Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Investigation of the Influence of Instructional Coaching on Retention of Mathematics Teachers

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF INSTRUCTIONAL COACHING ON RETENTION OF MATHEMATICS TEACHERS by Dorothy J. Lewis-Grace In 2007, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported in their 2004-2005 Teacher Follow-up Survey that nearly 20% of U.S. teachers leave the profession after their first year of teaching and almost 30% leave after the fourth year of teaching. These percentages are even greater for mathematics teachers. The inability of schools to retain teachers is the largest contributor to the perceived teacher shortage (Kardos, 2004). Research suggests that teachers who began teaching with a sense of a calling and commitment will remain in teaching. Using symbolic interactionism, adult learning, and partnership as a theoretical framework, this ethnographic case study investigated and examined the factors that influenced second-career mathematics teachers to remain in the teaching profession and their experiences with instructional coaching. The following guiding research question and sub-questions were pursued in the study: Why have four second-career mathematics teachers remained in their role for 5 or more years? What are the teachers’ experiences with instructional coaching? How would they describe coaching? Which aspects of coaching do the teachers find least and most beneficial? How would you improve the coaching program? A purposeful sampling was used in the selection of participants. The four participants were African-American mathematics teachers; three women and one man. They were chosen because they all are completing their sixth year of teaching. The participants are second-career teachers, and they all have been coached. The research is based on data collected from teacher narratives, participant observation, photo elicitation, and focus groups. Data were analyzed and categorized as follows: making a difference in a student’s life, teacher resiliency, job satisfaction, and support. Data analysis showed evidence of all four factors of retention for one or more of the participants, although the factors have varying degrees of influence. These results indicated that these secondcareer mathematics teachers have a passion for teaching and are committed to fulfilling their calling. The results also showed a relationship between retention and resilience and support. AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF INSTRUCTIONAL COACHING ON RETENTION OF MATHEMATICS TEACHERS by Dorothy J. Lewis-Grace
Carry checking/parity prediction adders and ALUs

In this paper, we present efficient self-checking implementations valid for all existing adder and arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) schemes (e.g., ripple carry, carry lookahead, skip carry schemes). Among all the known self-checking adder and ALU designs, the parity prediction scheme has the advantage that it requires the minimum hardware overhead for the adder/ALU and the minimum hardware overhead for the other data-path blocks. It also has the advantage to be compatible with memory systems checked by parity codes. The drawback of this scheme is that it is not fault secure for single faults. The scheme proposed in this work has all the advantages of the parity prediction scheme. In addition, the new scheme is totally self-checking for single faults. Thus, the new scheme is substantially better than any other known solution.
A roadmap to risk-aware business process management

The continuous, effective and efficient performance of business processes is the central element for entrepreneurial success. In order to achieve the abovementioned goal various disciplines are involved: The improvement from an economical viewpoint is mainly performed by the domain of business process management, whereas the consideration of risks and continuous execution of business processes is considered separately by risk management and business continuity management. We observed that this separation often leads to inefficiencies as decisions can be contradictory and a consistent information basis is missing. Therefore, we introduce our vision of risk-aware business process management that is capable of providing information for economic as well as for security disciplines.
Regulation of Paramyxovirus Fusion Activation: the Hemagglutinin-Neuraminidase Protein Stabilizes the Fusion Protein in a Pretriggered State

ABSTRACT The hemagglutinin (HA)-neuraminidase protein (HN) of paramyxoviruses carries out three discrete activities, each of which affects the ability of HN to promote viral fusion and entry: receptor binding, receptor cleaving (neuraminidase), and triggering of the fusion protein. Binding of HN to its sialic acid receptor on a target cell triggers its activation of the fusion protein (F), which then inserts into the target cell and mediates the membrane fusion that initiates infection. We provide new evidence for a fourth function of HN: stabilization of the F protein in its pretriggered state before activation. Influenza virus hemagglutinin protein (uncleaved HA) was used as a nonspecific binding protein to tether F-expressing cells to target cells, and heat was used to activate F, indicating that the prefusion state of F can be triggered to initiate structural rearrangement and fusion by temperature. HN expression along with uncleaved HA and F enhances the F activation if HN is permitted to engage the receptor. However, if HN is prevented from engaging the receptor by the use of a small compound, temperature-induced F activation is curtailed. The results indicate that HN helps stabilize the prefusion state of F, and analysis of a stalk domain mutant HN reveals that the stalk domain of HN mediates the F-stabilization effect.
Robust protocols for securely expanding randomness and distributing keys using untrusted quantum devices

Randomness is a vital resource for modern day information processing, especially for cryptography. A wide range of applications critically rely on abundant, high quality random numbers generated securely. Here we show how to expand a random seed at an exponential rate without trusting the underlying quantum devices. Our approach is secure against the most general adversaries, and has the following new features: tolerating a constant level of implementation imprecision, requiring only a unit size quantum memory per device component for the honest implementation, and allowing a large natural class of constructions. In conjunct with a recent work by Chung, Shi and Wu (QIP 2014), it leads to robust unbounded expansion using just 2 multi-part devices. It can also be adapted for distributing cryptographic keys securely. The proof begins with a known protocol and proceeds by showing that the Renyi divergence of the outputs of the protocol (for a specific bounding operator) decreases linearly as the protocol iterates. At the heart of the proof are a new uncertainty principle on quantum measurements, and a method for simulating trusted measurements with untrusted devices. A full version of this paper containing additional results developed after the conference submission is available as arXiv:1402.0489.
SPE1 and SPE2: two essential genes in the biosynthesis of polyamines that modulate +1 ribosomal frameshifting in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

We previously showed that a mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which cannot make spermidine as a result of a deletion in the SPE2 gene (spe2 delta), exhibits a marked elevation in +1 ribosomal frameshifting efficiency in response to the Ty1 frameshift sequence, CUU AGG C. In the present study, we found that spermidine deprivation alone does not result in increased +1 ribosomal frameshifting efficiency. The high level of +1 ribosomal frameshifting efficiency in spe2 delta cells is the result of the combined effects of both spermidine deprivation and the large increase in the level of intracellular putrescine resulting from the derepression of the gene for ornithine decarboxylase (SPE1) in spermidine-deficient strains.
Big Bangs and Bounces on the Brane

In view of our accelerating universe, one of the outstanding theoretical issues is the absence of a quantum-gravitational description of de Sitter space. Although speculative, an intriguing circumvention may be found in the realm of brane-world scenarios; where the physical universe can be interpreted as a non-critical 3-brane moving in a higher-dimensional, static bulk. In this paper, we focus on the cosmological implications of a positively curved brane world evolving in the background of a ``topological'' anti-de Sitter black hole (i.e, Schwarzschild-like but with an arbitrary horizon topology). We show that the bulk black hole will typically induce either an asymptotically de Sitter ``bounce'' universe or a big bang/big crunch FRW universe, depending on a critical value of mass. Interestingly, the critical mass is only non-vanishing in the case of a spherical horizon geometry. We go on to provide a holographic interpretation of this curiosity.
Students’ food consumption in a school canteen : analysis of what they choose from the canteen gallery and what they discard, by gender and age

Introduction/background Recently, many countries, including Portugal, have implemented strategies for promoting young people’s healthy lifestyles, and school canteens are seen as appropriate places to encourage healthy eating (Aracenta-Bartrina et al., 2008). In addition to educating and empowering students to make healthy choices, canteens are also seen as socialization spaces where the pleasure for healthy meals must also be promoted (Atie-Guidalli, 2012). This work intended to evaluate not only the quality of the canteen food provided in a school (in the Southern region of Portugal, Alentejo) but also the students’ food choices and opinions about the canteen service, in order to assess the efficiency of the national canteen programme in this school. The aim was to find evidence of good practices as well as needs for improvement. Therefore, the objectives of this study were (i) to characterise the school canteen conditions, both the food service provided and the students’ perceptions about it; (ii) to observe the students’ food choices and preferences; (iii) to analyse students’ food consumption, i.e. what they actually eat from the complete meal and what they discard; (iv) to find significant statistical differences between gender and between school level groups; (v) and, if pertinent, to formulate recommendations to improve the canteen service and the students’ healthier behaviour.
Caldesmon is an integral component of podosomes in smooth muscle cells

Podosomes are highly dynamic actin-based structures commonly found in motile and invasive cells such as macrophages, osteoclasts and vascular smooth muscle cells. Here, we have investigated the role of caldesmon, an actin-binding protein, in the formation of podosomes in aortic smooth muscle A7r5 cells induced by the phorbol ester PDBu. We found that endogenous low molecular weight caldesmon (l-caldesmon), which was normally localised to actin-stress fibres and membrane ruffles, was recruited to the actin cores of PDBu-induced podosomes. Overexpression of l-caldesmon in A7r5 cells caused dissociation of actin-stress fibres and disruption of focal adhesion complexes, and significantly reduced the ability of PDBu to induce podosome formation. By contrast, siRNA interference of caldesmon expression enhanced PDBu-induced formation of podosomes. The N-terminal fragment of l-caldesmon, CaD40, which contains the myosin-binding site, did not label stress fibres and was not translocated to PDBu-induced podosomes. Cad39, the C-terminal fragment housing the binding sites for actin, tropomyosin and calmodulin, was localised to stress fibres and was translocated to podosomes induced by PDBu. The caldesmon mutant, CadCamAB, which does not interact with Ca2+/calmodulin, was not recruited to PDBu-induced podosomes. These results show that (1) l-caldesmon is an integral part of the actin-rich core of the podosome; (2) overexpression of l-caldesmon suppresses podosome formation, whereas siRNA knock-down of l-caldesmon facilitates its formation; and (3) the actin-binding and calmodulin-binding sites on l-caldesmon are essential for the translocation of l-caldesmon to the podosomes. In summary, this data suggests that caldesmon may play a role in the regulation of the dynamics of podosome assembly and that Ca2+/calmodulin may be part of a regulatory mechanism in podosome formation.
Implementation of the "Non-Local Bayes" (NL-Bayes) Image Denoising Algorithm

This IPOL article is related to a companion publication in the SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences: A. Buades, M. Lebrun, and J.M. Morel. "A Non-local Bayesian Image De- noising Algorithm. " SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, 2013. (to appear) Abstract This article presents a detailed implementation of the Non-Local Bayes (NL-Bayes) image de- noising algorithm. In a nutshell, NL-Bayes is an improved variant of NL-means. In the NL- means algorithm, each patch is replaced by a weighted mean of the most similar patches present in a neighborhood. Images being mostly self-similar, such instances of similar patches are gen- erally found, and averaging them increases the SNR. The NL-Bayes strategy improves on NL-means by evaluating for each group of similar patches a Gaussian vector model. To each patch is therefore associated a mean (which would be the result of NL-means), but also a covari- ance matrix estimating the variability of the patch group. This permits to compute an optimal (in the sense of Bayesian minimal mean square error) estimate of each noisy patch in the group, by a simple matrix inversion. The implementation proceeds in two identical iterations, but the second iteration uses the de- noised image of the first iteration to estimate better the mean and covariance of the patch Gaussian models. A discussion of the algorithm shows that it is close in spirit to several state of the art algorithms (TSID, BM3D, BM3D-SAPCA), and that its structure is actually close to BM3D. Thorough experimental comparison made in this paper also shows that the algorithm achieves the best state of the art on color images in terms of PSNR and image quality. On grey level images, it reaches a performance similar to the more complex BM3D-SAPCA (no color version is available for this last algorithm). Source Code The ANSI C implementation of NL-Bayes image denoising algorithm has been peer reviewed and accepted by IPOL. The source code, the code documentation, and the online demo are accessible at the IPOL web page of this article 1 .
Semantic vector evaluation and human performance on a new vocabulary MCQ test

Vectors derived from patterns of co-occurrence of words in large bodies of text have often been used as representations of some aspects of the meanings of different words. Generally, the distance between such vectors is used as a measure of the semantic similarity between the word meanings they represent. One important way of evaluating the performance of these vectors has been to use them to answer vocabulary multiple choice questions (MCQs) where the participant is asked to judge which of several choice words is closest in meaning to a stem word. The existing vocabulary MCQ tests used in this way have been very useful but there are some practical problems in their use as general evaluation measures. Here, we discuss why such tests remain useful evaluation measures, introduce a new vocabulary test, evaluate several current sets of semantic vectors using the new test and compare their performance to human data.
Teaching pupils 'ideas-about-science': Case studies from the classroom

In this paper, we report work undertaken with a group of 11 teachers over a period of a year to teach aspects of the nature of science. The teachers, who taught science in a mix of elementary, junior high, and high schools, were asked to teach components of the nature of science for which consensus had been established using a Delphi study in the first phase of the project. Data were collected through field notes, videos, teachers’ reflective diaries, instruments that measured their understanding of the nature of science and the role of discussion in the classroom. In addition, data were collected of their pupils’ understanding of the nature of science, pre- and post-intervention, and that for a control. In this paper, drawing on a sample of the data we explore the factors that afforded or inhibited the teachers’ pedagogic performance in this domain. Using these data, we argue that there are 5 critical dimensions that distinguish and determine a teacher’s ability to teach effectively about science. Whilst these dimensions are neither mutually independent nor equally important, they serve as a valuable analytical tool for analysing and explaining the success, or otherwise, that individual teachers have when confronted with teaching components of the nature of science. In addition, we argue that they are an important means of identifying salient aspects of pedagogy for initial and in-service training of teachers for curricula that require the teaching of the nature of science.
Polyp classification based on Bag of Features and saliency in wireless capsule endoscopy

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) enables non-invasive visual inspection of the patients' digestive tract. However, the huge number of images from the WCE has been a hurdle for doctors to handle and thus it is urgent to develop computer-aided diagnosis systems to identify problematic images. To tackle this problem, an innovative algorithm based on the integration of the Bag of Features (BoF) method and the saliency map is proposed to detect polyps from the WCE images in this study. The algorithm constitutes of four steps. In the first step, by applying the BoF method, the visual words of all images are calculated by inputting the extracted Scale Invariant Feature Transformation (SIFT) feature vectors to the K-means clustering procedure. Then we calculate the saliency and non-saliency maps of the WCE images. Following that, the histogram of the visual words of each image is calculated by integrating histograms in both saliency and non-saliency maps with various weights to represent the WCE image. Finally, polyp classification of the WCE images is conducted by Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. Experiments on 436 polyp images and 436 normal images are carried out to validate the proposed algorithm. The proposed method with the weight 0.9 on the saliency region achieves a best polyp detection accuracy of 92%, sensitivity of 87.9% and specificity of 93%, demonstrating that the proposed method provides a good characterization and description for polyp classification.
Identification of Early Response Genes in Human Peripheral Leukocytes Infected with Orientia tsutsugamushi: The Emergent of a Unique Gene Expression Profile for Diagnosis of O. tsutsugamush Infection~!2010-03-24~!2010-06-08~!2010-08-02~!

Abstract : Scrub typhus, caused by infection with Orientia tsutsugamushi, is one of the most common rickettsial diseases in the Asia-Pacific region. The disease can cause up to 35% mortality if left untreated. In order to get a better understanding of the host responses to O. tsutsugamushi infection, freshly isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were infected with O. tsutsugamushi. The infected cells were collected at 1 h, 4 h, 8 h or 18 h post infection. The gene expression profiles were monitored by cDNA microarray. Among the 7,489 genes, 658 genes were up or down regulated by 2-fold upon infection. ANOVA t-test revealed 432 genes with statistically significant fold change (p < 0.05). Semi-quantitative PCR using specific primers that flank the mRNA splicing sites of these 658 genes was carried out to verify the microarray results. More than 9000 semi-quantitative PCR reactions were performed using glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) as the reference gene. Of these reactions, 22 genes were confirmed to exhibit up or down regulation. Quantitative PCR using 18S rRNA as the reference further confirmed two genes (NM_001547 and NM_006187) that exhibited significant increase of expression. Analysis of these 22 genes and the specific increase of both NM_001547 and NM_006187 suggest that the 22 genes are unique to O. tsutsugamushi infection and have the potential use for differentiating infections caused by virus, bacteria, parasites and other pathogens.
Risk of postpartum induced abortion in Finland: a register-based study.

CONTEXT Half of Finnish abortion patients already have children, and one in 10 pregnancies ending in abortions started within 12 months of a birth. Thus, many women may not practice contraception effectively during the postpartum period. METHODS Data from national registers were used to create ajoint data file on pregnancies occurring in Finland over the period 1987-1998. The abortion risk (the risk of a conception that leads to an induced abortion) and abortion ratio (the number of conceptions leading to abortions divided by the number leading to deliveries) were analyzed in follow-up periods after all live births to women younger than 45 (684,922), using hazard regression and logistic regression. RESULTS Pregnancies starting within eight months postpartum were more likely to end in abortion than were those starting later. Within the first eight months, the shorter the interval to the next pregnancy, the more likely the pregnancy was to end in abortion. Abortion risk was higher 6-18 months postpartum than at later periods and was highest at 6-8 months postpartum, particularly among unmarried women and teenagers. Between 1987-1988 and 1995-1996, the abortion risk within the first eight months postpartum rose significantly among women aged 25-29 and 30-34 (relative risks, 1.5 and 1.2, respectively). The abortion risk and abortion ratio were higher among teenagers than among women in other age-groups. CONCLUSIONS The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that contraceptive practice is less effective postpartum, suggesting room for improvement in postpartum contraceptive counseling in Finland.
Role of dust in the working environment in development of chronic bronchitis in British coal miners

Rogan, J. M. , Attfield, M. D. , Jacobsen, M. , Rae, S. , Walker, D. D. , and Walton, W. H. (1973). British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 30, 217-226. Role of dust in the working environment in development of chronic bronchitis in British coal miners. In the course of a long-term prospective study of chronic respiratory disease in British coal miners the effects on pulmonary ventilatory function of exposure to airborne dust, of simple pneumoconiosis, and of chronic bronchitis have been examined in a group of 3581 coalface workers. The men were employed in 20 collieries throughout the British coalfields. Their cumulative exposures to coal mine dust in the respirable range (1-5 μm) were calculated from detailed dust sampling results at their work places during a 10-year period and from estimates of earlier exposures based on records of their industrial histories. A progressive reduction in FEV1·0 with increasing cumulative exposure to airborne dust has been demonstrated. This effect was evident also in a subgroup of the men studied who reported no signs of mild bronchitic symptoms (cough and phlegm for at least three months in a year). Among men with pneumoconiosis there was no evidence of a reduction of FEV1·0 in excess of that attributable to their dust exposures, smoking habits, age, and physique. Increasing severity of bronchitic symptoms was associated with a loss in FEV1·0 greater than that expected from the effects of dust exposure as measured, smoking, age, and physique. Possible explanations for this phenomenon are discussed. It is suggested that the results may indicate that once early bronchitic symptoms are present the disease may progress and ventilatory capacity may deteriorate independently of factors initiating the disease process.