet

Sentence similarity computing based on the “HowNet” usually treats the optimal matches between the primitives or words as the basic computing unit, and the final results can be got through the weighted sum model. However, this approach often results in the information duplication and the irrational construction. For such problems, this paper calculates the similarity of sets through the statistics of common information (commonality) and the different information (differences) between the two sets of direct primitives. Moreover, the paper introduces this measure into the calculation of sentence similarity. The final experimental analysis shows that the method used in this paper is more stable and effective.
Lessons Learned from the Field: Teaching in High-risk Physical Education Environments

According to the U.S. Department of Education, a child is considered “at risk” if they receive low academic achievement scores, are at risk of dropping out of school, have little support from parents, or live in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood. Currently in the United States, somewhere between 10% and 25% of all youth are considered at risk and attend a Title-1 funded public school. While these numbers are substantial, it is reasonable to suggest that many children in these communities do not receive adequate opportunities to be physically active. The purpose of this article is to provide tangible teaching practices that have been effective in delivering high-quality physical education in some of the most dangerous contexts. Co-creating positive rules, employing consistent routines, holding students to high expectations, building relationships, and other curricular strategies will be expanded on in this article.
Normality: A Consistency Condition for Concurrent Objects

This paper is focused on concurrent objects (objects shared by concurrent processes). It introduces a consistency condition called Normality whose definition is based only on local orders of operations as perceived by processes and by objects. First we consider the model in which each operation is on exactly one object. In this model we show that a history is linearizable iff it is normal. However, the definition of Normality is less constraining in the sense that there are strictly more legal sequential histories which are considered equivalent to the given history when Normality is used. We next consider a more general model where operations can span multiple objects. In this model we show that Normality is strictly weaker than Linearizability, i.e., history may be normal but not linearizable. As Normality refers only to local orders (process order and object order) it appears to be well-suited to objects supported by asynchronous distributed systems and accessed by RPC-like mechanisms.
Integrating Rare-Variant Testing, Function Prediction, and Gene Network in Composite Resequencing-Based Genome-Wide Association Studies (CR-GWAS)

High-density array-based genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are complemented by exome sequencing and whole-genome resequencing-based association studies. Here we present a composite resequencing-based genome-wide association study (CR-GWAS) strategy that systematically exploits collective biological information and analytical tools for a robust analysis. We showcased the utility of this strategy by using Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) resequencing data. Bioinformatic predictions of biological function alteration at each locus were integrated into the process of association testing of both common and rare variants for complex traits with a suite of statistics. Significant signals were then filtered with a priori candidate loci generated from genome database and gene network models to obtain a posteriori candidate loci. A probabilistic gene network (AraNet) that interrogates network neighborhoods of genes was then used to expand the filtering power to examine the significant testing signals. Using this strategy, we confirmed the known true positives and identified several new promising associations. Promising genes (AP1, FCA, FRI, FLC, FLM, SPL5, FY, and DCL2) were shown to control for flowering time through either common variants or rare variants within a diverse set of Arabidopsis accessions. Although many of these candidate genes were cloned earlier with mutational studies, identifying their allele variation contribution to overall phenotypic variation among diverse natural accessions is critical. Our rare allele testing established a greater number of connections than previous analyses in which this issue was not addressed. More importantly, our results demonstrated the potential of integrating various biological, statistical, and bioinformatic tools into complex trait dissection.
βγ subunits of heterotrimeric G-proteins contribute to Ca2+ release at fertilization in the sea urchin

A cytoplasmic Ca2+ transient is required for egg activation at fertilization in all animals. The pathway leading to release of Ca2+ from the endoplasmic reticulum in echinoderms includes activation of a SRC homolog, followed by phospholipase Cγ activation, and formation of inositol trisphosphate. However, the upstream activators or modulators of this signaling pathway are not known. We recently identified four Gα subunits of heterotrimeric G-proteins present in the sea urchin egg, and here we find that activation of G-proteins of the Gαs and Gαq type, but not Gαi or Gα12 type, is required for normal Ca2+ dynamics at fertilization. The effects of these G-proteins are mediated by the Gβγ subunits, occur upstream of the cytoplasmic Ca2+ release, and influence both the amplitude of Ca2+ release and the duration of the lag phase. We propose integration of the G-protein input into the framework of signaling at sea urchin fertilization.
2016 Ieee International Conference on Big Data (big Data) Swarm Intelligence (si) Based Profiling and Scheduling of Big Data Applications

— Personalization targets a user's software, hardware, and QoS requirements at any given moment in the cloud environment for the big data applications. However, the individualization aims to target the daily needs of an individual user in a dynamic manner. The proposed research work aims to design a system which will be able to optimize user's applications towards a specified target goal. Furthermore, it is integrated with a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based application profiling and resource selection mechanism which comes from the family of Swarm Intelligence (SI). The proposed algorithms create an application profile template and preferred resource list for each submitted big data applications and select the cloud resources from the preferred resource list which is based on the application preferences and availability of cloud resources in an optimal manner. From the experimental results, it is evident that the proposed research work maximizes the application success ratio, scheduling success rate, utilization of cloud resources, and user satisfaction.
Molecular Hydrogen Formation on Dust Grains in the High-Redshift Universe

We study the formation of molecular hydrogen on dust grain surfaces and apply our results to the high-redshift universe. We find that a range of physical parameters—in particular dust temperature and gas temperature, but not so much dust surface composition—influences the formation rate of H2. The H2 formation rate is found to be suppressed above gas kinetic temperatures of a few hundred K and for dust temperatures above 500 K and below 10 K. We highlight the differences between our treatment of the H2 formation process and other descriptions in the literature. We also study the relative importance of H2 formation on dust grains with respect to molecular hydrogen formation in the gas phase, through the H- route. The ratio of the formation rates of these two routes depends to a large part on the dust abundance, on the electron abundance, and on the relative strength of the far-ultraviolet (extra-)galactic radiation field. We find that for a cosmological evolution of the star formation rate and dust density consistent with the Madau plot, a positive feedback effect on the abundance of H2 due to the presence of dust grains can occur at redshifts z ≥ 3. This effect occurs for a dust-to-gas mass ratio as small as 10-3 of the galactic value.
Antitopoisomerase I monoclonal autoantibodies from scleroderma patients and tight skin mouse interact with similar epitopes

We have generated for the first time monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) specific for topoisomerase I (topo I) from scleroderma patients, and tight skin mice which develop a scleroderma-like syndrome. The epitope specificity of these antibodies has been determined using a series of fusion proteins containing contiguous portions of topo I polypeptide. Western blot analysis demonstrated that both human and mouse mAbs bound strongly to fusion protein C encompassing the NH2-terminal portion of the enzyme, and weakly to fusion proteins F and G containing regions close to the COOH-terminal end of the molecule. This crossreactivity is related to a tripeptide sequence homology in F, G, and C fusion proteins. It is interesting that a pentapeptide sequence homologous to that in fusion protein C was identified in the UL70 protein of cytomegalovirus, suggesting that activation of autoreactive B cell clones by molecular mimicry is possible. Both human and mouse mAbs exhibiting the same antigen specificity, also share an interspecies cross-reactive idiotope. These data suggest that B cell clones producing antitopo autoantibodies present in human and mouse repertoire are conserved during phylogeny, and are activated during the development of scleroderma disease.
The Returns to Education, and the Increasing Age Gap between Younger and Older Workers

Using a regression decomposition approach, we find that, during the 1980s, the growth in the relative educational attainment of older workers has contributed to about one-quarter of the increase in the age-wage gap of men and women. During the 1990s, the age-wage gap increased to a much lesser extent. Changing relative educational attainment accounted for a much greater proportion of the much smaller increase in the gap: almost one-half for males and over three-quarters for women. We also find that, during the 1980s, the expected weekly wages associated with all levels of education fell for younger workers, both for men and women (from 2% to 16%, depending upon education level). Older employees, on the other hand, experienced mixed results. Expected weekly wages rose for some older workers and fell for some others.