Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distributed leadership according to the evidence

@contents:Distributed Leadership According to the Evidence K. Leithwood, B. Mascall, T. Strauss (Eds.) Chapter 1 Introduction: Distributed Leadership: New Perspectives on an Old Idea Section 1 Distributed Leadership: What It Is Chapter 2 Hybrid Leadership, Peter Gronn Chapter 3 Distributed Leadership: Paradigms, Policy and Paradox, John MacBeath Section 2 How Distributed Leadership Works in Schools & Districts Chapter 4 Districts, Teacher Leaders and Distributed Leadership, William A Firestone, M Cecilia Martinez Chapter 5 School Principals at Work: A Distributed Perspective, James P. Spillane, Eric M Camburn, Amber Stitziel Pareja Chapter 6 Positioning the Principals in Patterns of School Leadership Distribution Stephen E. Anderson, Shawn Moore, Jingping Sun Chapter 7 "A Job Too Big for One": Multiple Principals and Other Nontraditional Approaches to School Leadership, W Norton Grubb, Joseph J Flessa Section 3 Explaining the Effects of Distributed Leadership Chapter 8 Conceptualizing Distributed Leadership as a School Reform: Revisiting Job Redesign Theory, David Mayrowetz, Joseph Murphy, Karen Seashore Louis, Mark A Smylie Chapter 9 Distributing Leadership to Improve Outcomes for Students, Helen Timperley Chapter 10 Distributing Leadership to Make Schools Smarter, Kenneth Leithwood, Blair Mascall, Tiiu Strauss, Robin Sacks, Nadeem Memon, Anna Yashkina Chapter 11 Distributed Leadership and Knowledge Creation, Alma Harris Section 4 Chapter 12 What We Have Learned and Where We Go from Here
Role of TASK2 Potassium Channels Regarding Volume Regulation in Primary Cultures of Mouse Proximal Tubules

Several papers reported the role of TASK2 channels in cell volume regulation and regulatory volume decrease (RVD). To check the possibility that the TASK2 channel modulates the RVD process in kidney, we performed primary cultures of proximal convoluted tubules (PCT) and distal convoluted tubules (DCT) from wild-type and TASK2 knockout (KO) mice. In KO mice, the TASK2 coding sequence was in part replaced by the lac-Z gene. This allows for the precise localization of TASK2 in kidney sections using β-galactosidase staining. TASK2 was only localized in PCT cells. K+ currents were analyzed by the whole-cell clamp technique with 125 mM K-gluconate in the pipette and 140 mM Na-gluconate in the bath. In PCT cells from wild-type mice, hypotonicity induced swelling-activated K+ currents insensitive to 1 mM tetraethylammonium, 10 nM charybdotoxin, and 10 μM 293B, but blocked by 500 μM quinidine and 10 μM clofilium. These currents were increased in alkaline pH and decreased in acidic pH. In PCT cells from TASK2 KO, swelling-activated K+ currents were completely impaired. In conclusion, the TASK2 channel is expressed in kidney proximal cells and could be the swelling-activated K+ channel responsible for the cell volume regulation process during osmolyte absorptions in the proximal tubules.
Rough K-modes Clustering Algorithm Based on Entropy

Cluster analysis is an important technique used in data mining. Categorical data clustering has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Some existing algorithms for clustering categorical data do not consider the importance of attributes for clustering, thereby reducing the efficiency of clustering analysis and limiting its application. In this paper, we propose a novel rough k-modes clustering algorithm based on entropy. First, we integrated the knowledge of information entropy to define a new dissimilarity measure that takes into account the importance of attributes for clustering and improves the quality of clustering. Then, applying the theory of rough set analysis, we used upper and lower approximation to deal with uncertain clusters, which allowed us to offer an improved solution for uncertainty analysis. Finally, our experimental results demonstrated that our proposed algorithm performed better than other conventional clustering algorithms in terms of clustering accuracy, purity, and F1-measure.
Interface design and engagement with older people

The current paper examines the design process that led to an unusually successful interactive tutorial for older people. The paper describes the issues that make designing for older people different. These include differences between the designer and the target population and the difficulty that older people have in interacting with low-fidelity prototypes. Ways of altering the design process to address these issues and to obtain useful design contributions from older participants are described.
Space Mission Analysis & design for tactical spacecraft

In an attempt to avoid the financial hurdle imposed by the physical constraints on objects orbiting in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), it is preferred to use High Elliptical Orbit (HEO) for broader coverage. It takes a huge amount of energy to be put objects in HEO. To provide similar benefits at a very low cost, the ‘Special Orbit’ was offered as an alternate. This paper examines the usability of launching a Hybrid control enabled multiple payload micro satellite in to elliptical orbit. The perigee and apogee distances are modified so that the orbital period is 1/3 of a day instead of 12 hours. This orbit provides the benefits of both low and medium altitudes. In addition to this the orbit doesn't require any onboard liquid fuel or thrusters as there is no orbit manoeuvres required in its mission time. Ground Simulations are done for various initial conditions and time of availability over targets is evaluated.
Developmental changes in progenitor cell responsiveness to cytokines

Multipotent progenitor cells have been identified within periventricular generative zones of the developing and adult brain. To determine whether the environmental responsiveness of these cells changes during development, progenitor cells were cultured from embryonic, postnatal, and adult rat brain in the presence of either basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) or epidermal growth factor (EGF). Embryonic cells cultured as intact progenitor neurospheres proliferated more robustly in response to bFGF than to EGF, whereas proliferation of postnatal and adult progenitor cells was enhanced more by EGF than bFGF. Progenitor cells generated in the presence of either bFGF or EGF had the capacity to generate neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes at all developmental stages. Most embryonic and neonatal bFGF‐generated cells differentiated predominantly into neurons, whereas late stage embryonic and neonatal EGF‐generated progenitors largely remained in an undifferentiated state. However, later postnatal and adult progenitor species, irrespective of whether they were generated in the presence of bFGF or EGF, gave rise preferentially to astrocytes. Treatment with bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)2 or BMP7 enhanced astroglial differentiation and suppressed oligodendroglial differentiation of both EGF‐ and bFGF‐generated progenitor species, suggesting that the effects of the BMPs are not dependent on EGF receptor activation. Thus, while central nervous system (CNS) progenitor cells retain multipotent capacity and responsiveness to the BMPs throughout development, they exhibit significant changes in other cellular response properties, perhaps reflecting differences in the requirements for specific generative versus regenerative events. J. Neurosci. Res. 56:131–145, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Transhumance : A power-sensitive middleware for data sharing on mobile ad hoc networks

—This paper presents Transhumance a middleware supporting peer-to-peer applications on pocket PC-based mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Transhumance provides full communication and deployment facilities as well as complete and extended data sharing facilities. It also addresses two missing points in the existing middleware: security and power management. It targets small networks of up to 20 mobile nodes.
A neuro-fuzzy based method for TAIEX forecasting

Time series prediction can be widely applied to a variety of fields. Recently, a lot of artificial intelligence (Al) techniques have been exploited in the task of time series prediction. Compared to statistical methods, Al techniques are easier to use for real world data, and their performance can be better. In this paper, we propose a neuro-fuzzy based system for time series prediction. The neuro-fuzzy based system can generate superior performance through the relationship among different features. By partitioning the training data into clusters, fuzzy IF-THEN rules are extracted to form a fuzzy rule-base. Then, a fuzzy network is constructed accordingly and parameters are refined to increase the precision of the fuzzy rule-base by applying a hybrid learning algorithm which combines a recursive singular value decomposition-based least squares estimator and the gradient descent method. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system by applying it to do prediction for TAIEX stock indices. The experimental results conclude the superiority of the proposed system over other existing systems.
On the Survivability of Routing Protocols in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Survivable routing protocols are able to provide service in the presence of attacks and failures. The strongest attacks that protocols can experience are attacks where adversaries have full control of a number of authenticated nodes that behave arbitrarily to disrupt the network, also referred to as Byzantine attacks. This work examines the survivability of ad hoc wireless routing protocols in the presence of several Byzantine attacks: black holes, flood rushing, wormholes and overlay network wormholes. Traditional secure routing protocols that assume authenticated nodes can always be trusted, fail to defend against such attacks. Our protocol, ODSBR, is an on-demand wireless routing protocol able to provide correct service in the presence of failures and Byzantine attacks. We demonstrate through simulation its effectiveness in mitigating such attacks. Our analysis of the impact of these attacks versus the adversary’s effort gives insights into their relative strengths, their interaction and their importance when designing wireless routing protocols.
Hedge Funds, Managerial Skill, and Macroeconomic Variables

This paper evaluates hedge fund performance through portfolio strategies that incorporate predictability based on macroeconomic variables. Incorporating predictability substantially improves out-of-sample performance for the entire universe of hedge funds as well as for various investment styles. While we also allow for predictability in fund risk loadings and benchmark returns, the major source of investment profitability is predictability in managerial skills. In particular, long-only strategies that incorporate predictability in managerial skills outperform their Fung and Hsieh (2004) benchmarks by over 17% per year. The economic value of predictability obtains for different rebalancing horizons and alternative benchmark models. It is also robust to adjustments for backfill bias, incubation bias, illiquidity, fund termination, and style composition.
Evaluation of a Sparse Representation-Based Classifier For Bird Phrase Classification Under Limited Data Conditions

This paper evaluates the performance of a sparse representation-based (SR) classifier for a limited data, bird phrase classification task. The evaluation database contains 32 unique phrases segmented from songs of the Cassin’s Vireo (Vireo cassinii). Spectrographic features were extracted from each phrase-segmented audio file, followed by dimension reduction using principal component analysis (PCA). A performance comparison to the nearest subspace (NS) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers was conducted. The SR classifier outperforms the NS and SVM classifiers, with a maximum absolute improvement of 3.4% observed when there are only four tokens per phrase in the training set.
Preliminary evaluation of the CellFinder literature curation pipeline for gene expression in kidney cells and anatomical parts

Biomedical literature curation is the process of automatically and/or manually deriving knowledge from scientific publications and recording it into specialized databases for structured delivery to users. It is a slow, error-prone, complex, costly and, yet, highly important task. Previous experiences have proven that text mining can assist in its many phases, especially, in triage of relevant documents and extraction of named entities and biological events. Here, we present the curation pipeline of the CellFinder database, a repository of cell research, which includes data derived from literature curation and microarrays to identify cell types, cell lines, organs and so forth, and especially patterns in gene expression. The curation pipeline is based on freely available tools in all text mining steps, as well as the manual validation of extracted data. Preliminary results are presented for a data set of 2376 full texts from which >4500 gene expression events in cell or anatomical part have been extracted. Validation of half of this data resulted in a precision of ∼50% of the extracted data, which indicates that we are on the right track with our pipeline for the proposed task. However, evaluation of the methods shows that there is still room for improvement in the named-entity recognition and that a larger and more robust corpus is needed to achieve a better performance for event extraction. Database URL: http://www.cellfinder. org/
Emergency logistics using graph theory and abstraction hierarchy

An emergency logistics was modeled and optimized using abstraction hierarchy and graph theory. A case study for the emergency evacuation in a local underground multi-storey train station demonstrated the application of the method. The objectives of crowd control in an emergency evacuation were mapped using the abstraction hierarchy which modeled the means-ends relationship between the system and its components. The means to achieving the goals were represented in the form of a graph which was solved using graph theory algorithms. One solution space that satisfied the selected goal was obtained.
Following the Water: A Controlled Study of Drinking Water Storage in Northern Coastal Ecuador

Background To design the most appropriate interventions to improve water quality and supply, information is needed to assess water contamination in a variety of community settings, including those that rely primarily on unimproved surface sources of drinking water. Objectives We explored the role of initial source water conditions as well as household factors in determining household water quality, and how levels of contamination of drinking water change over time, in a rural setting in northern coastal Ecuador. Methods We sampled source waters concurrently with water collection by household members and followed this water over time, comparing Escherichia coli and enterococci concentrations in water stored in households with water stored under controlled conditions. Results We observed significant natural attenuation of indicator organisms in control containers and significant, although less pronounced, reductions of indicators between the source of drinking water and its point of use through the third day of sampling. These reductions were followed by recontamination in approximately half of the households. Conclusions Water quality improved after water was transferred from the source to household storage containers, but then declined because of recontamination in the home. Our experimental design allowed us to observe these dynamics by controlling for initial source water quality and following changes in water quality over time. These data, because of our controlled experimental design, may explain why recontamination has been reported in the literature as less prominent in areas or households with highly contaminated source waters. Our results also suggest that efforts to improve source water quality and sanitation remain important.
Above and beyond C5a Receptor Targeting by Staphylococcal Leucotoxins: Retrograde Transport of Panton–Valentine Leucocidin and γ-Hemolysin

Various membrane receptors associated with the innate immune response have recently been identified as mediators of the cellular action of Staphylococcus aureus leucotoxins. Two of these, the Panton–Valentine leucotoxin LukS-PV/LukF-PV and the γ-hemolysin HlgC/HlgB, bind the C5a complement-derived peptide receptor. These leucotoxins utilize the receptor to induce intracellular Ca2+ release from internal stores, other than those activated by C5a. The two leucotoxins are internalized with the phosphorylated receptor, but it is unknown whether they divert retrograde transport of the receptor or follow another pathway. Immunolabeling and confocal microscopic techniques were used to analyze the presence of leucotoxins in endosomes, lysosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, and Golgi. The two leucotoxins apparently followed retrograde transport similar to that of the C5a peptide-activated receptor. However, HlgC/HlgB reached the Golgi network very early, whereas LukS-PV/LukF-PV followed slower kinetics. The HlgC/HlgB leucotoxin remained in neutrophils 6 h after a 10-min incubation of the cells in the presence of the toxin with no signs of apoptosis, whereas apoptosis was observed 3 h after neutrophils were incubated with LukS-PV/LukF-PV. Such retrograde transport of leucotoxins provides a novel understanding of the cellular effects initiated by sublytic concentrations of these toxins.
A computational approach for gene assembly and exon annotation based on BLAST

Accurate gene assembly and precise exon annotations are two of the key goals of human genome project. Existing gene reference sequences and exon annotations are far from perfection. This paper introduces a new greedy algorithm which makes use of mRNA reference sequence and BLAST tools from NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) to effectively assemble and annotate gene structures. Four pipelined components are included in this approach. 1. Blast parser: extract mRNA-DNA local alignment pairs. 2. Chain finder: transform local alignments to spliced alignment. 3. Assembler: assemble multiple DNA sequences into a continuous DNA sequence based on their spliced alignments with a given mRNA sequence. 4. Annotator: resolve exon-intron boundary based on splicing signals. Test results on one sample set of human genes show that gene assembly and exon annotation using the proposed approach is significantly better than contig references from NCBI. The software is available upon request
Modeling of security requirements for decision information systems

Data Warehouse (DW) is a decision information system that facilitates decision makers for the fulfillment of strategic decisions (decision making needs) by extracting and integrating data from heterogeneous sources. Due to sensitivity of the information to be maintained in the DW, it becomes important to capture information security goal as a quality goal of the stakeholders for their organization from early stages of DW life cycle. Various requirements engineering techniques have been proposed in the DW literature without paying much attention on security aspect. Recently, AGDI (agent-goal-decision-information) model was proposed to capture decision making needs of the stakeholders for their organization to build a DW, but security issue was not addressed. In this paper, we propose an extension to the AGDI model to capture security aspect (i.e. security goals of the stakeholders) right from the beginning of requirements modeling in order to prevent illegitimate attempts of accessing DW. The application of the proposed extension in the AGDI model has been demonstrated through a CASE study of a University.
Voltage‐gated sodium channels in nociceptive versus non‐nociceptive nodose vagal sensory neurons innervating guinea pig lungs

Lung vagal sensory fibres are broadly categorized as C fibres (nociceptors) and A fibres (non‐nociceptive; rapidly and slowly adapting low‐threshold stretch receptors). These afferent fibre types differ in degree of myelination, conduction velocity, neuropeptide content, sensitivity to chemical and mechanical stimuli, as well as evoked reflex responses. Recent studies in nociceptive fibres of the somatosensory system indicated that the tetrodotoxin‐resistant (TTX‐R) voltage‐gated sodium channels (VGSC) are preferentially expressed in the nociceptive fibres of the somatosensory system (dorsal root ganglia). Whereas TTX‐R sodium currents have been documented in lung vagal sensory nerves fibres, a rigorous comparison of their expression in nociceptive versus non‐nociceptive vagal sensory neurons has not been carried out. Using multiple approaches including patch clamp electrophysiology, immunohistochemistry, and single‐cell gene expression analysis in the guinea pig, we obtained data supporting the hypothesis that the TTX‐R sodium currents are similarly distributed between nodose ganglion A‐fibres and C‐fibres innervating the lung. Moreover, mRNA and immunoreactivity for the TTX‐R VGSC molecules NaV1.8 and NaV1.9 were present in nearly all neurons. We conclude that contrary to findings in the somatosensory neurons, TTX‐R VGSCs are not preferentially expressed in the nociceptive C‐fibre population innervating the lungs.
Taking Advantage of Federated Cloud Storage and Multi-core Technology in Content Delivery

Cloud-based storage services are becoming key for organizations to deliver contents to end-users through the Internet. However, problems such as unavailable service, lost data risks and lack of controls over data management could arise in such a process. This paper presents a framework for building content delivery systems based on continuous workflow (CD-CW). The CD-CW systems split contents into redundant chunks in parallel by taking advantage of multiple cores commonly found in current CPU architectures. The chunks are encoded/decoded, anonymized, and distributed/retrieved to/from different cloud storage locations in a continuous workflow. Our framework allows organizations to automatically build federated cloud storage and publish-subscribe patterns for CD-CW systems. The federated cloud storage allows organizations both to withstand failures scenarios and to preserve autonomy in the data management. The publish-subscribe model establishes controls over the content delivery process and improves the service experience of the end-users. This paper also presents the experimental evaluation of a case study based on satellite images from a space agency. The satellite images are distributed to a federated storage prototype by using a CD-CW agent and a set of organizations, from two countries spanning two continents, get these images by using a CD-CW client.
A PMU-Based Method for Smart Transmission Grid Voltage Security Visualization and Monitoring

With the rapid growth of usage of phasor measurement units (PMUs) for modern power grids, the application of synchronized phasors (synchrophasors) to real-time voltage security monitoring has become an active research area. This paper presents a novel approach for fast determination of loading margin using PMU data from a wide-area monitoring system (WAMS) to construct the voltage stability boundary (VSB) of a transmission grid. Specifically, a new approach for online loading margin estimation that considers system load trends is proposed based on the Thevenin equivalent (TE) technique and the Mobius transformation (MT) technique. A VSB is then computed by means of real-time PMU measurements and is presented in a complex load power space. VSB can be utilized as a visualization tool that is able to provide real-time visualization of the current voltage stability situation. The proposed method is fast and adequate for online voltage security assessment. Furthermore, it enables us to significantly increase a system operator’s situational awareness for operational decision making. Simulation studies were carried out using different sized power grid models under various operating conditions. The simulation results are shown to validate the capability of the proposed method.