Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants of Soldier Support for Operation Uphold Democracy

A substantial number of U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Haiti for Operation Uphold Democracy did not believe it was important that the U.S. military be involved in the operation (49%); did not believe that what the U.S. military was doing was important (38%); and did not believe in the overall value of the operation (43%). At the same time, a substantial number of soldiers had positive feelings about what they were doing in Haiti and the mission they were accomplishing. The primary focus of this investigation was to examine factors that were related to the wide variation in soldier reports of support for Operation Uphold Democracy. The results indicated that a combination of soldier characteristics (e.g., race, gender), unit characteristics (e.g., unit type), task characteristics (e.g., task significance), and operational characteristics (e.g., perceptions of public support) accounted for nearly 50% of the variance in soldier reports of support for the overall operation.
RF Characterization of Schottky Diodes in 65-nm CMOS

Schottky diodes in 65-nm CMOS have been designed, measured up to 67 GHz, and modeled in the reverse-bias voltage range. An array of 8 × 8 minimum-sized parallel diode junctions is compared with a single-junction diode and to linear arrays of 3, 12, and 64 elements of the same total area. An iterative analysis method and a more detailed equivalent circuit than that used in previous work are developed to extract the junction capacitance, the stray capacitance, and the series resistances separately. Based on the equivalent circuit model, the extrapolation of the diode RF behavior to frequencies beyond the measurement range is discussed. The relevance of the cutoff frequency of the Schottky junction itself for evaluation of the suitability of the diodes in millimeter-wave and terahertz applications is explained.
International Conference on Computational Science, ICCS 2011 A-R-E: The Author-Review-Execute Environment

The Author-Review-Execute (A-R-E) is an innovative concept to offer under a single principle and platform an environment to support the life cycle of an (executable) paper; namely the authoring of the paper, its submission, the reviewing process, the author's revisions, its publication, and finally the study (reading/interaction) of the paper as well as extensions (follow ups) of the paper. It combines Semantic Wiki technology, a resolver that solves links both between parts of documents to executable code or to data, an anonymizing component to support the authoring and reviewing tasks, and web services providing link perennity.
Parsing complex microbiology data for secondary use

Clinical microbiology culture and antibiotic susceptibility data are a rich source of information required for a variety of secondary use applications such as epidemiologic studies of antimicrobial resistance. Our study team is working on using clinical microbiology data to develop antibiotic prescribing clinical decision support. Unfortunately, culture and antibiotic susceptibility results are often reported in complex, semi structured or free text form, making it difficult to use them for analysis. Cultures from abdominal-biliary (AB) sources are especially complex because there are multiple types of cultures results (e.g. anaerobic, fungal) and a wide variety of organisms. Prior work in this area has focused on rule-based approaches, natural language processing, and often on blood cultures. The objective of this project was to parse and annotate each unique organism name from a free text field of AB cultures and identify any antibiotic susceptibility results or evidence of resistance mechanisms (e.g. presence of penicillinase production) that occur in this free text field. By annotating the organisms with a unique concept identifier we are able to add additional, useful information to the dataset, such as Gram staining, type of growth patterns, and family.
Making the case for the outlier: researcher reflections of an African-American female deputy superintendent who decided to close the achievement gap

This article presents researcher reflections of a case study of a Black female deputy superintendent who made the value-driven decision to close the achievement gap in her district. I posit that she is an outlier because she is Black and female in a predominantly white male field of practice, she effectively closed the achievement gap through her knowledge of curriculum and teacher quality, and she allowed her standpoint, life experiences, and ethic of care to inform her decision-making, yielding unique success resolving an all too common problem in education – the inequity of educational opportunity. Using Black feminist theory and the ethic of care as a theoretical framework, I examine her positionality, values, and decision-making as a Black female educational leader. This reflective essay aims to advance Black feminist theory, while emphasizing the ethic of care, and contributing to the qualitative research literature on Black female superintendents.
Sequential reasoning and listening text comprehension in preschool children

Both sequential reasoning skills and listening text comprehension are complex abilities that have their major development stages during the preschool period. Theoretically, an association between these skills could have its origins in the script construct: the knowledge of how events develop in real life could lead to a better comprehension of temporal and causal relationships. This study addressed the existence of a specific association between children's performance on a listening comprehension test and their performance on a picture arrangement task that was specifically developed for this project. The participants were 110 preschool children ranging in age from 3 to 6 years. The results show that children's listening text comprehension ability is mainly explained by their lexical comprehension, but at 3 years of age, their competence in correctly arranging events in a sequential order plays a significant role in explaining children's comprehension of textual information.
Decision Procedures for Composition and Equivalence of Symbolic Finite State Transducers

Finite automata model a wide array of applications in software engineering, from regular expressions to specification languages. Finite transducers are an extension of finite automata to model functions on lists of elements, which in turn have uses in fields as diverse as computational linguistics and model-based testing. Symbolic finite transducers are a further generalization of finite transducers where transitions are labeled with formulas in a given background theory. Compared to classical finite transducers, symbolic transducers are far more succinct in the case of finite alphabets, because they have no need to enumerate all cases of a transition; symbolic transducers can also use theories, such as the theory of linear arithmetic over integers or reals, with infinite alphabets. Given a decision procedure for the background theory, we show novel algorithms for composition and equivalence checking for a large class of symbolic finite transducers, namely the class of single-valued transducers. Our algorithms give rise to a complete decidable algebra of symbolic transducers. Unlike previous work, we do not need any syntactic restriction of the formulas on the transitions, only a decision procedure; in practice we leverage recent advances in satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) solvers. We show how to decide single-valuedness, which means that symbolic finite transducers arising from practice can be checked to see if our algorithms apply. Our base algorithms are unusual in that they are nonconstructive, so we exhibit a separate model generation algorithm that can quickly find counterexamples in the case two symbolic finite transducers are not equivalent. As a key example, string manipulation is a particularly important application of our theoretical results with immediate benefits to bug finding. Our work makes symbolic finite transducers a practical approach for software engineering applications, such as the analysis of security-critical sanitization functions in web pages and model based testing. Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-2011-32 March 14, 2011
Genome Editing in Sugarcane: Challenges Ahead

Genome editing opens new and unique opportunities for researchers to enhance crop production. Until 2013, the zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) were the key tools used for genome editing applications. The advent of RNA-guided engineered nucleases - the type II clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated) system from Streptococcus pyogenes holds great potential since it is simple, effective and more versatile than ZFNs and TALENs. CRISPR/Cas9 system has already been successfully employed in several crop plants. Use of these techniques is in its infant stage in sugarcane. Jung and Altpeter (2016) have reported TALEN mediated approach for the first time to reduce lignin content in sugarcane to make it amenable for biofuel production. This is so far the only report describing genome editing in sugarcane. Large genome size, polyploidy, low transformation efficiency, transgene silencing and lack of high throughput screening techniques are certainly great challenges for genome editing in sugarcane which would be discussed in detail in this review.
Living up to the standards we set: A critical account of the development of anti-racist standards

In this paper we reflect on the work in progress to maintain an active focus on the impact of racism in society, its implications for social work practice, and the development of anti-racist strategies within the whole spectrum of anti-oppressive practice in social work education. We look at some of the ways in which this is being tackled in social work training programmes nationally, and share some of the dilemmas and difficulties encountered in the South West, as well as the achievements so far. We wish to invite debate through a discussion of the processes, principles and context of four years' work to set minimum standards for anti-racist practice. Our aim is to move forward from identifying the problem [S. Collins, P. Gutridge, A. James, E. Lynn & C. Williams (2000) Social Work Education, 19(1), pp. 29-43] to implementing positive change in both content and method of integrating anti-racist strategies in social work and assessing student practice. At all stages of the development work care has been taken to avoid the separation of racism from other forms of oppression and to acknowledge the ways it reconstitutes the experience of service users from minority and majority ethnic groups [F. Williams (1989) Social Policy: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, Polity)]. It is in this context that agreed standards for anti-racism within anti-oppressive practice are being articulated and adopted or considered by DipSW and Post Qualifying programmes within the Far South West of England. Local DipSW programme personnel in the region have worked consistently to achieve a positive, inclusive and dynamic approach to integrate anti-racist practice in social work education programmes. The authors write from the perspective of being White. We are members of a Forum for Anti-Racist Practice Development and are involved in the development work in different ways. This paper is our perspective of the work for which many individuals and institutions are responsible. We do not represent all those involved, and seek to celebrate rather than claim credit for the work.
DYNAMICS OF ACRIDINE ORANGE-CELL INTERACTION

The in vitro localization of acridine orange (AO) in living cells was monitored by means of fluorescence microscopy, quantitative cell viability studies, and photofluorimetric measurements following dye-cell interaction. The parameters, pH, time, dye concentration, and the metabolic state of the cell were found to exert a profound influence on the time course and distribution of staining. The parameters studied are mutually interdependent, and intracellular dye localization may be predictably altered by their appropriate manipulation. Conditions are defined whereby two morphologically distinct but physiologically interrelated reactions, namely, acridine orange particle (AOP) formation and cytoplasmic reddening (CR) may be caused, prevented, reversed, or modified. These results are explained in terms of the facilitation or inhibition of an intracytoplasmic dye-segregating mechanism, in turn affected by the rate of dye ingress and the physiological state of the cell. Whereas the accumulation of AO in AOP is compatible with cell viability, the appearance of CR is correlated with cell death. It is pointed out that meaningful interpretation of vital staining requires precise regulation of many parameters in the extracellular milieu. A scheme of cell compartmentalization with respect to AO is proposed to satisfactorily account for the effects of environmental variations on the distribution and ultimate fate of intracellular dye. The AOP are viewed as normally present acid phosphatase-positive multivesicular bodies.
Single-Injection Vaccine Protects Nonhuman Primates against Infection with Marburg Virus and Three Species of Ebola Virus

ABSTRACT The filoviruses Marburg virus and Ebola virus cause severe hemorrhagic fever with high mortality in humans and nonhuman primates. Among the most promising filovirus vaccines under development is a system based on recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) that expresses a single filovirus glycoprotein (GP) in place of the VSV glycoprotein (G). Here, we performed a proof-of-concept study in order to determine the potential of having one single-injection vaccine capable of protecting nonhuman primates against Sudan ebolavirus (SEBOV), Zaire ebolavirus (ZEBOV), Cote d'Ivoire ebolavirus (CIEBOV), and Marburgvirus (MARV). In this study, 11 cynomolgus monkeys were vaccinated with a blended vaccine consisting of equal parts of the vaccine vectors VSVΔG/SEBOVGP, VSVΔG/ZEBOVGP, and VSVΔG/MARVGP. Four weeks later, three of these animals were challenged with MARV, three with CIEBOV, three with ZEBOV, and two with SEBOV. Three control animals were vaccinated with VSV vectors encoding a nonfilovirus GP and challenged with SEBOV, ZEBOV, and MARV, respectively, and five unvaccinated control animals were challenged with CIEBOV. Importantly, none of the macaques vaccinated with the blended vaccine succumbed to a filovirus challenge. As expected, an experimental control animal vaccinated with VSVΔG/ZEBOVGP and challenged with SEBOV succumbed, as did the positive controls challenged with SEBOV, ZEBOV, and MARV, respectively. All five control animals challenged with CIEBOV became severely ill, and three of the animals succumbed on days 12, 12, and 14, respectively. The two animals that survived CIEBOV infection were protected from subsequent challenge with either SEBOV or ZEBOV, suggesting that immunity to CIEBOV may be protective against other species of Ebola virus. In conclusion, we developed an immunization scheme based on a single-injection vaccine that protects nonhuman primates against lethal challenge with representative strains of all human pathogenic filovirus species.
Simulation and Assessment of Mine Landscape Reconstruction Using Analogue Landform and Environmental Design Criteria

Environmental disruption from mining activity has increased markedly in the 21st century leading to increased emphasis on reconstructing natural environmental processes in post-mining landscapes. We present simulation and assessment approach to designing post-mining landforms at Ranger Uranium Mine in Northern Australia. A mine landform design was developed from mine planning estimates of waste rock and pit volumes. Landform design parameters were developed from analogous natural landscapes using digital terrain analysis. Evaluation of erosion, water balance and visual impact identified areas of localized erosion and links between soil reconstruction and the viability of native woodland ecosystems. The simulation and assessment approach identified where further refinement of the ecosystem reconstruction strategy was needed. In addition, it provides the basis for communication of plans to a wide audience, including traditional land owners.
Combination of homogeneous classifiers for musical genre classification

Content-based music genre classification is a useful tool for multimedia indexing and retrieval. In this paper a novel content-based music genre classification approach that employs combination of homogeneous classifiers is proposed. First, musical surface features and beat-related features are extracted from different pans of music tracks and three 15-dimensional feature vectors are generated. The features are extracted from the beginning, middle and end parts of the music. These features vectors are used to train three multilayer perceptron neural network classifiers. At the classification step, the outputs provided by each neural network based classifier are combined using max, sum and product rules. Experimental results show that the proposed combination of homogeneous classifiers outperforms single feature vectors and single classifiers, achieving higher correct music genre classification rates.
Chromatin features of plant telomeric sequences at terminal vs. internal positions

Epigenetic mechanisms are involved in regulation of crucial cellular processes in eukaryotic organisms. Data on the epigenetic features of plant telomeres and their epigenetic regulation were published mostly for Arabidopsis thaliana, in which the presence of interstitial telomeric repeats (ITRs) may interfere with genuine telomeres in most analyses. Here, we studied the epigenetic landscape and transcription of telomeres and ITRs in Nicotiana tabacum with long telomeres and no detectable ITRs, and in Ballantinia antipoda with large blocks of pericentromeric ITRs and relatively short telomeres. Chromatin of genuine telomeres displayed heterochromatic as well as euchromatic marks, while ITRs were just heterochromatic. Methylated cytosines were present at telomeres and ITRs, but showed a bias with more methylation toward distal telomere positions and different blocks of B. antipoda ITRs methylated to different levels. Telomeric transcripts TERRA (G-rich) and ARRET (C-rich) were identified in both plants and their levels varied among tissues with a maximum in blossoms. Plants with substantially different proportions of internally and terminally located telomeric repeats are instrumental in clarifying the chromatin status of telomeric repeats at distinct chromosome locations.
Augmented foam: a tangible augmented reality for product design

Computer aided design applications have become designers' inevitable tools for expressing and simulating innovative ideas and concepts. However, replacing traditional materials and mock-ups with 3D CAD systems, designers are faced with the intangibility problem, unable to physically interact with test products in early stages of design process. As a touchable and graspable interface based on 3D CAD data, we propose augmented foam, which applies augmented reality technologies to physical blue foams. Using augmented foam, a blue foam mock-up is overlaid with a 3D virtual object, which is rendered with the same CAD model used for mock-up production. We presented a method to correct occlusions of the virtual products by user's hand. Augmented foam was tested for a mug design and a cleaning robot design. Designers were able to inspect and evaluate the design alternatives interactively and efficiently.
Anonymity of Memory-Limited Chaum Mixes Under Timing Analysis: An Information Theoretic Perspective

Anonymous communication, where users communicate without revealing the identities of communicating parties or the paths of data flow is critical in data networks. On the Internet, Chaum mixes, intermediate nodes, or proxy servers, which use layered encryption and packet shuffling methods to hide source identities, are used to provide anonymity to network users. In this paper, an information theoretic framework is developed to study the maximum anonymity achievable by packet shuffling when the mixes are memory limited-in other words, they can store a finite number of packets. Using the Shannon entropy of the a posteriori distribution of packet sources from an eavesdropper's perspective as the measure of anonymity, the maximum achievable anonymity of a single mix with buffer size b (packets) serving two independent Poisson sources with equal arrival rates is shown to be log [2 cos (π/b+3)]. For a general multiuser b+3 system, the maximum anonymity as buffer size b → ∞ is shown to approach the entropy of the source arrival probabilities at a convergence rate no lesser than 1/b2. When the arrival probabilities of the general multiuser system can be expressed as a rational fraction k/2n for some fixed n, this convergence rate is shown to be achievable. The anonymity analysis is extended to a general network of mixes connecting the sources to a common destination, where the source anonymity achievable on the destination link is shown to be lower bounded by a weighted sum of the anonymity achievable by each individual mix.
Farmers' Sustainable Strategies for Soil Conservation on Sloping Arable Lands in the Upper Yangtze River Basin, China

The Upper Yangtze River Basin comprises a densely-populated agricultural region with mountainous and hilly landforms. Intensive cultivation has been extended onto steep hillslopes, which constitute the principal source area for sediment production. Soil conservation on sloping arable lands is thus of utmost priority for persisting sustainable agricultural production and maintaining sound ecosystem services. Although there have been many soil conservation techniques, either promoted by the government or adopted by local farmers, the practiced area was very limited relative to the total area affected by soil erosion. This paper attempts to introduce four popular soil conservation measures on sloping arable lands in this region to enhance a broader scale of implementation, including hedgerow buffers, level trenches, sloping terraces and limited downslope tillage. These practices, although developed from local farmers’ indigenous knowledge for productive purposes, have well conformed to our contemporary understanding of soil erosion processes on sloping landscape affected by human disturbances, were of sound suitability to regional manual tillage agriculture and more trade-off-efficient on rill prevention, runoff harvest and nutrient management.