Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Authentic Assessment Competence of Building Construction Teachers in Indonesian Vocational Schools

In the year 2020-2035 the number of productive citizen (15-60 years) of Indonesia will reach 70 percent over all citizens. It becomes a bonus when the citizen group possesses competence relevant to the era. Entering 21st century most important skills that a worker needs to acquire are: collaboration, creativity and problem-solving and character qualities like persistence, curiosity and initiative. In response to this issue, in 2013 Ministry of Education and Culture developed a new curriculum called “2013 Curriculum”. It emphasises on authentic-learning and assessment that promote higher-order thinking skills: creative, innovative, and problem solving in real life. This research focuses on teachers’ authentic assessment competence at the state vocational schools describing their understanding on the concepts and principles of authentic assessment and their ability in its planning and implementation. The findings show that teachers’ understanding and their ability to plan and implement authentic assessment are inadequate and furher training on authentic assessment is recommended.
A practical evaluation of a network expansion mechanism in an openstack cloud federation

The SSICLOPS consortium recently designed a transparent virtual network expansion mechanism for OpenStack. In this paper, we build up on this mechanism to propose features to improve the interconnection for inter-cloud federations. Based on distributed in-memory databases and High Energy Physics (HEP) workloads as two representative cloud computing workloads, we performed extensive performance evaluations to demonstrate that in a setup comprised of five sites across Europe, the performances of our interconnection agent are similar to the performances of the legacy VPNaaS feature provided by OpenStack. However, the interconnection agent is not restricted to the exemplary uses cases, as it is applicable to arbitrary workloads. This enables us to work in the direction of transparent inter-cloud live migration from a networking point of view.
Punished by Rewards

Having said that, I’ll move on to rewards. Rewards and punishments are both ways of manipulating behavior. They are two forms of doing things to students. And to that extent, all of the research that says it’s counterproductive to say to students, “Do this or here is what I’m going to do to you,” also applies to saying, “Do this and you’ll get that. ” Ed Deci and Rich Ryan at the University of Rochester are right when they call rewards “control through seduction. ”
Integrative functional transcriptomic analyses implicate specific molecular pathways in pulmonary toxicity from exposure to aluminum oxide nanoparticles

Abstract Gene expression profiling has developed rapidly in recent years and it can predict and define mechanisms underlying chemical toxicity. Here, RNA microarray and computational technology were used to show that aluminum oxide nanoparticles (Al2O3 NPs) were capable of triggering up-regulation of genes related to the cell cycle and cell death in a human A549 lung adenocarcinoma cell line. Gene expression levels were validated in Al2O3 NPs exposed A549 cells and mice lung tissues, most of which showed consistent trends in regulation. Gene-transcription factor network analysis coupled with cell- and animal-based assays demonstrated that the genes encoding PTPN6, RTN4, BAX and IER play a role in the biological responses induced by the nanoparticle exposure, which caused cell death and cell cycle arrest in the G2/S phase. Further, down-regulated PTPN6 expression demonstrated a core role in the network, thus expression level of PTPN6 was rescued by plasmid transfection, which showed ameliorative effects of A549 cells against cell death and cell cycle arrest. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using gene expression profiling to predict cellular responses induced by nanomaterials, which could be used to develop a comprehensive knowledge of nanotoxicity.
Text Accessibility by People with Reduced Contrast Sensitivity

Purpose. Contrast sensitivity is reduced in people with eye disease, and also in older adults without eye disease. In this article, we compare contrast of text presented in print and digital formats with contrast sensitivity values for a large cohort of subjects in a population-based study of older adults (the Salisbury Eye Evaluation). Methods. Contrast sensitivity values were recorded for 2520 adults aged 65 to 84 years living in Salisbury, Maryland. The proportion of the sample likely to be unable to read text of different formats (electronic books, newsprint, paperback books, laser print, and LED computer monitors) was calculated using published contrast reserve levels required to perform spot reading, to read with fluency, high fluency, and under optimal conditions. Results. One percent of this sample had contrast sensitivity less than that required to read newsprint fluently. Text presented on an LED computer monitor had the highest contrast. Ninety-eight percent of the sample had contrast sensitivity sufficient for high fluent reading of text (at least 160 words/min) on a monitor. However, 29.6% were still unlikely to be able to read this text with optimal fluency. Conclusions. Reduced contrast of print limits text accessibility for many people in the developed world. Presenting text in a high-contrast format, such as black laser print on a white page, would increase the number of people able to access such information. Additionally, making text available in a format that can be presented on an LED computer monitor will increase access to written documents.
Metalloprotease Activity in a Small Heat Shock Protein of the Human Malaria Parasite Plasmodium vivax

ABSTRACT The malaria parasite affects millions of people each year, lives and multiplies in two different hosts, and synthesizes a large number of proteases and heat shock proteins (HSPs) for its survival. We describe here the characterization of a metalloprotease activity which resides in the small HSP (PVHSP28) of the common but noncultivable human malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax. The protein is expressed by erythrocytic stages of the parasite. It is expressed as a ∼55-kDa polypeptide which is then processed to the 28-kDa mature protein. The latter was found to be an active protease in gelatin zymography. This protease showed its optimal activity at 37°C (pH 7.6). It also retained its proteolytic activity at higher temperatures of up to 55°C. The enzyme belongs to the metalloprotease class, as its proteolytic activity was most effectively blocked by 1,10-phenanthroline and was restored to a maximal level by the addition of zinc metal ions. Inhibitors for the cysteine, serine, and aspartate classes of proteases were ineffective against this enzyme. A homology search indicates that PVHSP28 probably belongs to a new class of HSPs which possess the metalloprotease signature sequence.
Determination of maximal oxygen consumption of algerian soccer players during preseason

The aim of this study was to assess the cardio-respiratory profile (VO2 max) of Algerian soccer players during preseason and compare VO2 max by competition level. Materials and Methods.A total of 45 Algerian soccer players participated in the study, of which 22 were second division, 23 third division forwards with an average age of 23.13 ± 2.46 years; height 180, 67 ± 3, 54 cm; weight 80,35 ± 3,25 kg; body mass index 24,61± 0,38 kg/m 2 . In order to evaluate the VO2 max of players, the 20-m Multi Stage Shuttle Run Test (MST) protocol was used as recommended by (Leger et al., 1988). Results: of the total sample (n=45) with a general average of 57,38 ± 1,83 ml/kg/min, in which Second division sample (n=22) with a average of 58,28 ± 1,35 ml/kg/min had the highest VO2 max and third division sample (n=23) with a average of 56,53 ± 1,84 ml/kg/min. a statistically significant differences were found (P<0.05) between competition level. Conclusion: Results show that the Algerian second division football players tested have a normal VO2 max at the beginning of the preseason in comparison with the findings of other studies of international soccer players.
Aging and Inequality: The Link and Transmission Mechanisms

There exists a shortage of rigorous empirical analyses that focus on the aging‐to‐inequality transmission mechanisms although both developed and some developing countries have been confronted with the challenge of population aging. Using cross‐country panel data covering the period of 1975 to 2015, this paper contributes to the literature by directly modeling the relationship between aging and inequality and exploring the transmission mechanisms. Our estimation results show that (1) Aging worsens income distribution; (2) This adverse impact is attributable to its negative correlation with the share of labor income that in general is more equally distributed than capital income; (3) The labor share‐reducing effect of aging can be further attributed to the significant and negative impact of aging on both labor input or supply and wage or labor productivity; and (4) Our findings are robust to changes in model specifications, use of different indicators of aging, different inequality and labor share data sources.
Numerical Experiments in Plasma Focus Operated in Various Gases

We adapted the Lee Model code as a branch version RADPF5.15K to gases of special interest to us, namely, nitrogen and oxygen and applied numerical experiments specifically to our AECS PF-1 and AECS PF-2. We also generalized the numerical experiments to other machines and other gases to look at scaling laws and to explore recently uncovered insights and concepts. The required thermodynamic data of nitrogen, oxygen, neon, and argon gases (ion fraction, the effective ionic charge number, the effective specific heat ratio) were calculated, the X-ray emission properties of plasmas were studied, and suitable temperature range (window) for generating H- and He-like ions (therefore soft X-ray emissions) of different species of plasmas were found. The code is applied to characterize the AECS-PF-1 and AECS-PF-2, and for optimizing the nitrogen, oxygen, neon, and argon SXR yields. In numerical experiments we show that it is useful to reduce static inductance L0 to a range of 15-25 nH; but not any smaller. These yields at diverse wavelength ranges are large enough to be of interest for applications. Scaling laws for argon and nitrogen SXR were found. Model parameters are determined by fitting computed with measured current waveforms in neon for INTI PF and in argon for the AECS PF-2. Radiative cooling effects are studied indicating that radiative collapse may be observed for heavy noble gases (Ar, Kr, Xe) for pinch currents even below 100 kA. The creation of the consequential extreme conditions of density and pulsed power is of interest for research and applications.
Molecular forms and microheterogeneity of the oligosaccharide chains of pregnancy-associated CA125 antigen.

BACKGROUND The cancer antigen CA125 has a very complex molecular architecture in terms of both protein backbone and oligosaccharide chains. In this study, we examined the molecular forms and microheterogeneity of oligosaccharide chains of pregnancy-associated CA125, as a first step towards gaining an insight into its possible involvement as a ligand in carbohydrate-dependent interactions. The glycobiochemical properties of CA125 may be of diagnostic and biomedical importance as specific markers of physiological and pathological conditions of early pregnancy, as well as targets in different therapeutic procedures. METHODS Pregnancy-associated CA125 was characterized by gel filtration and ion-exchange chromatography, followed by lectin-affinity chromatography with a panel of plant lectins as ligands. RESULTS CA125 antigen isolated from first trimester placental extract was found to be heterogeneous in respect to molecular mass and the existence of different glyco-isoforms. Thus, elution profiles from the lectin-affinity columns demonstrated molecular subpopulations bound with low, intermediate and high affinity. Under the applied experimental conditions, CA125 bound most strongly to Triticum vulgaris agglutinin (WGA) and Ricinus communis agglutinin (RCA), but low affinity interactions occurred with the other lectins tested. CONCLUSIONS The assessment of the carbohydrate composition of N- and O-glycans of pregnancy-associated CA125 was in general agreement with available data on CA125 of cancer origin. The main difference was observed in reactivity to Canavalia ensiformis agglutinin (ConA) and Phaseolus vulgaris erythroagglutinin (PHA-E) binding.
Robust Face Super-Resolution via Locality-Constrained Low-Rank Representation

Learning-based face super-resolution relies on obtaining accurate a priori knowledge from the training data. Representation-based approaches (e.g., sparse representation-based and neighbor embedding-based schemes) decompose the input images using sophisticated regularization techniques. They give reasonably good reconstruction performance. However, in real application scenarios, the input images are often noisy, blurry, or suffer from other unknown degradations. Traditional face super-resolution techniques treat image noise at the pixel level without considering the underlying image structures. In order to rectify this shortcoming, we propose in this paper a unified framework for representation-based face super-resolution by introducing a locality-constrained low-rank representation (LLR) scheme to reveal the intrinsic structures of input images. The low-rank representation part of LLR clusters an input image into the most accurate subspace from a global dictionary of atoms, while the locality constraint enables recovery of local manifold structures from local patches. In addition, low-rank, sparsity, locality, accuracy, and robustness of the representation coefficients are exploited in LLR via regularization. Experiments on the FEI, CMU face database, and real surveillance scenario show that LLR outperforms the state-of-the-art face super-resolution algorithms (e.g., convolutional neural network-based deep learning) both objectively and subjectively.
Introducing security services in DSL access and edge networks

Current DSL access and edge networks are typically deployed to offer best-effort high speed Internet access to small office and home environments. Future DSL access and edge networks will offer an evolution to higher bandwidth in the last mile. They will also be used by telecom operators to increase their average revenue per user by offering new services (such as security services) to the end users. In the brand range of advanced security services, we selected a service mix formed by a firewall and a network intrusion detection system for a feasibility study of their introduction in the future access and edge network. The study focuses on the relation between the complexity of the service and available computational technologies in the access and edge network. The evaluation results indicate that moderate complexity security services can be considered for integration. High complexity security services are unlikely to be deployed in the access and edge network.
High endogenous calcium buffering in Purkinje cells from rat cerebellar slices.

1. The ability of Purkinje cells to rapidly buffer depolarization‐evoked intracellular calcium changes (delta [Ca2+]i) was estimated by titrating the endogenous buffer against incremental concentrations of the Ca(2+)‐sensitive dye fura‐2. 2. In cells from 15‐day‐old rats, pulse‐evoked delta [Ca2+]i were stable during the loading with 0.5 mM fura‐2 through the patch pipette. In cells from 6‐day‐old rats, delta [Ca2+]i decreased by approximately 50% during equivalent experiments. This decrease was not related to changes in Ca2+ influx, since the integral of the Ca2+ currents remained constant throughout the recording. 3. Experiments with high fura‐2 concentrations (1.75‐3.5 mM) were performed in order to obtain for each cell the curve relating delta [Ca2+]i to fura‐2 concentration. From this relationship, values for the Ca2+ binding ratio (the ratio of buffer‐bound Ca2+ changes over free Ca2+ changes) were calculated. 4. In Purkinje cells from 15‐day‐old rats, the Ca2+ binding ratio was approximately 2000, an order of magnitude larger than that of other neurones and neuroendocrine cells studied to date. This Ca2+ binding ratio was significantly smaller (approximately 900) in Purkinje cells from 6‐day‐old rats. 5. We propose that the large Ca2+ binding ratio of Purkinje cells is related to the presence of large concentrations of Ca2+ binding proteins and that these cells regulate their ability to handle Ca2+ loads during development through changes in the concentration of Ca2+ binding proteins.
Analytical SPICE-Compatible Model of Schottky-Barrier-Type GNRFETs With Performance Analysis

This paper presents an accurate analytical compact model for Schottky-barrier-type graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistors (SB-GNRFETs). This is a physics-based analytical model for the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of SB-GNRFETs. The proposed model considers various design parameters and process variation effects, including graphene-specific line-edge roughness, which allows thorough exploration and evaluation of SB-GNRFET circuits. We develop accurate approximations of SB tunneling, channel charge, and current, which provide accurate results while maintaining model compactness. We evaluate the effect of design parameters and process variations on the performance of SB-GNRFETs. We also compare circuit-level performance of SB-GNRFETs with multigate (MG) Si-CMOS (e.g., FinFETs). Our circuit simulations indicate that SB-GNRFET has an energy-delay product (EDP) advantage over Si-CMOS, although GNR-specific process variation, especially the line-edge roughness, would significantly downgrade such an advantage; the EDP of the ideal SB-GNRFET (assuming no process variation) is ~2.5% of that of Si-CMOS, while the EDP of the nonideal case with process variation is ~68% of that of Si-CMOS. Finally, we study technology scaling with SB-GNRFET and MG Si-CMOS. We show that the EDP of ideal (nonideal) SB-GNRFET is ~0.88% (54%) EDP of that of Si-CMOS as the technology nodes scale down to 7 nm.
In vitro two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional tenocyte culture for tendon tissue engineering

In order to examine the differentiation potential of the tenocytes expanded in our defined culture medium (reported previously) and the effect of sequential combination of the two culture conditions on human tenocytes, a two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional experimental approach was used. Human tenocytes were sequentially exposed to 1% fetal bovine serum (FBS) + 50 ng/ml platelet‐derived growth factor‐BB (PDGFBB) + 50 ng/ml basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) for the first 14 days (expansion phase) followed by a further 14‐day culture in the presence of 10 ng/ml transforming growth factor β‐3 plus 50 ng/ml insulin‐like growth factor 1, but in the absence of serum (differentiation phase). The results showed that by sequential treatment of human tenocytes maintaining a long‐term two‐dimensional tenocyte culture in vitro for up to 28 days was possible. These findings were further verified using a three‐dimensional scaffold (Bombyx silk) whereby the tendon‐like constructs formed resembled macroscopically and microscopically the constructs formed in 10% FBS supplemented culture media and the human hamstring tendon. These findings were further substantiated using haematoxylin and eosin staining, scanning electron microscopy and by immunohistochemical detection of type I collagen. In addition, the mechanical properties of the three‐dimensional constructs were determined to be significantly superior to that of the natural human hamstring tendon. This is the first report to demonstrate a possible approach in expanding and differentiating human tenocytes for tendon tissue engineering. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Executive environmental scanning and strategic uncertainty: the impact of institutional context

Abstract We examined perceived strategic uncertainty (PSU) and environmental scanning among Hong Kong, Nigerian, and U.S. executives. We posit that PSU and scanning will vary in ways that can be explained by the different institutional contexts, that is, the national environment, within which the decision-makers are embedded. We found that Nigerian decision-makers perceived greater strategic uncertainty in the political/legal, economic, and sources of resources sectors. Hong Kong and U.S. executives, however, perceived greater levels of uncertainty in the technology sector. Furthermore, U.S. decision-makers perceived greater strategic uncertainty in the socio-cultural sector. We discuss the research and managerial implications of the results.
Terminal QoS of adaptive applications

An intensive effort is under way to support networked multimedia applications on slim hosts or terminals such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and set-top boxes. In addition to their limited processing capabilities, these terminals may use limited network bandwidth conditions — for example, wireless links. One way to implement multimedia applications on terminals is to make them adaptive. Such applications can then use bandwidth availability in the network as feedback to adapt their output packet rate. This manages the bandwidth scarcity by preventing the network congestion from worsening beyond a point. However, such an implementation imposes unique challenges. Simple task-level processing variations in audio/video applications can seriously overload a terminal. Adaptive applications impose even more variability. Consequently, the processing delay of applications can become unpredictable. We classify processing delay as a terminal quality of service (QoS) measure since it determines the overall perceptual quality of applications. We design a framework that can quantify the terminal QoS through the processing delay distribution. Our framework is broad enough to be used across several applications, terminal system architectures, and run-time schedulers. At Bell Labs, we have implemented the framework in a tool called AsaP. Its output can be used to design adaptive applications, application managers, and both software and architecture support for terminals and other networked embedded systems.