Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Supporting Young Children's Literacy Learning through Home-School Partnerships: The Effectiveness of a Home Repeated-Reading Intervention

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a home repeated-reading intervention on the reading achievement of eight low-performing second-grade children in an urban school by taking into consideration their need to develop automaticity and the role their parents play in this process. Specifically we posed the following questions: Does participation in a home repeated reading intervention improve children's (a) reading accuracy, (b) reading fluency, and (c) reading skills on an independent reading task? When parents participate in a home repeated reading intervention, (a) what word-study strategies do they use to support their children's reading and (b) how do the strategies they use influence children's subsequent word errors? A multiple-baseline across-subjects design and a pre-post design were used to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Results indicated that all participants made substantially fewer reading errors during the intervention as compared to their performance on baseline stories. All participants demonstrated decreased error rates from the first to the last reading of stories, and significant fluency gains were evident in all cases when comparing mean baseline fluency with mean intervention fluency. All participants made considerable gains in fluency from the first to the last reading of each story, and all children improved on an independent reading measure. All participants read more than 10,000 words during the home intervention. Parents monitored their children's home reading. Four parents provided substantial word-level support, and the children who received this support made fewer repeated reading errors. The children who begin school with full, or nearly full, literacy pocketbooks, in terms of the dominant literacy Discourse, will consistently and inevitably outperform, outlearn, and outscore those children who arrive at the school door with considerably less. While it is the responsibility of the schools to teach what is needed, programs that focus on increasing the level and degree of literacy in the homes of children have begun and are desperately needed. (Purcell-Gates, 1995, pp. 198–199)
Notice of RetractionThe mechanism of stock market's heterogeneity on financial anomalies: From the momentum effect perspective

This paper calculated 812 stocks' daily average return of SSE A-shares during July 1, 2006 to December 31, 2009. By adopting overlapping sampling method, we computed out 70 group data of winners, losers and momentum strategies value, which come from cross-combination of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 24 months' developing period and holding period of institutional investors and personal investors. After t-test, we find that momentum effect is not obvious in short term; price reversals exist and institutional investors under react in long term in Chinese stock market.
Efficient timing management for user-level real-time threads

Timing management for user-level real-time threads can be done with appropriate support of the kernel. When a specified time comes, the kernel makes a virtual processor to upcall a user-level scheduler for its timing management. Then, the timing management can suffer from the overhead of a user-level scheduler. The paper presents an efficient timing management mechanism for user-level real-time threads. By sharing user-level timers through the shared kernel/user structure and keeping the appropriate hints for them, redundant processing of them and events can be eliminated. The results of the performance evaluations show that the upcall performance of our user-level real-time threads is comparable to and more stable than that of kernel-provided real-time threads.
Low-Cost Thin Film Perovskite Solar Cells

Perovskite is a class of materials named after their characteristic crystal structure, presenting excellent optoelectronic properties. These properties (particularly, ambipolar charge transport) allow these materials to integrate solar cells with and without the addition of selective layers, like Electron-Transport-Layer and Hole-Transport-Layer, possessing also the ability to be fabricated using simple, non-expensive, solution processing techniques, like Spin-Coating. Coupled with its facile production, the steep rise in SC efficiency over the last years, makes these materials a strong candidate to replace Silicon in the photovoltaic market, both in solid-state and flexible devices. Despite its many advantages, Perovskite SC still face considerable costs regarding processing conditions and HTL materials. By fabricating these devices under ambient air conditions and using Copper(I) Thiocyanate as the material for the HTL, the fabrication costs are significantly reduced. To further lower fabrication cost, Methylammonium Chloride is studied as a replacement forMethylammonium Iodide in Perovskite precursor solution fabrication. Using this solution, crystalline films were obtained, studying several deposition parameters, and the best reported ones, should provide a starting point for further optimization under similar fabrication conditions. The main goal for this work was the optimization of SC, using Spin-Coating technique, keeping the devices as low-cost as possible. Improving Perovskite film quality is detrimental to enhance SC performance, which is why efforts were made to minimize film degradation during Perovskite film fabrication and HTL deposition steps. Due to the hygroscopic nature of the organic component in Perovskite films, the influence of humidity levels was tested, and methods to reduce thin film degradation via humidity exposure were also evaluated. Overall, device optimization was successful, with Perovskite films reaching >95% bulk density and the champion device presenting PCE of 2.65%, with Jsc of 15.11mA/cm2 and Voc of 0.701V.
The Effect of School and Area on Academic Self- Concept and Academic Achievement of Adolescents

Backgrounds & Aims: The research attempt has been made (1) to study the effect of school on academic self-concept and academic achievement of adolescents (2) to study the effect of area on academic self-concept and academic achievement of adolescents. It was hypothesized that academic self-concept and academic achievement of adolescents would be higher in high facility schools as compared to low facility schools and academic self-concept and academic achievements of adolescents would also be higher in urban areas as compared to rural areas. To measure academic self-concept, Indian adaptation of Marsh Academic Self Description Questionnaire II (ASDQ), was used. The marks in two previous annual school examinations were obtained from the school records to get an index of academic achievement of the student along with the personal data sheet. With these instrument data was collected and analyzed by using MANOVA, a statistical technique. Investigations tend to report facilitating effect of types of school on students’ academic self-concept and academic achievement. Results: Academic self-concept and academic achievement of adolescents were higher in the high facility schools than the low facility schools. Academic achievement of urban adolescents was also higher as compared to rural adolescents. In has long been a theme in education that a student needs a good academic self-concept in order to be success in their later life. To achieve this success, school and area of residence do effect the adolescent’s academic self-concept and academic achievement by developing high facility, organized ,supportive and good environment in the schools. Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest that these facility of school and area of residence influence students’ academic self-concept and academic achievement.
Lane tracking and autonomous cruise control for automatic highway system

In this paper a vision based lane tracking and velocity dependant cruise control system is presented as automatic highway system. The system developed, uses different image processing techniques to detect lanes. It maintains a safe distance by calculating the distance from the leading vehicle. For lane tracking and to calculate the orientation of the vehicle on the road, Hough transform is used. On the other hand, a PID controller is designed for the nonlinear vehicle dynamics in order to track the velocity of the leading vehicle and to maintain a safe distance. The complete model has been implemented and simulated using Matlab and the results shows that the system successfully detects the lanes and the distance from the leading vehicle.
Barriers to asthma care in urban children: parent perspectives.

BACKGROUND Despite improved treatment regimens for asthma, the prevalence and morbidity from asthma are increasing, especially among underserved, minority children. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to identify barriers to the treatment of asthma among urban, minority children as perceived by parents. METHODS Parents were recruited from 4 schools located in low-income, urban areas with high rates of asthma hospitalizations. Focus groups involving parents of children 5 to 12 years old with asthma were conducted using a standardized questionnaire. Parents' comments were analyzed to identify barriers, and 3 independent raters coded parents' comments to assess reliability of interpretation. RESULTS Forty parents who represented 47 children participated in the focus groups. All parents described their racial background as black. Parents' average age was 36.8 years, 92% were females, 70% were nonmarried, and 38% had less than a high school education. Forty-five percent of children had intermittent or mild asthma and 55% had moderate to severe asthma. The most frequent types of barriers identified by parents were patient or family characteristics (43%), followed by environmental (28%), health care provider (18%), and health care system (11%). Parents were specifically concerned about the use, safety and long-term complications of medications, the impact of limitation of exercise on their child's quality of life, and their own quality of life. CONCLUSIONS In contrast with the widespread beliefs that access to medical care, health insurance, and continuity of care are the major barriers to quality asthma care, the barriers most frequently reported by parents were related to patient and family characteristics, health beliefs, or to their social and physical environment. To improve asthma management and health outcomes for urban, minority children with asthma, it is critical to tailor education about asthma and its treatment, and address quality of life issues for both children and parents.
Biochemical and mutational analysis of a plant virus polyprotein cleavage site.

The RNA genome of tobacco etch virus (TEV) is organized as a single translational unit coding for a 346,000 (346 kd) mol. wt (Mr) polyprotein. The 346 kd Mr polyprotein is cleaved by a 49 kd Mr virus‐encoded proteinase at five different sites between the dipeptides Gln‐Ser or Gln‐Gly. These cleavage sites or gene product boundaries are defined by the heptapeptide sequence…Glu‐Xaa‐Xaa‐Tyr‐Xaa‐Gln‐Ser or Gly…. We have used the 54 kd Mr nuclear inclusion protein/30 kd Mr capsid protein junction as a model to examine the role of these conserved amino acids in defining a cleavage site. The 54 kd/30 kd Mr protein cleavage site sequence of 10 TEV isolates from geographically distinct locations has been deduced. The conserved amino acids are present in all isolates. To determine if these four amino acids are an absolute requirement for polyprotein substrate activity, a site‐directed mutational analysis has been performed. A recombinant cDNA molecule encoding the TEV 54 kd/30 kd Mr gene product cleavage site was mutated and polyprotein substrates were synthesized and processed in a cell‐free system. Single amino acid substitutions made at the different positions reveal a strong preference for the naturally conserved amino acids.
The protective effects of glutamine in a rat model of ventilator-induced lung injury.

BACKGROUND The mortality rate of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is still high despite the use of protective ventilatory strategies. We sought to examine the pharmacological effects of glutamine (GLN) in a two-hit model of endotoxin-induced inflammation followed by ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI). We hypothesized that the administration of GLN ameliorates the VILI. METHODS Sprague-Dawley rats were anesthetized and given lipopolysaccharide (LPS) intratracheally as a first hit to induce lung inflammation, followed 24 h later by a second hit of mechanical ventilation (MV) with either low tidal volume (6 mL/kg) with 5 cmH2O of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) or high tidal volume (22 mL/kg) with zero PEEP for 4 h. GLN or lactated Ringer's solution as the placebo was administered intravenously 15 min prior to MV. RESULTS In the LPS-challenged rats ventilated with high tidal volume, the treatment with GLN improved lung injury indices, lung mechanics and cytokine responses compared with the placebo group. CONCLUSIONS The administration of GLN given immediately prior to MV may be beneficial in the context of reducing VILI.
New rotor shape design of SRM to reduce the torque ripple and improve the output power

Switched reluctance motors have the advantage a high torque/weight ratio, as the large reluctance torque is made by salient poles of both stator and rotor, and a high reliability. On the other hand, the switched reluctance motors have the disadvantage of a large ripple torque which is made by salient poles. So the application for the industrial fields have been limited to special cases. To reduce the torque ripple and improves the output power, this paper proposed the design of a 12/8 switched reluctance motor using the lamination layer method of the asymmetry rotor. Witch is the lamination structure using the asymmetry angle every a steel sheet at the lamination process. The design is focused to reduce the torque ripple and radial force and improve the output power in the demanded value. The three dimension finite element analysis method (3D-FEM) was used for decides the lamination layer angle of the asymmetry rotor.
Cross-layer scheduling and resource allocation in OFDMA wireless networks

One of the fundamental requirements of state-of-the-art and next-generation OFDMA-based wireless communication systems is the provision of quality of service (QoS) guarantees. This paper addresses the design of cross-layer channel-and queue-aware scheduling and resource allocation algorithms jointly assigning transmission data rates, bandwidth and/or power to active users while providing support to a wide range of multimedia applications with heterogeneous QoS requirements. Using tools from information and queueing theories, convex optimization, and stochastic approximation, a utility-based unified analytical framework is proposed. The merits and performance behavior of the proposed cross-layer algorithms are confirmed by a comprehensive simulation study.
Mobility enhancements for heterogeneous networks through interference coordination

In this paper, mobility performance of heterogeneous networks (HetNets) is studied in terms of handover failure and ping-pong rates of user equipments (UEs) in co-channel deployment of macro- and pico- cells. Simulation assumptions and parameters of a related study item in 3GPP are used to investigate the impact of various handover-related parameters on mobility performance. Then, a mobility-based inter-cell interference coordination (MB-ICIC) technique is proposed, in which picocells configure almost blank subframes in order to protect high-mobility macrocell UEs. Through extensive simulations, MB-ICIC is shown to provide handover performance gains for both low-mobility and high-mobility UEs. In addition, we show through simulations that performance of the mobility state estimation technique in 3GPP standard specifications is good enough for supporting the proposed MB-ICIC in HetNets.
Multispectral palmprint identification method using rotation invariant variance measures

Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure identification and personal verification solutions. Nowadays, palmprint identification is a novel and one of the most reliable biometrically based technology in applications of personal identification due to its highly stability and uniqueness. In this paper, biometric security system for access control based on multi-spectral palmprint is presented. To represent texture information, rotation invariant variance measures is used. Finally, a hamming distance score is employed to measure the similarity between templates of palmprints during the atching phase. The results show that a rotation invariant variance measure is robust to some extent in rotation of the images. The accuracy and speed of the proposed method can meet the requirements of an online biometric identification.
Low-latency image processing for vision-based navigation systems

This paper concerns a problem of the latency reduction in the vision-based mobile robot navigation, which is considered as the crucial system property to determine a control command based on visual data in practical deployments of mobile robots. The problem is addressed by a processor centric FPGA-based System-on-Chip design allowing power and computationally efficient on-line image processing. The proposed architecture is considered in an autonomous vision-based navigation with a teach-and-repeat algorithm based on detection and tracking of image salient points. The architecture has been evaluated and compared with a CPU-based solution on different platforms and the results indicate that the proposed FPGA-based implementation outperforms pure CPU solutions in the overall latency, speed, and power consumption.
The role of customer community in value co-creation for third places: an example of senior citizens

This paper reports findings of two sequential studies; qualitative (Study 1) and then quantitative (Study 2) that aimed to investigate factors that contribute to seniors’ place value co-creation via social engagement in third places. Using QSR NVivo 7 software for Study 1 and SPSS and AMOS software for Study 2 the results revealed that, the ‘operant’ resources of third places which are friendship and sociability between seniors co-created three types of place values; place value to socialise, place value as home and value of routine visit. The implications of these findings for customer centric view on value co-creation and for operant resources are discussed.
Gene × smoking interactions on human brain gene expression: finding common mechanisms in adolescents and adults.

BACKGROUND Numerous studies have examined gene × environment interactions (G × E) in cognitive and behavioral domains. However, these studies have been limited in that they have not been able to directly assess differential patterns of gene expression in the human brain. Here, we assessed G × E interactions using two publically available datasets to assess if DNA variation is associated with post-mortem brain gene expression changes based on smoking behavior, a biobehavioral construct that is part of a complex system of genetic and environmental influences. METHODS We conducted an expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) study on two independent human brain gene expression datasets assessing G × E for selected psychiatric genes and smoking status. We employed linear regression to model the significance of the Gene × Smoking interaction term, followed by meta-analysis across datasets. RESULTS Overall, we observed that the effect of DNA variation on gene expression is moderated by smoking status. Expression of 16 genes was significantly associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms that demonstrated G × E effects. The strongest finding (p = 1.9 × 10⁻¹¹) was neurexin 3-alpha (NRXN3), a synaptic cell-cell adhesion molecule involved in maintenance of neural connections (such as the maintenance of smoking behavior). Other significant G × E associations include four glutamate genes. CONCLUSIONS This is one of the first studies to demonstrate G × E effects within the human brain. In particular, this study implicated NRXN3 in the maintenance of smoking. The effect of smoking on NRXN3 expression and downstream behavior is different based upon SNP genotype, indicating that DNA profiles based on SNPs could be useful in understanding the effects of smoking behaviors. These results suggest that better measurement of psychiatric conditions, and the environment in post-mortem brain studies may yield an important avenue for understanding the biological mechanisms of G × E interactions in psychiatry.
Sharing Solutions: Persistence and Grounding in Multimodal Collaborative Problem Solving

This article reports on an exploratory study of the relationship between grounding and problem solving in multimodal computer-mediated collaboration. This article examines two different media, a shared whiteboard and a MOO environment that includes a text chat facility. A study was done on how the acknowledgment rate (how often partners give feedback of having perceived, understood, and accepted partner's contributions) varies according to the media and the content of interactions. It was expected that the whiteboard would serve to draw schemata that disambiguate chat utterances. Instead, results show that the whiteboard is primarily used to represent the state of problem solving and the chat is used for grounding information created on the whiteboard. These results are interpreted in terms of persistence: More persistent information is exchanged through the more persistent medium. The whiteboard was used as a shared memory rather than a grounding tool.
Providing dental care to pregnant patients: a survey of Oregon general dentists.

BACKGROUND A growing number of studies and reports indicate preventive, routine and emergency dental procedures can be provided safely to pregnant patients to alleviate dental problems and promote oral health of mothers and children. METHODS In 2006 and 2007, the authors conducted a survey of 1,604 general dentists in Oregon. The survey asked dentists about their attitudes, beliefs and practices regarding dental care for pregnant patients. The authors compared the responses with 2006 guidelines from a New York State Department of Health expert panel. RESULTS The response rate was 55.2 percent. Most respondents (91.7 percent) agreed that dental treatment should be part of prenatal care. Two-thirds of respondents (67.7 percent) were interested in receiving continuing dental education (CDE) regarding the care of pregnant patients. Comparisons of self-reported knowledge and practice with the aforementioned guidelines revealed several points of difference; the greatest regarded obtaining full-mouth radiographs, providing nitrous oxide, administering long-acting anesthetic injections and use of over-the-counter pain medications. CONCLUSIONS Dentists need pregnancy-specific education to provide up-to-date preventive and curative care to pregnant patients. The results of the study identified specific skills and misinformation that could be addressed through CDE. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS Comprehensive dental care provided during pregnancy is needed to ensure the oral health of all women at risk of experiencing pregnancy-specific problems, as well as the prevention of early childhood caries.