Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environmental identity, pro-environmental behaviors, and civic engagement of volunteer stewards in Portland area parks

We conducted surveys of adults participating in municipally sponsored volunteer events in the Portland, OR metropolitan area in order to understand the range of attitudes and behaviors associated with volunteer work. We sampled 172 individuals in 18 events from February to June 2012. Principal components and factor analyses of survey responses identified three groups based on annual frequency of participation in stewardship events: first-time volunteers, mid-level volunteers (3–10 events per year), and frequent volunteers (>10 events per year). Our analyses revealed three main factors that explained the variation in survey response for the three volunteer groups: environmental identity, private pro-environmental behavior, and civic engagement. All three factors were positively correlated with frequency of participation in stewardship events, with the most frequent volunteers indicating the highest degree of attention to environmental issues, environmental identity, and self-reported pro-environmental behaviors. Frequent volunteers were more likely to feel personally attached to their local environment, believe that their efforts help solve environmental problems, and enjoy being part of community efforts. These results suggest that stewardship activities provide opportunities for volunteers to interact with others while working collectively toward restoring and maintaining parks, which may contribute to more resilient communities.
PHENOTYPIC EXPRESSION OF A GENETIC PROPERTY INTRODUCED BY DEOXYRIBONUCLEATE

The time course of the appearance of cells showing a new phenotype, following treatment with a specific DNA, has been analyzed. A plot as a function of time of the number of cells showing the new property closely resembles the summation under a normal distribution curve. Describing the appearance of the new phenotype in these terms permits the definition of two parameters, the mean time, and the standard deviation of the distribution curve. This distribution is not affected either by the DNA concentration with which the transformable population has been treated, or by the streptomycin concentration with which the transformed population has been challenged. Interruptions of the expression process, by cooling to 20° or 0°C. , serve only to displace the expression curves, without changing their shape, while small reductions in temperature change both the mean time of expression and the standard deviation of the distribution curve. On the basis of these observations a number of hypotheses have been examined concerning the mechanism whereby transforming DNA manifests a phenotypic alteration in the transformed cells. It can be concluded that there exist at least two stages in the process of expression. The completion of the first stage, causing the randomization, occurs with a mean time of about 60 minutes, and a terminal step, that of the transition of phenotype, occurs in less than 3 minutes.
Wheat Oxophytodienoate Reductase Gene TaOPR1 Confers Salinity Tolerance via Enhancement of Abscisic Acid Signaling and Reactive Oxygen Species Scavenging1[C][W]

Wheat oxophytodienoate reductase gene TaOPR1 enhances salinity tolerance by promoting an abscisic acid-dependent stress response pathway. The 12-oxo-phytodienoic acid reductases (OPRs) are classified into the two subgroups OPRI and OPRII. The latter proteins participate in jasmonic acid synthesis, while the function of the former ones is as yet unclear. We describe here the characterization of the OPRI gene TaOPR1, isolated from the salinity-tolerant bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) cultivar SR3. Salinity stress induced a higher level of TaOPR1 expression in the seedling roots of cv SR3 than in its parental cultivar, JN177. This induction was abolished when abscisic acid (ABA) synthesis was inhibited. The overexpression of TaOPR1 in wheat significantly enhanced the level of salinity tolerance, while its heterologous expression in Arabidopsis alleviated root growth restriction in the presence of salinity and oxidants and raised the sensitivity to ABA. In Arabidopsis, TaOPR1 promoted ABA synthesis and the ABA-dependent stress-responsive pathway, partially rescued the sensitivity of the Arabidopsis aba2 mutant defective in ABA synthesis to salinity, and improved the activities of reactive oxygen species scavengers and the transcription of their encoding genes while reducing malondialdehyde and reactive oxygen species levels. TaOPR1 did not interact with jasmonate synthesis or the jasmonate signaling pathway. Rather than serving purely as an antioxidant, we believe that TaOPR1 acts during episodes of abiotic stress response as a signaling compound associated with the regulation of the ABA-mediated signaling network.
Relegation and Reversion: Longitudinal Analysis of School Turnaround and Decline

School turnaround has become a popular strategy for improvement of chronically low-performing schools. Research related to school turnaround has relied substantially upon case studies. These case studies often focus on successful turnarounds and report immediate outcomes, failing to provide information about the sustainability of the results. In addition, schools with equally dramatic declining academic performance garner little attention from educators, policy makers, and researchers. This study addresses this gap in school effectiveness and school improvement literature by examining the longitudinal performance of schools after experiencing a dramatic improvement or decline. Results of the study indicated that 3 years after a school experienced turnaround, on average, academic performance declined from peak performance, but did not revert to prior low levels of performance. Similarly, academic performance of downfall schools, on average, did not relegate schools to a status of chronic low performance, yet achievement levels did not rebound to prior levels.
Efficacy of Vitamin and Antioxidant Supplements in Prevention of Esophageal Cancer: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Background: Observational epidemiological studies have shown that higher intakes of vitamins or antioxidants were inversely associated with the risk of esophageal cancer. However, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have reported no preventive efficacy of vitamin or antioxidant supplements on esophageal cancer. This meta-analysis aimed to investigate the efficacy of vitamin and antioxidant supplements in the prevention of esophageal cancer as reported by RCTs. Methods: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library in May 2013. Two authors independently reviewed and selected eligible articles based on predetermined selection criteria. Results: Of 171 articles searched from three databases and relevant bibliographies, 10 RCTs were included in the final analyses. In a fixed-effect meta-analysis of 10 trials, there was no efficacy of vitamin and antioxidant supplements in the prevention of esophageal cancer (relative risk [RR], 1.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.86–1.25; I2=0.0%). Also, subgroup meta-analyses showed that vitamin and antioxidant supplements had no preventive efficacy on esophageal cancer both in the high risk (RR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.85–1.28; n=4) and non-high risk (RR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.65–1.56; n=6) groups for esophageal cancer. Further, subgroup meta-analyses revealed no preventive efficacy on esophageal cancer by type of methodological quality and type of vitamin and antioxidant supplements. Conclusions: Unlike observational epidemiological studies, this meta-analysis of RCTs suggests that there is no clinical evidence to support the efficacy of vitamin and antioxidant supplements in the prevention of esophageal cancer.
Gene Cloning and mRNA Expression of Glutamate Dehydrogenase in the Liver, Brain, and Intestine of the Swamp Eel, Monopterus albus (Zuiew), Exposed to Freshwater, Terrestrial Conditions, Environmental Ammonia, or Salinity Stress

The swamp eel, Monopterus albus, is an obligatory air-breathing teleost which can undergo long period of emersion, has high environmental and tissue ammonia tolerance, and can survive in brackish water. We obtained a cDNA sequence of glutamate dehydrogenase (gdh), which consisted of a 133-bp 5′ UTR, a complete coding sequence region spanning 1629 bp and a 3′ UTR of approximately 717 bp, from the liver, intestine, and brain of M. albus. The translated Gdh amino acid sequence had 542 residues, and it formed a monophyletic clade with Bostrychus sinensis Gdh1a, Tetraodon nigroviridis Gdh1a, Chaenocephalus aceratus Gdh1a, Salmo salar Gdh1a1 and Gdh1a2, and O. mykiss Gdh1a. One day of exposure to terrestrial conditions or 75 mmol l−1 NH4Cl, but not to water at salinity 20, resulted in a significant increase in mRNA expression of gdh1a and Gdh amination activity in the liver of M. albus. However, exposure to brackish water, but not to terrestrial conditions or 75 mmol l−1 NH4Cl, led to a significant increase in the mRNA expression of gdh1a and Gdh amination activity in the intestine. By contrast, all the three experimental conditions had no significant effects on the mRNA expression of gdh1a in the brain of M. albus, despite a significant decrease in the Gdh amination activity in the brain of fish exposed to 75 mmol l−1 NH4Cl for 6 days. Our results indicate for the first time that the mRNA expression of gdh1a was differentially up-regulated in the liver and intestine of M. albus in response to ammonia toxicity and salinity stress, respectively. The increases in mRNA expression of gdh1a and Gdh amination activity would probably lead to an increase in glutamate production in support of increased glutamine synthesis for the purpose of ammonia detoxification or cell volume regulation under these two different environmental conditions.
Traces of navigation as knowledge for simulating information retrieval by navigation in hypertext document

Richness of current websites or hypermedia, the continuous evolution of them, can cause complexity in the structure of these hypermedia and some difficulties in navigation. From their early first design but also during their different evolution, it may be useful to test accessibility of offered information. The use of testing robots - complexes to be elaborated, should be a solution to carry out frequent simulations of website information accessibility. Such a solution requires a model of user behavior that is the subject of the work presented here. A specificity of our approach is that it combines empirical and theoretical approaches of modelling in order to obtain a realistic model. We reached a proposal which take into account traces of navigation previously gathered on the website to test. The proposal of a model, with limited but clear conditions of application, is by its own a contribution to this domain.
Bird species recognition from field recordings using HMM-based modelling of frequency tracks

This paper presents an automatic system for recognition of bird species from field audio recordings. The proposed system employs a novel method for detection of sinusoidal components in the acoustic scene. This provides a segmentation of the signal and also feature representation of each segment in terms of frequencies over time, referred to as frequency track. We employ hidden Markov models (HMMs) to model the temporal evolution of frequency tracks. We demonstrate the effect of including local temporal dynamics of frequency tracks and HMM modelling parameters. Experiments are performed on over 33 hours of field recordings, containing 30 bird species. Evaluations demonstrate that the HMM-based temporal modelling provides considerable performance improvement over a system based on Gaussian mixture modelling. The proposed HMM-based system is capable of recognising bird species with accuracy over 85% from only 3 seconds of detected signal.
Qualitative analysis of user experience in a 3D virtual environment

This paper describes elements of user experience of a collaborative 3D immersive virtual information management environment. We detail those elements that are seen to both improve and deteriorate user experience, and provide design guidance for researchers and designers. We designed the 3D virtual environment in the Virtual Collaboration Arena (VirCA) collaborative space specifically to study the collaborative information retrieval and management behaviors of users. We conducted 117 interviews and then analyzed the data using a qualitative content analysis to identify the main elements of user experience. While participants generally reacted positively to the environment, they also mentioned a few distracting usability problems. Applying the results in the further development of VirCA can create a higher level of user experience and more effective collaboration.
Ideas and Realities: Investigating Good Practice in the Management of Transnational English Language Programmes for the Higher Education Sector

Abstract This paper describes the findings of an Australian Government‐funded research project that sought to investigate the management of transnational English‐language teaching programmes in the higher education sector with a view to identifying those activities that both facilitate and inhibit good practice as defined in the paper. Using data obtained from desk research and semi‐structured interviews conducted on three different programmes (two run in Indonesia and one in Mauritius), the researchers sought to identify staff perceptions of the causes of the problems and explanations for the successes that had occurred at the three sites. The study found that for transnational English‐language teaching programmes for the higher education sector, key management concerns can be related to issues of communication and culture, principles and values, and capacity and resources. It concluded that these issues need to be consciously and transparently addressed if good practice in the management of transnational English‐language teaching programmes is to be successfully promoted.
Adaptive Job Assign Algorithm Based on Hierarchical Server Cloud Computing

The size of data used by enterprises, academia and sciences in recently years has been growing at an exponential rate day by day. Simultaneously, the requirement to process and analyze the large quality of data is also increased. In the previous method, a single computer or a small number of computers cannot process and monitor these large amounts of data, but cloud system can handle the requirement and reduce the costs of data processing now. Therefore, lots of enterprises use the cloud system to process this problem. A basic framework of the cloud system is MapReduce. User must configure the relative setting including the number of computers and virtual machines before running the MapReduce. Each data size is not the same, and users may claim more or less computers and virtual machines than they need, and waste cloud resources or run out of resources. When the job is put in to cloud system, at first, it is processed by a single node for a period of time and if the node detects that the job cannot be completed within the period of time, the node ask another to share the computation. Then, all nodes continue processing until the end of the job. Therefore we proposed mechanism constructs hierarchical dynamic configuration of cloud system (HDCOCS) to efficiently use the resources in the cloud.
Drexel University

As part of Drexel's annual celebration of National Computer Science Education Week (November 17 -- 21, 2014), Drexel student tech volunteer organization DUCSTeach (Drexel University Computer Science Teachers) visited middle school students at St. Francis de Sales School on Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2014 to lead an "Hour of Code," where volunteers gave introductory computer science activities designed to demystify coding, and show students that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator or an innovator
Genotype-Phenotype Associations of APC Mutations With Pouch Adenoma in Patients With Familial Adenomatous Polyposis

Background: Patients with familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) may carry various adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) mutations. However, genotype-phenotype correlation for APC mutations is still debated and is yet to be evaluated with regard to pouch polyp formation. Objective: To evaluate the association between APC mutation type and exon location and the outcome of pouch adenoma. Design Setting and Patients: Forty-five FAP patients with defined pathogenic APC mutations, who underwent total proctocolectomy and ileal pouch anal anastomosis were classified by mutation type and location. Analysis was conducted for clinical and endoscopic parameters. Results: Twenty patients had either indel/deletion mutations and 25 had nonsense/missense mutations. The indel/deletion group was associated with higher prevalence of preoperative hundreds of colonic adenomas (66.7% vs. 30%; P=0.030), lower rates of stapled versus sewn anastomosis (46.7% vs. 76%; P=0.060), of single stage surgery (13.3% vs. 44%; P=0.045) and with higher pouch adenoma formation rate (50% vs. 8%; P=0.002). Twenty-seven were carriers of exons 1 to 14 mutations and 18 were carriers of exon 15 mutations. Carriers of exon 15 mutations had higher prevalence of preoperative hundreds of colonic adenomas (55.6% vs. 22.2%; P=0.003) and a higher tendency for pouch and cuff adenoma formation rate. Adjusted odds ratio for pouch adenoma formation was 8.32 (1.42-48.80; P=0.019) for the indel/deletion group versus nonsense/missense, but no significant independent association was noted with mutation location. The mean number of pouch and cuff adenoma formation (per endoscopy) was higher among carriers of exon 15 mutations, but no significant independent association was noted the with mutation type. Conclusions: Type and location of APC mutation are associated with colonic polyp burden, surgical outcome and likelihood of developing pouch adenomas. These findings may contribute to surgical and endoscopic surveillance decisions for FAP patients.
Reconstructing reefs: qualitative research and the environmental history of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Given recent concerns about the degradation of coral reef ecosystems world-wide, we investigated the environmental history of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia using qualitative methods. In particular, we used archival and oral history sources to reconstruct changes in coral reefs, islands and marine wildlife species for the period 1860—1970 and we evaluated the potential of qualitative methods to inform marine environmental research. Here, we argue that qualitative research offers a valuable means of reconstructing environmental changes, their drivers and their historical contexts. However, we found that qualitative methods also had important limitations. Hence we identify strategies for addressing those challenges and we suggest criteria for ensuring the accuracy and rigor of qualitative sources in marine environmental research. Overall, we argue that qualitative methods offer distinctive insights into the environmental history of the Great Barrier Reef, and that qualitative reconstructions can act as important triggers for conservation of marine ecosystems.
Diameter WebAuth: An AAA-Based Identity Management Framework for Web Applications

With an increasing number of personalized information and services offered on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, effective identity management solutions are demanded by application providers. Instead of a Web-based stand-alone approach, we extend existing network-based AAA mechanisms to be useable for identity management by Web applications. Our proposal, Diameter WebAuth, allows to seamlessly integrate Web-based services into a Diameter infrastructure for authentication, authorization, credit-control and identity management purposes. Diameter WebAuth offers comparable features to Web-based identity management solutions, benefits from the maturity and wide deployment of the Diameter protocol, and takes advantage of existing AAA setups.
EXPRESSION OF THE CONNEXIN 43 GENE IS INCREASED IN THE KIDNEYS AND THE LUNGS OF RATS INJECTED WITH BACTERIAL LIPOPOLYSACCHARIDE

At the molecular level, the inflammatory response is characterized by changes in gene expression of various organ systems. One gene by which expression has been observed to be altered in the liver during inflammation is connexin (Cx) 32. Cx genes encode the polypeptide subunits of the hemichannels that comprise gap junctions. In the present study, an increase in the expression of a different Cx gene, Cx43, was observed in the kidney and lung of rats injected with a sublethal dose (1 mg/kg) of bacterial lipolysaccharide (LPS). To elucidate the possible mechanism by which the Cx43 expression is increased during inflammation, the 5′ flanking region of the gene was cloned and coupled to a reporter gene (human growth hormone). This construct was transfected into cells of renal origin (NRK), which express Cx43 constitutively. The Cx43 promoter activity was indeed found in the cloned region, which contained 725 base pairs upstream of the transcriptional initiation site of the Cx43 gene. The Cx43 promoter activity was found to be increased by incubation of the transfected cells with serum obtained from LPS-treated rats. Moreover, direct incubation of the transfected cells with LPS or interleukin 1β, but not with other cytokines, was observed to increase the Cx43 promoter activity. These results suggest the expression of Cx43 after administration of LPS is part of the inflammatory response. Moreover, the expression of this gene seems to be mediated by proinflammatory mediators.
An Efficient Cascaded Filtering Retrieval Method for Big Audio Data

Fast audio retrieval is crucial for many important applications and yet demanding due to the high dimension nature and increasingly larger volume of audios in the internet. Although audio fingerprinting can greatly reduce its dimension while keeping audio identifiable, the dimension of audio fingerprints is still too high to scale up for big audio data. The tradeoff between the accuracy and the efficiency prevents the further reducing of the dimension of fingerprints. This paper proposes a multi-stage filtering strategy for audio retrieval, with the beginning stages focusing on speed up by using a middle fingerprint with much smaller size to quickly filtering the most likely audios, and the ending stages emphasizing on accuracy by applying an accurate and robust fingerprint on the small set of the most likely audios. A notion called middle fingerprint is devised with considerable small dimension for quickly filtering out most irrelevant audios. A matching algorithm is developed to reduce the computational complexity by comparing the samples at fixed interval of two audios with thresholds. By using the middle fingerprint, audio retrieval can get a speed gain of 12 times on average compared with the Fibonacci Hashing retrieval. By combing the Fibonacci hashing algorithm with the middle filtering retrieval and the matching algorithm, we propose an efficient cascaded filtering retrieval methods, which can further improve the retrieval by 250 times on average. After applying MP3 conversion, resampling, and random shearing, the recall rates of the method are all above 99.47%, and the theoretical accuracy is close to 100%.