Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SERVOGrid complexity computational environments (CCE) integrated performance analysis

In this paper we describe the architecture and initial performance analysis results of the SERVOGrid complexity computational environments (CCE). The CCE architecture is based on a lightly coupled, service oriented architecture approach that is suitable for distributed applications that are tolerant of Internet latencies. CCE focuses on integrating diverse Web and grid services for coupling scientific applications to geographical information systems. The services and coupling/orchestrating infrastructure are mapped to problems in geophysical data mining, pattern informatics, and multiscale geophysical simulation.
Benchmarking Academic Standards in History: an empirical exercise

Abstract The article reports on a small‐scale project that investigated the potential of using a benchmarking club on assessment practices in History as a means of establishing and comparing academic standards. The context of the project is described and the benchmarking club's key findings are presented. Issues addressed are the subject goals, levels of study, assessment methods, assessment criteria, marking practices, feedback mechanisms, and the monitoring and dissemination strategies used in the participants' universities. A number of preliminary conclusions aimed at national policy, institutions, subjects and individual modules suggest that benchmarking as a process for comparing academic standards across departments to identify best practice could be a valuable tool of quality assurance. However, there must be doubt about the worth of creating academic benchmarks as baselines against which to measure the academic standards of subjects.
Appraising Performance Across Borders: An Empirical Examination of the Purposes and Practices of Performance Appraisal in a Multi-Country Context

This study empirically investigated culture's consequences on the major purposes and practices of performance appraisal using a sample (n e 1749) drawn from the banking industry in seven countries across Europe, Asia, and North America. We found that the effects and predictive capability of assertiveness, uncertainty avoidance, in-group collectivism, and power distance should not be overstated nor are they straightforward. Organizations must be cognizant of the potential influence that a range of other organizational, institutional, and economic factors may wield on appraisal. These findings hold significant implications for the theoretical underpinnings of appraisal, a management tool largely rooted in US equity, expectancy, and procedural justice values and traditions. They also offer important lessons for practice. Not only is the transferability of appraisal and its operationalization affected by interactions with divergent cultures and contextual settings, but new hybrid appraisal architectures are emerging that necessitate further research. Copyright (c) 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies.
No Child Left Behind and High School Reform.

Although No Child Left Behind (NCLB) aims to close the achievement gap that parallels race and class, some of its key provisions are at odds with reforms that are successfully overhauling the large, comprehensive high schools that traditionally have failed students of color and low-income students in urban areas. While small, restructured schools are improving graduation and college attendance rates, NCLB accountability provisions create counterincentives that encourage higher dropout and push-out rates for low-achieving students (especially English language learners), create obstacles to staffing that allow for greater personalization, and discourage performance assessments that cultivate higher-order thinking and performance abilities. In this article, Linda Darling-Hammond proposes specific amendments to NCLB that could help achieve the goal of providing high-quality, equitable education for all students by recruiting highly qualified teachers and defining such teachers in appropriate ways; by rethinki.
Is there evidence to claim or deny association between variants of the multidrug resistance gene (MDR1 or ABCB1) and inflammatory bowel disease?

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a complex disease with a genetic background. Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the two main types of IBD. There is indication that variants in the MDR1 gene are associated with development of IBD. However, the 20 published genetic association studies (GAS) for the three most popular variants in the MDR1 gene (C3435T, G2677T/A, and C1236T) have produced inclusive results. Methods: In order to decrease the uncertainty of pooled risk effects and to explore the trend and stability of the risk effects, a meticulous meta‐analysis, including cumulative and recursive cumulative meta‐analysis, of the GAS related to the MDR1 gene with susceptibility to IBD was conducted. The risk effects were estimated based on the odds ratio (OR) of the allele contrast and the generalized odds ratio (ORG). Results: The analysis showed marginal significant association for the C3435T variant in UC: the risk estimate for the allele contrast was OR = 1.11 (1.00–1.22) and ORG = 1.12 (1.01–1.27), indicating that a subject with high mutational load has a 12% higher probability of being diseased. The respective cumulative meta‐analysis indicated a downward trend of association, as evidence accumulates with the association being significant during the whole published period. The cumulative meta‐analysis for the other variants showed lack of any trend of association. However, the recursive cumulative meta‐analysis showed that there is no sufficient evidence for denying or claiming an association for all variants. Conclusions: More evidence is needed to draw safe conclusions regarding the association of MDR1 variants and development of IBD. (Inflamm Bowel Dis 2012;)
The tweens market and responses to advertising in Denmark and Hong Kong

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare sources of money as well as responses to television commercials and pop up advertisements on the internet among young “tween” consumers in Denmark and Hong Kong. Findings are compared with existing preconceptions of the tween segment in the marketing literature.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was conducted in six primary schools in Denmark and Hong Kong, with 434 respondents from fourth, fifth and sixth grades.Findings – The paper finds that the Danish tweens received higher monthly incomes from all sources than Hong Kong tweens. Danish tweens were more likely to spend money on CDs, computer games, clothing, sports equipment, and cosmetics/jewelry than Hong Kong tweens. Hong Kong tweens were more likely to spend money on books than Danish tweens. The results showed complex differences in the perception and reactions to advertising. The results seem to support that tween consumption and responses to advertising are motivated differently in cultures o.
Matching user accounts across online social networks : methods and applications. (Corrélation des profils d'utilisateurs dans les réseaux sociaux : méthodes et applications)

The proliferation of social networks and all the personal data that people share brings many opportunities for developing exciting new applications. At the same time, however, the availability of vast amounts of personal data raises privacy and security concerns.In this thesis, we develop methods to identify the social networks accounts of a given user. We first study how we can exploit the public profiles users maintain in different social networks to match their accounts. We identify four important properties – Availability, Consistency, non- Impersonability, and Discriminability (ACID) – to evaluate the quality of different profile attributes to match accounts. Exploiting public profiles has a good potential to match accounts because a large number of users have the same names and other personal infor- mation across different social networks. Yet, it remains challenging to achieve practically useful accuracy of matching due to the scale of real social networks. To demonstrate that matching accounts in real social networks is feasible and reliable enough to be used in practice, we focus on designing matching schemes that achieve low error rates even when applied in large-scale networks with hundreds of millions of users. Then, we show that we can still match accounts across social networks even if we only exploit what users post, i.e., their activity on a social networks. This demonstrates that, even if users are privacy conscious and maintain distinct profiles on different social networks, we can still potentially match their accounts. Finally, we show that, by identifying accounts that correspond to the same person inside a social network, we can detect impersonators.
SATELLITE CHARTOGRAPHY OF ATMOSPHERIC METHANE FROM SCIAMACHY ONBOARD ENVISAT

SCIAMACHY onboard ENVISAT enables the retrieval of atmospheric methane with high sensitity towards the ground. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas. However, the partitioning of global methane sources is still highly uncertain. Further, a newly discovered additional source, viz. direct plant emissions, requires other sources to be reassessed. SCIAMACHY from its vantage point in space now offers the possibility of sensing methane globally. However, high accuracy is needed in order to employ the retrievals in source inversion models. This work shows latest methane results from SCIAMACHY with special focus on retrieval accuracy. The retrievals are compared with atmospheric chemistry models and first results of source inversions using SCIAMACHY data and the TM5 model will be shown. These inversions comfirm previous studies that tropical methane sources are so far underestimated.
Health and Social Functioning of Adults With Intellectual Disability and Autism

There is little information on the mental health needs of adults with intellectual disability (ID) and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Such evidence is much needed for the development of more effective mental health services for this group. The aim of this study is to compare adults with ID and ASD receiving specialist mental health services with participants without ASD. Data were collected from the anonymized case records of a clinic-based population in South East London. Health and social functioning were measured using the Health of the Nation Outcome Scale for people with Learning Disability (HoNOS-LD). A review of case records identified 371 service users in receipt of specialist mental health care who were eligible for the study. There were 117 people (32% of the sample) with a clinical diagnosis of ID and ASD. Participants with ASD were younger, more likely to be male, less likely to live independently and had more severe ID than those without ASD. Furthermore, those with ID and ASD were less likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder but had significantly higher scores on the HoNOS-LD (indicating lower health and social functioning) than those without ASD. A significant proportion of adults with ID who are in receipt of specialist mental health services also have a clinical diagnosis of ASD. This group has different mental health needs compared with those without ASD. The authors note the need for a more personalized approach to service delivery with a focus on improving social functioning and behavioral impairments.
State-Dependent Gaussian Interference Channels: Can State Be Fully Canceled?

The state-dependent Gaussian interference channel (IC) and Z-IC are investigated, in which two receivers are corrupted by the same but differently scaled states. The state sequence is noncausally known at both transmitters, but not known at either receiver. Three interference regimes are studied, i.e., the very strong, strong, and weak regimes. In the very strong regime, the capacity region is characterized under certain channel parameters by designing a cooperative dirty paper coding between the two transmitters to fully cancel the state. In the strong regime, points on the capacity region boundary are characterized under certain channel parameters by designing an achievable scheme based on rate splitting, layered dirty paper coding, and successive state cancellation. In the weak regime, the sum capacity is obtained by independent dirty paper coding at two transmitters. For all the above regimes, the capacity achieves that of the IC/Z-IC without state. Comparison between the state-dependent regular IC and the Z-IC suggests that even with one interference-free link, the Z-IC does not necessarily perform better, because dirty paper coded interference in the regular IC facilitates to cancel the state through the cooperative dirty paper coding between the transmitters.
Epitope Mapping for Monoclonal Antibody Reveals the Activation Mechanism for αVβ3 Integrin

Epitopes for a panel of anti-αVβ3 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were investigated to explore the activation mechanism of αVβ3 integrin. Experiments utilizing αV/αIIb domain-swapping chimeras revealed that among the nine mAbs tested, five recognized the ligand-binding β-propeller domain and four recognized the thigh domain, which is the upper leg of the αV chain. Interestingly, the four mAbs included function-blocking as well as non-functional mAbs, although they bound at a distance from the ligand-binding site. The epitopes for these four mAbs were further determined using human-to-mouse αV chimeras. Among the four, P3G8 recognized an amino acid residue, Ser-528, located on the side of the thigh domain, while AMF-7, M9, and P2W7 all recognized a common epitope, Ser-462, that was located close to the α-genu, where integrin makes a sharp bend in the crystal structure. Fibrinogen binding studies for cells expressing wild-type αVβ3 confirmed that AMF-7, M9, and P2W7 were inhibitory, while P3G8 was non-functional. However, these mAbs were all unable to block binding when αVβ3 was constrained in its extended conformation. These results suggest that AMF-7, M9, and P2W7 block ligand binding allosterically by stabilizing the angle of the bend in the bent conformation. Thus, a switchblade-like movement of the integrin leg is indispensable for the affinity regulation of αVβ3 integrin.
Elevated Dickkopf‐2 levels contribute to the abnormal phenotype of human osteoarthritic osteoblasts

The Wnt signaling pathway is crucial for osteogenesis and regulates terminal osteoblast differentiation. Although osteoarthritic (OA) osteoblasts show an abnormal phenotype and poor in vitro mineralization, the mechanism leading to this situation still remains unknow. Recent evidence indicates that Wnt signaling may be altered in OA osteoblasts. In this study we determined whether an alteration of the Wnt/β‐catenin signaling pathway is responsible for the abnormal phenotype of OA osteoblasts. Expression of the Wnt signaling antagonist Dickkopf‐1 (DKK1) was similar in normal and OA osteoblasts, whereas DKK2 expression was higher in OA osteoblasts than in normal osteoblasts. OA osteoblasts showed a decrease of Wnt3a‐dependent Wnt/β‐catenin signaling, measured by the TOPflash reporter assay and by Western blot analysis, compared with normal osteoblasts. Correcting DKK2 levels in OA osteoblasts by siRNA techniques enhanced Wnt/β‐catenin signaling. Elevated DKK2 levels could be explained by elevated transforming growth factor β1 (TGF‐β1) in OA osteoblasts, and exogenous TGF‐β1 increased DKK2 expression in normal osteoblasts, whereas ablating TGF‐β1 expression in OA osteoblasts reduced DKK2 expression. Inhibiting TGF‐β1 or DKK2 expression corrected the abnormal phenotype of OA osteoblasts. In vitro mineralization of OA osteoblasts also was increased by DKK2 siRNA. We conclude that elevated TGF‐β1 levels in OA osteoblasts can stimulate DKK2 expression, which, in turn, is responsible, at least in part, for their abnormal phenotype. © 2011 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
The Effect of Workload on the P 300 and Classification

Brain Computer Interfacing is a rapidly developing field that offers promises of better Human Computer Interaction through a more natural approach then current interfaces have established. However before BCIs can realize this promise there are known and unknown obstacles to overcome. One of these obstacles is related to how many tasks a human can currently do while still generating brain signals that are usable by state-of-the-art (brain) signal analysis programs. This thesis describes an experiment that was conducted to test human capacity as well as a signal analysis program in several different conditions with different levels of
Stochastic security for operations planning with significant wind power generation

In their attempt to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, several countries are committed to install wind power generation up to and beyond the 10-20% penetration mark. However, the large-scale integration of wind power represents a challenge for power system operations planning because wind power (i) cannot be dispatched in the classical sense; and, (ii) its output varies as weather conditions change. This warrants the investigation of alternative short-term power system operations planning methods capable of better coping with the nature of wind generation while maintaining or even improving the current reliability and economic performance of power systems. To this end, this paper formulates a short-term forward electricity market-clearing problem with stochastic security capable of accounting for non-dispatchable and variable wind power generation sources. The principal benefit of this stochastic operation planning approach is that, when compared to a deterministic worst-case scenario planning philosophy, it allows greater wind power penetration without sacrificing security.
Multiple pathways mediate the sex-peptide-regulated switch in female Drosophila reproductive behaviours

Male-derived sex-peptide (SP) induces profound changes in the behaviour of Drosophila females, resulting in decreased receptivity to further mating and increased egg laying. SP can mediate the switch in female reproductive behaviours via a G protein-coupled receptor, SPR, in neurons expressing fruitless, doublesex and pickpocket. Whether SPR is the sole receptor and whether SP induces the postmating switch in a single pathway has not, to our knowledge been tested. Here we report that the SP response can be induced in the absence of SPR when SP is ectopically expressed in neurons or when SP, transferred by mating, can access neurons through a leaky blood brain barrier. Membrane-tethered SP can induce oviposition via doublesex, but not fruitless and pickpocket neurons in SPR mutant females. Although pickpocket and doublesex neurons rely on G(o) signalling to reduce receptivity and induce oviposition, G(o) signalling in fruitless neurons is required only to induce oviposition, but not to reduce receptivity. Our results show that SP's action in reducing receptivity and inducing oviposition can be separated in fruitless and doublesex neurons. Hence, the SP-induced postmating switch incorporates shared, but also distinct circuitry of fruitless, doublesex and pickpocket neurons and additional receptors.
A Digital Tutorial for Ancient Greek Based on John Williams White’s First Greek Book

This article describes a hybrid approach to Ancient Greek that combines online tutorial exercises with flexible face-to-face meetings and assessment within the Blackboard Course Management System. The goal of this system is to enable the Classics program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City to offer its three-course beginning Greek sequence concurrently so that students begin in any semester, work independently online while receiving any necessary help in a tutorial environment from the professor or a peer tutor, and continue their Greek studies at any time during their academic career without being constrained by a rigid three-semester rotation.
Quantifying attentional modulation of auditory-evoked cortical responses from single-trial electroencephalography

Selective auditory attention is essential for human listeners to be able to communicate in multi-source environments. Selective attention is known to modulate the neural representation of the auditory scene, boosting the representation of a target sound relative to the background, but the strength of this modulation, and the mechanisms contributing to it, are not well understood. Here, listeners performed a behavioral experiment demanding sustained, focused spatial auditory attention while we measured cortical responses using electroencephalography (EEG). We presented three concurrent melodic streams; listeners were asked to attend and analyze the melodic contour of one of the streams, randomly selected from trial to trial. In a control task, listeners heard the same sound mixtures, but performed the contour judgment task on a series of visual arrows, ignoring all auditory streams. We found that the cortical responses could be fit as weighted sum of event-related potentials evoked by the stimulus onsets in the competing streams. The weighting to a given stream was roughly 10 dB higher when it was attended compared to when another auditory stream was attended; during the visual task, the auditory gains were intermediate. We then used a template-matching classification scheme to classify single-trial EEG results. We found that in all subjects, we could determine which stream the subject was attending significantly better than by chance. By directly quantifying the effect of selective attention on auditory cortical responses, these results reveal that focused auditory attention both suppresses the response to an unattended stream and enhances the response to an attended stream. The single-trial classification results add to the growing body of literature suggesting that auditory attentional modulation is sufficiently robust that it could be used as a control mechanism in brain–computer interfaces (BCIs).
Gene Expression Differences between Enriched Normal and Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia Quiescent Stem/Progenitor Cells and Correlations with Biological Abnormalities

In comparing gene expression of normal and CML CD34+ quiescent (G0) cell, 292 genes were downregulated and 192 genes upregulated in the CML/G0 Cells. The differentially expressed genes were grouped according to their reported functions, and correlations were sought with biological differences previously observed between the same groups. The most relevant findings include the following. (i) CML G0 cells are in a more advanced stage of development and more poised to proliferate than normal G0 cells. (ii) When CML G0 cells are stimulated to proliferate, they differentiate and mature more rapidly than normal counterpart. (iii) Whereas normal G0 cells form only granulocyte/monocyte colonies when stimulated by cytokines, CML G0 cells form a combination of the above and erythroid clusters and colonies. (iv) Prominin-1 is the gene most downregulated in CML G0 cells, and this appears to be associated with the spontaneous formation of erythroid colonies by CML progenitors without EPO.