Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Skill Differences and the Effect of Immigrants on the Wages of Natives

This paper examines the effects of changes in the supply of immigrant labor on the wages of natives. Estimates are presented indicating that immigrants and natives are nearly perfect substitutes within broad skill categories. This result is then used to calculate the effects of the large influx of immigrants to the U.S. labor market during the 1980s. The calculations presented suggest that immigration depressed the wages of native dropouts by as much as 3 percent and can account for possibly as much as 24 percent of the increase in the college-high school wage differential during the decade.
Robust Sparse Signal Recovery in the Presence of the S $\alpha$S Noise

In this letter, robust sparse signal recovery is considered in the presence of the symmetric α-stable distributed noise. An M-estimate type model is constructed by approximating the location score function of the noise. A reweighed iterative hard thresholding algorithm is proposed to recover the sparse signal. The basis functions for the approximation and the recovery performance of the proposed algorithm are discussed. Simulations are given to demonstrate the validity of our results.
A 4-Bit Passive Phase Shifter for Automotive Radar Applications in 0.13 μm CMOS

This paper presents a 67 – 78 GHz 4-bit passive phase shifter using CMOS switches available in the 0.12 μm SiGe BiCMOS process (IBM 8HP). The phase shifter is based on a low-pass π-network and CMOS passive transistors. The phase shifter achieves -19.2+/-3.7 dB of gain including pad loss at 77 GHz. The RMS phase error is less than 11.25° and the RMS gain error is less than 2.5 dB over the 67 – 78 GHz range. The total chip size is 450 x 300 μm (0.135 mm), excluding pads, and the chip consumes virtually no power. The measured P1dB is > +8 dBm at 77 GHz and the simulated IIP3 is > 22 dBm, making it possible to precede this design with a high gain LNA without loss of system linearity or input power handling. Index Terms – phase shifter, passive, phased array, millimeterwave, CMOS switch
A CROSS-NATIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATION OF EDUCATIONAL TRUST TO EXPECTED EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

While student perceptions of the fairness and trustworthiness of educational institutions have been shown to relate to civic participation, this relationship has not been extended to issues of continued participation in the education system. Using data from the IEA Civic Education Study of 14-yearolds, measures of trust in schools and perceptions of educational inequality are examined in their relationships with perceived educational attainment. The extent to which academic achievement levels mediate this relationship is also assessed. Additionally, differences are examined and discussed between genders. This relationship is observed in four countries-Cyprus, England, the Russian Federation, and the United States-who differ both in their systems of education and in nationwide expectations of educational attainment.
Towards Balancing Conciseness, Readability and Salience: an Integrated Architecture

In this paper we present an architecture for generating texts that vary in the emphasis put on conciseness, readability and the marking of particularly salient items. We abandon the traditional pipeline architecture, and use an integrated approach which makes the search for an optimum text explicit, taking into account both inter-sentential and intra-sentential features. We describe a context sensitive scoring system which can relate surface properties to a deeper representational level. We show how this approach can be used in generating paragraph length texts, optimised against various criteria.
Modeling and Predicting Term Mismatch for Full-Text Retrieval

The probability that a term appears in a relevant document is a fundamental quantity in the theory of probabilistic information retrieval, however prior research provided few clues about how to estimate it reliably. Since this probability measures how likely it is that a term has to appear in a document in order for the document to be relevant, in this thesis, it is called term necessity. Equivalently, it is also the proportion of relevant documents that contain the term, thus measures term recall, or the complement of term mismatch. This thesis uses exploratory data analysis to identify common reasons that user-specified query terms fail to match relevant documents, develops features correlated with each reason, and integrates them into a model that can be trained from data. The resulting term necessity predictions can be used as term weights in state-of-the-art retrieval models to improve retrieval accuracy substantially. Feature-based necessity prediction also supports diagnosis and improvement of query components. The thesis research will develop several forms of diagnosis and intervention. The simplest form is interactive feedback in which potential problems with query components are identified for a person to fix. More nuanced approaches to automatic formulations of structured queries are based on interventions that address different causes of term mismatch. For example, removing unnecessary terms, expanding the terms that are likely to mismatch, and weighting term disjunctions after query expansion. Improved weighting of structured query components also provides a new approach to addressing the field-length biases that persist in state-of-the-art retrieval models for structured documents. Collectively, these interventions leverage term necessity predictions to address a variety of common problems related to formation of effective queries.
Reelin Is a Secreted Glycoprotein Recognized by the CR-50 Monoclonal Antibody

The neurological mouse mutant strain reeler displays abnormal laminar organization of several brain structures as a consequence of a defect in cell migration during neurodevelopment. This phenotype is a result of the disruption of reelin, a gene encoding a protein that has several structural characteristics of extracellular matrix proteins. To understand the molecular basis of the action of Reelin on neuronal migration, we constructed a full-lengthreelin clone and used it to direct Reelin expression. Here, we demonstrate that Reelin is a secreted glycoprotein and that a highly charged C-terminal region is essential for secretion. In addition, we demonstrate that an amino acid sequence present in the N-terminal region of Reelin contains an epitope that is recognized by the CR-50 monoclonal antibody. CR-50 was raised against an antigen expressed in normal mouse brain that is absent in reelermice. The interaction of CR-50 with its epitope leads to the disruption of neural cell aggregation in vitro. Here, we used CR-50 to precipitate Reelin from reticulocyte extracts programmed withreelin mRNA, from cells transfected withreelin clones, and from cerebellar explants. Thereelin gene product seems to function as an instructive signal in the regulation of neuronal migration.
Relay Beamforming Designs in Multi-User Wireless Relay Networks Based on Throughput Maximin Optimization

Beamforming design for multi-user wireless relay networks under the criterion of maximin information throughput is an important but also very hard optimization problem due to its nonconvex nature. The existing approach to reformulate the design as a matrix rank-one constrained optimization problem is highly inefficient. This paper exploits the d.c. (difference of two convex functions) structure of the objective function and the convex structure of the constraints in such a global optimization problem to develop efficient iterative algorithms of very low complexity to find the solutions. Both cases of concurrent and orthogonal transmissions from sources to relays are considered. Numerical results indicate that the proposed algorithms provide solutions that are very close to the upper bound on the solution of the non-orthogonal source transmissions case and are almost equal to the optimal solution of the orthogonal source transmissions case. This demonstrates the ability of the developed algorithms to locate approximations close to the global optimal solutions in a few iterations. Moreover, the proposed methods are superior to other methods in both performance and computation complexity.
A Small Conserved Domain in the Yeast Spa2p Is Necessary and Sufficient for Its Polarized Localization

SPA2 encodes a yeast protein that is one of the first proteins to localize to sites of polarized growth, such as the shmoo tip and the incipient bud. The dynamics and requirements for Spa2p localization in living cells are examined using Spa2p green fluorescent protein fusions. Spa2p localizes to one edge of unbudded cells and subsequently is observable in the bud tip. Finally, during cytokinesis Spa2p is present as a ring at the mother–daughter bud neck. The bud emergence mutants bem1 and bem2 and mutants defective in the septins do not affect Spa2p localization to the bud tip. Strikingly, a small domain of Spa2p comprised of 150 amino acids is necessary and sufficient for localization to sites of polarized growth. This localization domain and the amino terminus of Spa2p are essential for its function in mating. Searching the yeast genome database revealed a previously uncharacterized protein which we name, Sph1p (Spa2p homolog), with significant homology to the localization domain and amino terminus of Spa2p. This protein also localizes to sites of polarized growth in budding and mating cells. SPH1, which is similar to SPA2, is required for bipolar budding and plays a role in shmoo formation. Overexpression of either Spa2p or Sph1p can block the localization of either protein fused to green fluorescent protein, suggesting that both Spa2p and Sph1p bind to and are localized by the same component. The identification of a 150–amino acid domain necessary and sufficient for localization of Spa2p to sites of polarized growth and the existence of this domain in another yeast protein Sph1p suggest that the early localization of these proteins may be mediated by a receptor that recognizes this small domain.
Reduction of Systematic Bias in Transcriptome Data from Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells for Transportation and Biobanking

Transportation of samples is essential for large-scale biobank projects. However, RNA degradation during pre-analytical operations prior to transportation can cause systematic bias in transcriptome data, which may prevent subsequent biomarker identification. Therefore, to collect high-quality biobank samples for expression analysis, specimens must be transported under stable conditions. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of RNA-stabilizing reagents to prevent RNA degradation during pre-analytical operations with an emphasis on RNA from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) to establish a protocol for reducing systematic bias. To this end, we obtained PBMCs from 11 healthy volunteers and analyzed the purity, yield, and integrity of extracted RNA after performing pre-analytical operations for freezing PBMCs at −80°C. We randomly chose 7 samples from 11 samples individually, and systematic bias in expression levels was examined by real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) experiments and data analysis. Our data demonstrated that omission of stabilizing reagents significantly lowered RNA integrity, suggesting substantial degradation of RNA molecules due to pre-analytical freezing. qRT-PCR experiments for 19 selected transcripts revealed systematic bias in the expression levels of five transcripts. RNA-Seq for 25,223 transcripts also suggested that about 40% of transcripts were systematically biased. These results indicated that appropriate reduction in systematic bias is essential in protocols for collection of RNA from PBMCs for large-scale biobank projects. Among the seven commercially available stabilizing reagents examined in this study, qRT-PCR and RNA-Seq experiments consistently suggested that RNALock, RNA/DNA Stabilization Reagent for Blood and Bone Marrow, and 1-Thioglycerol/Homogenization solution could reduce systematic bias. On the basis of the results of this study, we established a protocol to reduce systematic bias in the expression levels of RNA transcripts isolated from PBMCs. We believe that these data provide a novel methodology for collection of high-quality RNA from PBMCs for biobank researchers.
Application of an Internally Consistent Material Model to Determine the Effect of Tool Edge Geometry in Orthogonal Machining

It is well known that the edge geometry of a cutting tool affects the forces measured in metal cutting. Two experimental methods have been suggested in the past to extract the ploughing (non-cutting) component from the (total) measured force; 1) the extrapolation approach and 2) the dwell force technique. This study reports the behavior of zinc during orthogonal machining, using tools of controlled edge radius. It was determined that application of neither the extrapolation nor dwell approaches yielded a material response that is consistent with the known behavior of zinc. Further analysis shows that the edge geometry modifies the shear zone of the material and thereby modifies the forces. When analyzed this way, the measured force data yield the expected material response without requiring recourse to an additional ploughing component.
Secure two-party computation with AES-128: Generic approach and exploiting specific properties of functions approach

Introduced by Yao in early 1980s, secure computation is being one among the major area of research interest among cryptologists. In three decades of its growth, secure computation which can be called as two-party computation, or multiparty computation depending on the number of parties involved has experienced vast diversities. Research has been carried out by exploiting specific properties of functionalities and generic approach to achieve efficient practical secure computation protocols. This paper compares the above two approaches for secure two-party computation of AES-128.
Reverse Engineering User-Drawn Form-Based Interfaces for Interactive Database Conceptual Analysis

The first step of most database design methodologies consists in eliciting part of the user requirements from various sources such as user interviews and corporate documents. These requirements are formalised into a conceptual schema of the application domain, that has proved difficult to validate, especially since the graphical representations of data models have shown understandability limitations from the end-users standpoint. On the other hand, electronic forms seem to be more natural and intuitive to express data requirements for laymen. Besides, the necessity to associate end-users of a future system with its specification and development steps has long been advocated. In this doctoral research, we consequently explore the possible reverse engineering of user-drawn form-based interfaces to perform an interactive database conceptual analysis, and subsequently present the tool-supported RAINBOW approach resulting from this investigation. This user-oriented approach relies on the adaptation and integration of principles and techniques coming from various fields of study, ranging from Database Forward and Reverse Engineering to Prototyping and Participatory Design.
HMC algorithm for two-flavour lattice QCD: Schwarz-preconditioning with a one-dimensional domain decomposition

We study a variant of the Schwarz-preconditioned HMC algorithm. In contrast to the original proposal of L\"uscher, we apply the domain decomposition in one lattice direction only. This is sufficient to reduce the condition number of the fermion matrix restricted to the domains compared with the full fermion matrix. For the same linear extension of the domain, less links reside on the boundaries of the domains. Therefore it becomes e.g. practical to iterate the decomposition. We perform numerical tests for two degenerate flavours of Wilson fermions. The standard Wilson gauge action at $\beta=5.6$ is used. The performance of our implementation is compared with other recent studies using various types of preconditioning.
C-Terminal Interactors of the AMPA Receptor Auxiliary Subunit Shisa9

Shisa9 (initially named CKAMP44) has been identified as auxiliary subunit of the AMPA-type glutamate receptors and was shown to modulate its physiological properties. Shisa9 is a type-I transmembrane protein and contains a C-terminal PDZ domain that potentially interacts with cytosolic proteins. In this study, we performed a yeast two-hybrid screening that yielded eight PDZ domain-containing interactors of Shisa9, which were independently validated. The identified interactors are known scaffolding proteins residing in the neuronal postsynaptic density. To test whether C-terminal scaffolding interactions of Shisa9 affect synaptic AMPA receptor function in the hippocampus, we disrupted these interactions using a Shisa9 C-terminal mimetic peptide. In the absence of scaffolding interactions of Shisa9, glutamatergic AMPA receptor-mediated synaptic currents in the lateral perforant path of the mouse hippocampus had a faster decay time, and paired-pulse facilitation was reduced. Furthermore, disruption of the PDZ interactions between Shisa9 and its binding partners affected hippocampal network activity. Taken together, our data identifies novel interaction partners of Shisa9, and shows that the C-terminal interactions of Shisa9 through its PDZ domain interaction motif are important for AMPA receptor synaptic and network functions.
A Finite Set Network Coding Automatic Repeat Request Scheme for Machine-to-Machine Wireless Broadcasting

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications are quite different from traditional network communications. The main difference lies in the fact that the number of M2M equipments is rather large. To apply broadcasting technique adopted in traditional networks to M2M broadcasting without modifying may bring in disadvantages, two main of which are the rise of the Average Packet Transmission Times (APTT) and the rise of Feedback Messages Number (FMN). In order to improve the efficiency of M2M broadcasting in terms of APTT and FMN, in this paper, we design a Finite set Network coding Automatic Repeat reQuest (FNARQ) scheme for M2M broadcasting. Compared with traditional Broadcasting technique, for example Partial feedback Selective Automatic Repeat reQuest (PSARQ) and traditional network coding Automatic Repeat reQuest (NARQ), FMN could be largely reduced, which make FNARQ more practical for avoiding "feedback implosion", and at the same time, APTT is reduced, making FNARQ more efficient. Simulation results verify the potential of our proposed FNARQ scheme.
An Examination of Admission Criteria to Programs of Teacher Education.

This study investigated the criteria for admission to teacher education at 50 undergraduate universities accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). These universities varied in geographical location, public and private affiliation, and size of student enrollment. The study analyzed and evaluated admission criteria in light of recent educational reforms that call for higher standards and more qualified candidates, in order to ascertain whether the universities had actually implemented more demanding performance based criteria for teacher candidate selection. The study employed the qualitative and quantitative analysis of data drawn from university published materials, telephone inquiries, teacher-education and public school teacher interviews, and surveys of the dean, department chair, or director at the 50 universities. The study disclosed: (1) a general lack of consistency in requirements for admission to teacher candidate programs at the university level; (2) a need for qualitative measures to evaluate admission candidates; and (3) a need to modify initial screening and ongoing evaluation of teacher candidates. (Contains 19 references.) (MAE) ********AAA. *. AAA**,,,,-. **AA******************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************
The Resistance Distance is Meaningless for Large Random Geometric Graphs

We study convergence properties of the resistance distance on random geometric graphs for increasing sample size. It turns out that the suitably scaled resistance distance between two fixed points converges to a non-trivial limit. However, this limit no longer takes into account global properties of the graph, as for example the cluster structure. Quite to the opposite, the limit distance function is rather meaningless. As our simulations show, this phenomenon can already be observed for rather small sample sizes. Thus, we discourage the usage of the resistance distance for learning purposes on the type of graph we have analyzed so far.
Detection of Fast Flux Service Networks

Fast Flux Service Networks (FFSN) apply high availability server techniques to the business of malware distribution. FFSNs are similar to commercial content distribution networks (CDN), such as Akamai, in terms of size, scope, and business model, serving as an outsourced content delivery service for clients. Using an analysis of DNS traffic, we derive a sequential hypothesis-testing algorithm based entirely on traffic characteristics and dynamic white listing to provide real time detection of FFSNs in live traffic. We improve on existing work, providing faster and more accurate detection of FFSNs. We also investigate a category of hosts not fully explored in previous detectors - Open Content Distribution Networks (OCDN) that share many of the characteristics of FFSNs.
Building Confidence in Information-Trustworthiness Metrics for Decision Support

In light of the significant amount of information available online today and its potential application to a range of situations, the importance of identifying trustworthy information, and secondly, of building user confidence in that information is paramount. With this in mind, we have developed a novel trustworthiness metric which is designed to provide a relative score based on several key factors that influence trust, such as information's provenance and quality, and the integrity of the infrastructure through which the information passes. In this paper we consider whether providing insight into the various factors that make-up the resulting trustworthiness score actually helps to build trust in the metric itself, and whether users can successfully understand the advice being conveyed. Specifically, we present here the results of experiments which explore whether or not the visual interface that enables users to understand how the metric is composed of a combination of scores, across a range of factors, is a feature they are cognitively able to process, and whether it might help to build confidence in the trustworthiness advice being provided.