Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Demographic Characteristics of Early Childhood Teachers and Structural Elements of Early Care and Education in the United States.

childhood programs and teachers of 3 and 4-year-olds. Questionnaires were sent to a random sample of early childhood programs across the United States. Data were collected on teacher characteristics and structural features of early childhood programs (enrollment, class size, hours of operation, and ratio of teachers to students). Findings indicated that there are approximately 284,277 teachers of 3 and 4-year-olds in the United States. The vast majority of these teachers are women, and 78 percent are white. Approximately 50 percent of these teachers have earned a college degree, although educational attainment varies among program types. For-profit centers currently outnumber other types of centers, although the number of early childhood programs in public schools is increasing rapidly. The findings wiil be of interest to parents, and it is therefore important for them to have access to information about the characteristics of early childhood programs and teachers. Additionally, policy-makers need to understand the distinctions that exist between different types of early childhood settings as they adopt regulations and make funding decisions that affect parental choice of programs. (Contains 18 references.) (Author/HTH) This paper summarizes demographic information on early Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made fiom the original document. Early Childhood Research and Practice Sp . Care and Education in the United States http://ecrp.uiuc. edulv4n l/saluja.htnil Spring 2002 Volume 4 Number 1 d tl w TI" " __ _ _ _ I -I 1 / I Demographic Characteristics of Early Childhood Teachers and Structural Elements of Early Care and Education in the United States I '
Networks of Tiny Switches ( NoTS ) : In search of network power efficiency and proportionality

The era of cloud computing is driving deployments of dense, high bandwidth, high port count network devices whose energy consumption is growing super-linearly. This trend diverges from the objective of power proportional, cloud-scale datacenter and enterprise networks, and implies a looming network power wall that will require re-thinking the design and configuration of networks and network systems. In this paper, we present a new architecture called Networks of Tiny Switches (NoTS). Our approach is based on the idea of building large networks from low port count, low power devices. We provide an overview of the hardware, software, and management required by a NoTS architecture. We also describe a case-study for NoTS in the enterprise context, and conduct a thorough evaluation of using small switches in a datacenter.
Clinicopathologic Characteristics of Breast Cancer Stem Cells Identified on the Basis of Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 1 Expression

Purpose Breast cancer displays varying molecular and clinical features. The ability to form breast tumors has been shown by several studies with aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) positive cells. The aim of this study is to investigate the association between ALDH1 expression and clinicopathologic characteristics of invasive ductal carcinoma. Methods We investigated breast cancer tissues for the prevalence of ALDH1+ tumor cells and their prognostic value. The present study included paraffin-embedded tissues of 70 patients with or without recurrences. We applied immunohistochemical staining for the detection of ALDH1+ cells. Analysis of the association of clinical outcomes and molecular subtype with marker status was conducted. Results ALDH1+ and ALDH1- tumors were more frequent in triple-negative breast cancers and in luminal A breast cancers, respectively (p<0.01). ALDH1 expression was found to exert significant impact on disease free survival (DFS) (ALDH1+ vs. ALDH1-, 53.1±6.7 months vs. 79.2±4.7 months; p=0.03) and overall survival (OS) (ALDH1+ vs. ALDH1-, 68.5±4.7 months vs. 95.3±1.1 months; p<0.01). In triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients, DFS and OS showed no statistical differences according to ALDH1 expression (ALDH1+ vs. ALDH1-, 45.3±9.4 months vs. 81.3±7.4 months, p=0.52; 69.0±7.5 months vs. 91.3±6.3 months, p=0.67). However, non-TNBC patients showed significant OS difference between ALDH1+ and ALDH1- tumors (ALDH1+ vs. ALDH1-, 77.6±3.6 months vs. 98.0±1.0 months; p=0.04) with no statistical difference of DFS (ALDH1+ vs. ALDH1-, 60.5±8.0 months vs. 81.8±4.6 months; p=0.27). Conclusion Our findings suggest that the expression of ALDH1 in breast cancer may be associated with TNBC and poor clinical outcomes. On the basis of our findings, we propose that ALDH1 expression in breast cancer could be correlated with poor prognosis, and may contribute to a more aggressive cancer phenotype.
Large-scale winds in the southern North Sea region: the wind part of the KNMI’14 climate change scenarios

The wind climate and its possible change in a warming world are important topics for many applications, among which are marine and coastal safety and wind energy generation. Therefore, wind is an important variable to investigate for climate change scenarios. In developing the wind part of the KNMI’14 climate change scenarios, output from several model categories have been analysed, ranging from global General Circulation Models via regional climate model (RCMs) to suitably re-sampled RCM output. The main conclusion is that global warming will not change the wind climate over the Netherlands and the North Sea beyond the large range of natural climate variability that has been experienced in the past.
Expression of the Rat Liver Haptoglobin Gene is Mediated by Isoforms of C / EBP α ,-β and-δ Proteins

CCAAT/enhancer binding proteins (C/EBP) α, -β and -δ play an important role in mediating I interleukin-6 (IL-6) dependent expression of acute-phase protein (APP) genes in liver during acute-phase (AP) response. Based on the presence of type IL-6 responsive element (IL-6 RE) in the rat haptoglobin (Hp) gene promoter we assumed that some C/EBPα, -β and/or -δ isoforms could mediate the expression of this gene during turpentine-induced AP response. By Western immunoblot and Northern blot assays, we found that turpentine treatment of rats led to a coordinate induction of C/EBPβ and -δ as well as repression of C/EBPα isoforms pool levels in rat liver nuclear extracts (NEs) which was preceded by an adequate alteration of their mRNAs expression in liver. Consequently, results of DNA affinity chromatography revealed that affinity of certain C/EBPα isoforms to bind the type I IL-6 RE within the rat Hp gene promoter decreased whereas affinities of certain C/EBPβ isoforms and C/EBPδ were increased and induced, respectively. Our data suggest that turpentine-induced alterations of C/EBPα, -β and -δ pool levels and DNA-binding activities can be regarded as an integral part of activation of the Hp gene expression in the course of AP response.
Deposition of a-Si:H thin films embedded with nano-crystalline through dilution of argon

The structure of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin films embedded with nano-crystal grains deposited by conventional radio frequency (RF) plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) through decomposition of silane diluted with argon has been studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy. It is observed that argon as dilution gas plays a significant role in the growth of nano-crystal grains and amorphous network in a-Si:H thin films. The structural variation of the thin films with different dilution ratios suggests that changing of plasma conditions in the chamber leads to the nanocrystallizing of the thin films. The nanocrystallization process initiating at a relatively low dilution ratio has been observed. Moreover, a positive effect of argon dilution on the nanocrystallization has also been observed. The structural changes studied under argon dilution are explained by a proposed model based on the energy exchange between argon plasma constituted of Ar* and A+ radicals and the growth region of the thin films.
Biosynthesis of Silver Nanoparticles from Protium serratum and Investigation of their Potential Impacts on Food Safety and Control

Silver nanoparticles play an integral part in the evolution of new antimicrobials against the broad ranges of pathogenic microorganisms. Recently, biological synthesis of metal nanoparticles using plant extracts has been successfully consummated. In the present study, the biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) was conducted using the leaf extract of plant Protium serratum, having novel ethnomedicinal. The synthesized AgNPs were characterized using UV-Visible spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering spectroscopy (DLS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscopy. The DLS study revealed the surface charge of the resulted nanoparticles that was highly negative, i.e., −25.0 ± 7.84 mV and the size was 74.56 ± 0.46 nm. The phytochemical and FTIR analysis confirmed the role of water-soluble phyto-compounds for the reduction of silver ions to silver nanoparticles. The potential antibacterial activity of AgNPs was studied against the food borne pathogens viz. Pseudomonas aeruginosa (IC50 = 74.26 ± 0.14 μg/ml), Escherichia coli (IC50 = 84.28 ± 0.36 μg/ml), Bacillus subtilis (IC50 = 94.43 ± 0.4236 μg/ml). The in vitro antioxidant potential of AgNPs was evaluated using 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazil (IC50 = 6.78 ± 0.15 μg/ml) and hydroxyl radical assay (IC50 = 89.58 ± 1.15 μg/ml). In addition, the cytotoxicity of AgNPs was performed against fibroblast cell line L-929 to evaluate their biocompatibility. The overall results of the present investigation displayed the potential use of P. serratum leaf extract as a good bio-resource for the biosynthesis of AgNPs and their implementation in diverse applications, specifically as antibacterial agent in food packaging and preservation to combat against various food borne pathogenic bacteria along with its pharmaceutical and biomedical applications.
Point of Care Cardiac Ultrasound Applications in the Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit - A Review

The use of point of care echocardiography by non-cardiologist in acute care settings such as the emergency department (ED) or the intensive care unit (ICU) is very common. Unlike diagnostic echocardiography, the scope of such point of care exams is often restricted to address the clinical questions raised by the patient’s differential diagnosis or chief complaint in order to inform immediate management decisions. In this article, an overview of the most common applications of this focused echocardiography in the ED and ICU is provided. This includes but is not limited to the evaluation of patients experiencing hypotension, cardiac arrest, cardiac trauma, chest pain and patients after cardiac surgery.
FireDroid: hardening security in almost-stock Android

Malware poses a serious threat to Android smartphones. Current security mechanisms offer poor protection and are often too inflexible to quickly mitigate new exploits. In this paper we present FireDroid, a policy-based framework for enforcing security policies by interleaving process system calls. The main advantage of FireDroid is that it is completely transparent to the applications as well as to the Android OS. FireDroid enforces security policies without modifying either the Android OS or its applications. FireDroid is able to perform security checks on third-party and pre-installed applications, as well as malicious native code. We have implemented a novel mechanism that is able to attach, identify, monitor and enforce polices for any process spawned by the Android's mother process Zygote. We have tested the effectiveness of FireDroid against real malware. Moreover, we show how FireDroid can be used as a swift solution for blocking OS and application vulnerabilities before patches are available. Finally, we provide an experimental evaluation of our approach showing that it has only a limited overhead. Given these facts, FireDroid represents a practical solution for strengthening security on Android smartphones.
Comparison of consumer purchase intention between interactive and augmented reality shopping platforms through statistical analyses

The objective of this study is to explore the effectiveness of three digital shopping platforms (Plain Interactive, Marker-based Augmented Reality and Markerless Augmented Reality), on the impressions and purchase intentions of consumers. The study is mainly interested in analysing whether intelligent shopping platforms with AR elements provide any added advantage to an advertised product in the form of favourable attitude or a stronger purchase impulse. During the tests with the three shopping platforms, quantitative data was collected via computerised questionnaire. High and Low class users were statistically extracted, corresponding to the high or low probability to buy or recommend the advertised brand. The results show that Markerless AR system clearly outperforms the Marker-based AR and the Plain Interactive in terms of positive attitude from the users. The second better performing system is the Marker-based AR, which closely follows the Markerless AR, while the Plain Interactive system obtains least approval.
Measuring liquidity under stress

In line with much of the literature, I define market liquidity as the “ease” with which a security can be traded. The word “ease” can be substituted by the word “cost”. The cost of trading includes commissions, fees and taxes as well as the bid-ask spread, the price impact of a trade, and the cost caused by prices movements if a trade cannot be executed at once or when it is split up into a sequence of smaller transactions. In normal times, the cost of trading is particular relevant for those investors who try to make a profit by trading on small movements in prices and, consequently, turn over positions relatively quickly. For such agents, even small differences in the cost of a transaction can make or break a trading strategy. Investors with longer time horizons shouldn’t really worry about market liquidity.
Privacy preservation for personalised services in smart spaces

Context-awareness in pervasive smart spaces exposes intuitively useful services. These services implicitly annotate users' personal information with contextual cues to individualise experiences. Mobile terminals have positioned most domestic and business users as potential consumers of these services. To alleviate the inconveniences of small screens, compact keyboards and users' limited attention span, personalised services tend towards transparency. As the services become more transparent requiring less user intervention, the more personal and context information they solicit. Richer contextual and deeper personal information facilitates better automation and adaptation. Unfortunately, transparent soliciting, acquiring and handling of personalisation constructs raises privacy concerns. We argue that, privacy policies enforced through reputable authority preserves and safeguards compromises regarding personal information. To this we propose a Privacy Policy Enforcement Authority to monitor and regulate service adherence to policy stipulations. Addressed concerns are; disclosures, retention, use and repurpose of personalisation attributes.
Preconditioned and Rank-Flexible Block Conjugate Gradient Implementations of Mimo Wiener Decision Feedback Equalizers

In this paper, we present two extensions of the block conjugate gradient (BCG) algorithm, a method which exploits the concept of block Krylov subspaces. First, we extend the BCG algorithm such that it is more flexible concerning the dimension of the block Krylov subspace. Second, a computationally efficient preconditioned BCG (PBCG) algorithm is introduced which turns out to outperform the standard BCG algorithm concerning the complexity-performance ratio. Hence, we provide a powerful implementation for reduced-rank signal processing in the minimum mean square error (MMSE) sense. Simulation results show the gain in rank-flexibility and convergence speed
Solar magnetic fields and geomagnetic events

Some interplanetary studies lead one to expect that the toroidal fields of individual active regions are directly related to their heliospheric structure. Other studies conclude that the large-scale solar dipolar field is more important. We have carried out two studies that bear on these apparently conflicting views. We first studied geomagnetic events temporally associated with the eruption of 18 individual coronal X-ray sigmoids, which occurred while the large-scale solar dipolar magnetic field pointed southward. We found that if a coronal flux rope model is used to interpret magnetic structure, eruptions with a southward leading magnetic field are associated with stronger geomagnetic storms, but those with a northward leading field are associated with more storms. We next studied three full magnetic cycles, solar cycles 17–22. We examined the temporal variation of the ratio of the geomagnetic Ap index to the sunspot number. We found no statistically compelling fluctuations of this quantity on solar cycle timescales that are in phase with the reversal of active region polarities. On the other hand, we found a weak tendency for fluctuations that are in phase with the reversal of the large-scale solar dipole field. From these two studies we infer that the magnetic structure of individual active regions plays a role in geomagnetic events, but their geoeffectiveness is complicated by asymmetries in the leading and following magnetic field and density. We conclude that simple cycle-dependent generalizations have only statistical significance, and cannot dependably be used to predict the geomagnetic effects of a given solar eruption.
Sodium channel blockers identify risk for sudden death in patients with ST-segment elevation and right bundle branch block but structurally normal hearts.

BACKGROUND A mutation in the cardiac sodium channel gene (SCN5A) has been described in patients with the syndrome of right bundle branch block, ST-segment elevation in leads V1 to V3, and sudden death (Brugada syndrome). These electrocardiographic manifestations are transient in many patients with the syndrome. The present study examined arrhythmic risk in patients with overt and concealed forms of the disease and the effectiveness of sodium channel blockers to unmask the syndrome and, thus, identify patients at risk. METHODS AND RESULTS The effect of intravenous ajmaline (1 mg/kg), procainamide (10 mg/kg), or flecainide (2 mg/kg) on the ECG was studied in 34 patients with the syndrome and transient normalization of the ECG (group A), 11 members of 3 families in whom a SCN5A mutation was associated with the syndrome and 8 members in whom it was not (group B), and 53 control subjects (group C). Ajmaline, procainamide, or flecainide administration resulted in ST-segment elevation and right bundle branch block in all patients in group A and in all 11 patients with the mutation in group B. A similar pattern could not be elicited in the 8 patients in group B who lacked the mutation or in any person in group C. The follow-up period (37+/-33 months) revealed no differences in the incidence of arrhythmia between the 34 patients in whom the phenotypic manifestation of the syndrome was transient and the 24 patients in whom it was persistent (log-rank, 0.639). CONCLUSIONS The data demonstrated a similar incidence of potentially lethal arrhythmias in patients displaying transient versus persistent ST-segment elevation and right bundle branch block, as well as the effectiveness of sodium channel blockers to unmask the syndrome and, thus, identify patients at risk.
A matrix generalization of Euler identity e jϕ = cosϕ + j sinϕ

In this work we present a matrix generalization of the Euler identity about exponential representation of a complex number. The concept of matrix exponential is used in a fundamental way. We define a notion of matrix imaginary unit which generalizes the usual complex imaginary unit. The Euler-like identity so obtained is compatible with the classical one. Also, we derive some exponential representation for matrix real and imaginary unit, and for the first Pauli matrix.
Exploring Quality Dependencies among UML Artifacts Developed by Novice Systems Analysts

Capturing and representing information systems requirements using quality artifacts is an important step in successful implementation. Better quality artifacts in the early stages of systems development help in early detection and correction of errors. Although UML is widely used for modeling systems requirements, it is often difficult for novice systems analysts to develop quality UML artifacts. This paper presents an application of the conceptual model quality framework proposed by Lindland et al (1994) for identifying quality dependencies among the UML artifacts developed by novice systems analysts in an undergraduate course on object-oriented systems analysis and design. Findings from this study offer directions for enhancing teaching and learning of systems analysis techniques with UML.
Mechanical verification of transaction processing systems

Concerns the formal specification and mechanical verification of transaction processing systems aimed at distributed databases. In such systems, a standard set of ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability) properties must be ensured by a combination of concurrency control and recovery protocols. In the existing literature, these protocols are often studied in isolation, making strong assumptions about each other. The problem of combining them in a formal way has been largely ignored. To study the formal verification of combined protocols, we specify a transaction processing system, integrating strict two-phase locking, undo/redo recovery and two-phase commit. In our method, the locking and undo/redo mechanism at distributed sites is defined by state machines, whereas the interaction between sites according to the two-phase commit protocol is specified by assertions. We have proved, using the interactive proof checker of PVS, that our system satisfies atomicity, durability and serializability properties.
Bridgeless High-Power-Factor Buck-Converter Operating in Discontinuous Capacitor Voltage Mode

In this paper, a new bridgeless single-phase ac-dc power factor correction (PFC) rectifier based on buck topology operating in discontinuous capacitor voltage mode (DCVM) is proposed. The bridgeless topology and the presence of only one or two semiconductor switches in the current flowing path during each interval of the switching cycle result in lower conduction losses compared with the conventional DCVM buck PFC rectifier. The DCVM operation offers additional advantages such as zero-voltage turn-off in the power switches, zero-voltage turn-on in the output diode, and continuous input current. Hence, the electromagnetic interference noise emission is minimized. The converter achieves high power factor naturally with low total harmonic distortion in the input current. Theoretical analysis and experimental results for 100 W/48 Vdc at 100 Vrms line voltage are provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. The measured conversion efficiency reached 96.3%.