Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative study of gifted and non-gifted middle-school students in terms of classroom environment and attitudes within a large urban school district

term ‘attitudes’ in an effort to conduct measurements of them (Aiken, 2000; Kerlinger, 1986; McLeod, 1992). Proving most promising for the purposes of the present study, a paraphrased version of Baron and Byrne’s (1977) definition was adopted: individually-attributed beliefs, emotions, and behavioral tendencies that an individual has towards specific abstract or concrete objects. De Lourdes Mata et al. (2012) argued that attitudes can be linked directly to motivation and provide key information to a better understanding of attitudinal and motivational processes. A significant part of Section 2.7 was devoted to the three components of motivation that are consistently associated with students’ adaptive motivational beliefs: learning goal orientation, task value, and self-efficacy (Zimmerman, 2002). These components were included in the construction of the SALES (Velayutham et al., 2011), one of the instruments used in the present study. Self-regulation, the fourth and final component of the SALES questionnaire, was also reviewed. Additionally, an overview of the LASSI (Weinstein et al., 1987) and MSLQ (Pintrich et al., 1991), instruments commonly used to investigate student self-regulation, was presented. Section 2.7 concluded with a review of the TOSRA’s (Fraser, 1981) significant contributions to assessing the field of attitudes specifically toward science. Lastly, Section 2.8 presented literature on the topic of sex differences as they relate to gifted education and the field of learning environments. Siegle and Reis (1994) found that adolescent female gifted students are more confident than gifted males in language arts, while male gifted students express more confidence than females in
Phyllanthus Niruri Standardized Extract Alleviates the Progression of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Decreases Atherosclerotic Risk in Sprague–Dawley Rats

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the major global health issues, strongly correlated with insulin resistance, obesity and oxidative stress. The current study aimed to evaluate anti-NAFLD effects of three different extracts of Phyllanthus niruri (P. niruri). NAFLD was induced in male Sprague–Dawley rats using a special high-fat diet (HFD). A 50% methanolic extract (50% ME) exhibited the highest inhibitory effect against NAFLD progression. It significantly reduced hepatomegaly (16%) and visceral fat weight (22%), decreased NAFLD score, prevented fibrosis, and reduced serum total cholesterol (TC) (48%), low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (65%), free fatty acids (FFAs) (25%), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) (45%), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) (38%), insulin concentration (67%), homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) (73%), serum atherogenic ratios TC/high-density lipoprotein (HDL) (29%), LDL/HDL (66%) and (TC–HDL)/HDL (64%), hepatic content of cholesterol (43%), triglyceride (29%) and malondialdehyde (MDA) (40%) compared to a non-treated HFD group. In vitro, 50% ME of P. niruri inhibited α-glucosidase, pancreatic lipase enzymes and cholesterol micellization. It also had higher total phenolic and total flavonoid contents compared to other extracts. Ellagic acid and phyllanthin were identified as major compounds. These results suggest that P. niruri could be further developed as a novel natural hepatoprotective agent against NAFLD and atherosclerosis.
Endotracheal tube placement during computed tomography of brachycephalic dogs alters upper airway dimensional measurements

Computed tomography (CT) is used to document upper airway lesions in dogs with brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome. The presence of an endotracheal tube during CT scanning is often required for general anesthesia. We hypothesized that the endotracheal tube placement would change the soft tissue dimensions of the upper airway. The aims of this prospective, method comparison study were to evaluate the reliability of the previously reported upper airway CT measurements with endotracheal tube placement, and to propose measurements that are minimally affected by the endotracheal tube. Twenty brachycephalic dogs were included in this study. Each dog underwent head/neck CT with an endotracheal tube, followed by a second scan without the endotracheal tube. Ten measurements of the soft palate, nasopharynx, and trachea were performed. Tracheal dimension was significantly larger with the endotracheal tube compared to without, whereas the soft palate cross-sectional area was significantly smaller with the endotracheal tube than without the endotracheal tube. The influence of the endotracheal tube on the caudal nasopharynx cross-sectional (transverse-sectional) area varied with a mean proportional absolute difference of 35%. Rostral soft palate thickness, tracheal perimeter, and cross-sectional area of the rostral nasopharynx were the measurements least affected by the endotracheal tube (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.964, 0.967, and 0.951, respectively). Therefore, we proposed that these three measurements may be most useful for future brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome studies that require CT scanning of intubated animals. However, with endotracheal tube placement, measurements of soft palate length, caudal nasopharyngeal cross-sectional area, and trachea height and width may not be reliable.
Formative research in rural education

AbstractPretesting educational programmes and materials forms a major focus and concern for producers and researchers. Only through thorough research can it be determined whether a certain programme will have the intended effects on the audience. Jon Baggaley and Kirk Smith present here one technique of conducting formative programme research using electronic hand-held response units.
A complete mitochondrial DNA genome derived from a Chinese population of the Bemisia afer species complex (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae)

Abstract We report here the sequence of a complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of a population of Bemisia afer species complex, which was collected from Abutilonaviecnnae gaerner at LinYi, Shan Dong province of China (hereafter B. afer_China_Ag) (GenBank accession number: KR819174). The mitogenome of B. afer_China_Ag is 15 300 bp and contains 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNAs, 2 ribosomal RNAs, and 2 control regions. The content and arrangement of mitochondrial genes of B. afer_China_Ag exhibit remarkable differences from the mitogenome of a B. afer population collected from African cassava (KF734668). Phylogenetic analyses based on 13 protein-coding genes support the close relationship of the two sequenced B. afer mitogenomes and confirm the species status of our specimen.
Meeting deadlines for approximation processing in MapReduce environments

To provide timely results for big data analytics, it is crucial to satisfy deadline requirements for MapReduce jobs in today’s production environments. Much effort has been devoted to the problem of meeting deadlines, and typically there exist two kinds of solutions. The first is to allocate appropriate resources to complete the entire job before the specified time limit, where missed deadlines result because of tight deadline constraints or lack of resources; the second is to run a pre-constructed sample based on deadline constraints, which can satisfy the time requirement but fail to maximize the volumes of processed data. In this paper, we propose a deadline-oriented task scheduling approach, named ‘Dart’, to address the above problem. Given a specified deadline and restricted resources, Dart uses an iterative estimation method, which is based on both historical data and job running status to precisely estimate the real-time job completion time. Based on the estimated time, Dart uses an approach–revise algorithm to make dynamic scheduling decisions for meeting deadlines while maximizing the amount of processed data and mitigating stragglers. Dart also efficiently handles task failures and data skew, protecting its performance from being harmed. We have validated our approach using workloads from OpenCloud and Facebook on a cluster of 64 virtual machines. The results show that Dart can not only effectively meet the deadline but also process near-maximum volumes of data even with tight deadlines and limited resources.
Secondary Teachers’ Language Usage: Beliefs and Practices

Abstract:In recent years, much research has shown that the first language (L1) is being used in the majority of foreign language classrooms. However, these findings have often failed to include secondary foreign language teachers and their teaching context. The current mixed-methods study explores Spanish teachers’ use of and beliefs about first and target language usage. A survey was completed by 96 middle and high school Spanish teachers, which included questions related to when the first or target language should be used as well as beliefs about usage. This survey found that teachers report similar reasons for using the L1 as post-secondary teachers; however, they have cited added reasons to use the first language such as exhaustion and fears of losing their program or students. In addition, the respondents demonstrate divided beliefs regarding the appropriate use of the first language in class, thus suggesting disagreement about when the L1 is truly a resource in the foreign language classroom.
An Improved Data Placement Strategy in a Heterogeneous HadoopCluster

Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is designed to store big data reliably, and to stream these data at high bandwidth to user applications. However, the default HDFS block placement policy assumes that all nodes in the cluster are homogeneous, and randomly place blocks without considering any nodes' resource characteristics, which decreases self-adaptability of the system. In this paper, we take account nodes heterogeneities, such as utilization of nodes' disk space, and put forward an improved blocks placement strategy for solving some drawbacks in the default HDFS. The simulation experiments indicate that our improved strategy performs much better not only in the data distribution but also significantly saves more time than the default blocks placement.
The Individualized Facelift Technique in Improving Facial Asymmetry for Asian Patients.

PURPOSE Among multiple influential factors affecting facial symmetry, the role of soft tissue is often overlooked. Skin and skeletal differences between Asian and Caucasian people also require the adaptation of current techniques for Asian patients. This article aimed to explore the ability of individual facelift techniques to improve facial symmetry and reset youthful eye in Asian people, while a new method, called the grid method, was tried to evaluate the improvement in facial symmetry. METHODS The authors conducted a review of 58 consecutive facelifts, which were all performed by a single surgeon between April 2009 and December 2016 following institutional review board approval. Among them, 21 patients underwent lower eyelid blepharoplasty. The original frontal photograph of each patient was evaluated by the grid method. Five independent plastic surgeons reviewed the facial asymmetry of the images before and after the operations using a visual analog scale to analyze the facial asymmetry of the patients. RESULTS In the preoperative group evaluated by the grid, the mean facial asymmetry score was 4.11, while in the postoperative group, the mean score was 1.07, which was significantly lower than the mean score before the operation (p < 0.001). The change in mean scores illustrated that the technique was effective in improving facial symmetry in Asian people. A total of 8 patients experienced hematomas and recovered well without obvious sequelae. CONCLUSIONS The individual facelift technique was effective for improving facial symmetry and reshaping youthful eye in Asian people.
Social Networks Influencing Black Girls’ Interpretations of Chris Brown’s Violence Against Rihanna

This study identifies the social networks used by urban Black girls to interpret a highly publicized episode of dating violence and ensuing conflicts between hip-hop stars Chris Brown and Rihanna. Forty-three adolescent Black girls (age 11-17 years) were asked how they heard about the relationship conflicts and what they thought about them. The media, school peers, friends, and family members emerged as the key social networks participants relied on when gathering information about and interpreting reported incidents. The mainstream media was seen as portraying Brown, the perpetrator, negatively, whereas school peers, friends, and family were seen as portraying Brown in more mixed or positive ways. The degree to which participants viewed each source as influential depended on whether the source was seen as generally trustworthy and knowledgeable about hip-hop. While the media was a frequently cited source of information, participants did not trust the mainstream media’s analyses. In contrast, hip-hop media was viewed as the most unbiased and accurate information source. The importance of these networks in supporting healthy relationships for Black girls is discussed.
Carbon dioxide generation rates for building occupants

Indoor carbon dioxide (CO2 ) concentrations have been used for decades to characterize building ventilation and indoor air quality. Many of these applications require rates of CO2 generation from the building occupants, which are currently based on approaches and data that are several decades old. However, CO2 generation rates can be derived from well-established concepts within the fields of human metabolism and exercise physiology, which relate these rates to body size and composition, diet, and level of physical activity. This paper reviews how CO2 generation rates have been estimated in the past and discusses how they can be characterized more accurately. Based on this information, a new approach to estimating CO2 generation rates is presented, which is based on the described concepts from the fields of human metabolism and exercise physiology. Using this approach and more recent data on body mass and physical activity, values of CO2 generation rates from building occupants are presented along with the variability that may occur based on body mass and activity data.
Single Neurons in the Avian Auditory Cortex Encode Individual Identity and Propagation Distance in Naturally Degraded Communication Calls

One of the most complex tasks performed by sensory systems is “scene analysis”: the interpretation of complex signals as behaviorally relevant objects. The study of this problem, universal to species and sensory modalities, is particularly challenging in audition, where sounds from various sources and localizations, degraded by propagation through the environment, sum to form a single acoustical signal. Here we investigated in a songbird model, the zebra finch, the neural substrate for ranging and identifying a single source. We relied on ecologically and behaviorally relevant stimuli, contact calls, to investigate the neural discrimination of individual vocal signature as well as sound source distance when calls have been degraded through propagation in a natural environment. Performing electrophysiological recordings in anesthetized birds, we found neurons in the auditory forebrain that discriminate individual vocal signatures despite long-range degradation, as well as neurons discriminating propagation distance, with varying degrees of multiplexing between both information types. Moreover, the neural discrimination performance of individual identity was not affected by propagation-induced degradation beyond what was induced by the decreased intensity. For the first time, neurons with distance-invariant identity discrimination properties as well as distance-discriminant neurons are revealed in the avian auditory cortex. Because these neurons were recorded in animals that had prior experience neither with the vocalizers of the stimuli nor with long-range propagation of calls, we suggest that this neural population is part of a general-purpose system for vocalizer discrimination and ranging. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Understanding how the brain makes sense of the multitude of stimuli that it continually receives in natural conditions is a challenge for scientists. Here we provide a new understanding of how the auditory system extracts behaviorally relevant information, the vocalizer identity and its distance to the listener, from acoustic signals that have been degraded by long-range propagation in natural conditions. We show, for the first time, that single neurons, in the auditory cortex of zebra finches, are capable of discriminating the individual identity and sound source distance in conspecific communication calls. The discrimination of identity in propagated calls relies on a neural coding that is robust to intensity changes, signals' quality, and decreases in the signal-to-noise ratio.
Marking spaces as ‘sacred’: Infusing Singapore’s urban landscape with sacrality

This article looks beyond ‘places of worship’ as sacred spaces in an effort to discover/uncover other urban sites/spaces/locations where sacred indicators have been inserted and embedded. The author argues that tracking ‘signs of the sacred’ is a productive and inclusive mapping of urban religiosity, capturing ostensibly everyday secular spaces which are marked by sacrality and efficacy. These urban sites are ethnographically messy, colourful and energetic spaces, where city dwellers create urban worlds to express, experience and enact religiosity. They defy neat categorization and challenge such binaries as ‘private’/‘public’ and ‘legal’/‘illegal’ and ‘sacred’/‘profane’, to name just a few dichotomies. Instead, these sites ‘made sacred’ are ‘out of place’ and the disarray one encounters here is reminiscent of Mary Douglas’s notion of dirt as ‘matter out of place’. Their liminality signals their ambivalence and connotes them as dangerous and as spiritually charged.
Thirsty tree roots exude more carbon

Root exudation is an important input of carbon into soils and affects plant and soil communities, but little is known about the effect of climatic factors such as drought on exudation, and its ability to recover. We studied the impact of increasing drought on root exudation and its subsequent recovery in the Mediterranean tree species Quercus ilex L. in a greenhouse study by measuring the amount of total organic carbon in exudates. The amount of exudation per unit root area increased with drought duration and was 21% higher under the most extreme drought scenario compared with the non-droughted control. The amount of root exudation did not differ between the treatments following 6 weeks of re-watering, indicating a strong capacity for recovery in this species. We concluded that drought could affect the amount of root exudation, which could in turn have a large impact on microbial activity in the rhizosphere, and alter these microbial communities, at least in the short term. This tree species may be able to return to normal levels of root exudation after a drought event, but long-term exudate-mediated impacts on Mediterranean forest soils may be an unforeseen effect of drought.
Attention model of binocular rivalry

Significance Binocular rivalry provides a unique opportunity to characterize intrinsic neural dynamics of cortical processing. A computational model was developed as a parsimonious explanation of the empirical phenomena of rivalry for which there was no previous explanation. The key idea in the model is that rivalry relies on interactions between sensory processing and attentional modulation with distinct dynamics and selectivity. Bifurcation theory was used to identify the parameter regime in which the behavior of the model was consistent with empirical findings. The model explained a wide range of phenomena, including (i) that binocular rivalry requires attention, (ii) that different perceptual states emerge when the two images are swapped between the eyes, and (iii) how dominance duration changes as a function of stimulus input strength. When the corresponding retinal locations in the two eyes are presented with incompatible images, a stable percept gives way to perceptual alternations in which the two images compete for perceptual dominance. As perceptual experience evolves dynamically under constant external inputs, binocular rivalry has been used for studying intrinsic cortical computations and for understanding how the brain regulates competing inputs. Converging behavioral and EEG results have shown that binocular rivalry and attention are intertwined: binocular rivalry ceases when attention is diverted away from the rivalry stimuli. In addition, the competing image in one eye suppresses the target in the other eye through a pattern of gain changes similar to those induced by attention. These results require a revision of the current computational theories of binocular rivalry, in which the role of attention is ignored. Here, we provide a computational model of binocular rivalry. In the model, competition between two images in rivalry is driven by both attentional modulation and mutual inhibition, which have distinct selectivity (feature vs. eye of origin) and dynamics (relatively slow vs. relatively fast). The proposed model explains a wide range of phenomena reported in rivalry, including the three hallmarks: (i) binocular rivalry requires attention; (ii) various perceptual states emerge when the two images are swapped between the eyes multiple times per second; (iii) the dominance duration as a function of input strength follows Levelt’s propositions. With a bifurcation analysis, we identified the parameter space in which the model’s behavior was consistent with experimental results.
Bovine lineage specification revealed by single-cell gene expression analysis from zygote to blastocyst†

Abstract Preimplantation embryos undergo zygotic genome activation and lineage specification resulting in three distinct cell types in the late blastocyst. The molecular mechanisms underlying this progress are largely unknown in bovines. Here, we sought to analyze an extensive set of regulators at the single-cell level to define the events involved in the development of the bovine blastocyst. Using a quantitative microfluidics approach in single cells, we analyzed mRNA levels of 96 genes known to function in early embryonic development and maintenance of stem cell pluripotency in parallel in 384 individual cells from bovine preimplantation embryos. The developmental transitions can be distinguished by distinctive gene expression profiles and we identified NOTCH1, expressed in early developmental stages, while T-box 3 (TBX3) and fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 (FGFR4), expressed in late developmental stages. Three lineages can be segregated in bovine expanded blastocysts based on the expression patterns of lineage-specific genes such as disabled homolog 2 (DAB2), caudal type homeobox 2 (CDX2), ATPase H+/K+ transporting non-gastric alpha2 subunit (ATP12A), keratin 8 (KRT8), and transcription factor AP-2 alpha (TFAP2A) for trophectoderm; GATA binding protein 6 (GATA6) and goosecoid homeobox (GSC) for primitive endoderm; and Nanog homeobox (NANOG), teratocarcinoma-derived growth factor 1 (TDGF1), and PR/SET domain 14 (PRDM14) for epiblast. Moreover, some lineage-specific genes were coexpressed in blastomeres from the morula. The commitment to trophectoderm and inner cellmass lineages in bovines occurs later than in the mouse, and KRT8 might be an earlier marker for bovine trophectoderm cells. We determined that TDGF1 and PRDM14 might play pivotal roles in the primitive endoderm and epiblast specification of bovine blastocysts. Our results shed light on early cell fate determination in bovine preimplantation embryos and offer theoretical support for deriving bovine embryonic stem cells. Summary Sentence Gene expression analysis of single blastomeres from zygote to blastocyst sheds light on the early cell fate determination in bovine preimplantation embryos and offers theoretical support for deriving bovine embryonic stem cells.