Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Traffic Accidents on Expressways: New Threat to China

Objective: As China is building one of the largest expressway systems in the world, expressway safety problems have become serious concerns to China. This article analyzed the trends in expressway accidents in China from 1995 to 2010 and examined the characteristics of these accidents. Methods: Expressway accident data were obtained from the Annual Report for Road Traffic Accidents published by the Ministry of Public Security of China. Expressway mileage data were obtained from the National Statistics Yearbook published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Descriptive statistical analyses were conducted based on these data. Results: Expressway deaths increased by 10.2-fold from 616 persons in 1995 to 6300 persons in 2010, and the average annual increase was 17.9 percent over the past 15 years, and the overall other road traffic deaths was −0.33 percent. China's expressway mileage accounted for only 1.85 percent of highway mileage driven in 2010, but expressway deaths made up 13.54 percent of highway traffic deaths. The average annual accident lethality rate [accident deaths/(accident deaths + accident injuries)] for China's expressways was 27.76 percent during the period 1995 to 2010, which was 1.33 times higher than the accident lethality rate of highway traffic accidents. Conclusions: China's government should pay attention to expressway construction and safety interventions during the rapid development period of expressways. Related causes, such as geographic patterns, speeding, weather conditions, and traffic flow composition, need to be studied in the near future. An effective and scientific expressway safety management services system, composed of a speed monitoring system, warning system, and emergency rescue system, should be established in developed and underdeveloped provinces in China to improve safety on expressway.
THE IMPACT OF ENHANCED PRISON TERMS FOR FELONIES COMMITTED WITH GUNS

Legislation mandating minimum sentences or additions to sentences for crimes committed with guns is a frequent response to gun problems. We compiled these state laws and estimated their impact on state prison populations, prison admissions, UCR crime rates, and gun use in homicides, assaults and robberies. We employed a multiple time series research design, with data for nearly all states over the past 16 to 24 years, such that for any one state the remaining states operated as controls. Several small-scale studies have suggested that the laws might reduce some types of gun crime. We found that the laws produced such an impact in no more than a few states and that there is little evidence that the laws generally reduce crime or increase prison populations.
Teachers' Talk in Preschools During Circle Time: The Case of Revoicing

Abstract This study focused on a specific feature of preschool teacher talk, revoicing (a situation in which the teacher repeats, fully or partially, what the child said in the immediately preceding turn), within a specific interactional context, circle time, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the type of language mediation that occurs in this learning event. Data included recordings of 20 circle-time sessions with children from two age groups: preschool children (mean age of 47.4 months) and kindergarten children (mean age of 68.7 months). This age range enabled us to explore whether the use of revoicing reflects teacher attentiveness to the level of the children's developing linguistic and conversational skills. Revoicing was manifested in two forms, exact and reformulated, and was found woven into the teachers' talk throughout the interaction with both younger and older children, regardless of the topic or pedagogical aims of the session. Although revoicing served various pedagogical needs, it functioned mainly as a marker of acknowledgment, serving as a type of “filler” to sustain group involvement, and did not open a new slot for the children to join the discussion. This pedagogical action was more frequent with the younger children. The findings of the study should be viewed in light of the consensus that preschool teacher talk plays a significant role in supporting the development of children's language and of their conversational and literacy skills. Therefore, teacher awareness of the pedagogical goals that may be accomplished by their conversational moves, and their effect on the nature of interaction, is important in establishing an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of their practice.
Popup workshop: computationally enhanced paper engineering for children

Computational enhancement of craft work has been attempted for a variety of crafts. These comprise an unusual branch of software development because of their relationship with physical objects produced by users. One craft which has seen no general computational enhancement usable by children is paper engineering. Paper engineering is the production of pop-ups, 3-dimensional forms that pop into shape when a page is opened, and that fold away when the page is closed. This is an interesting craft for children since pop-up books have become a mainstay of children's culture, and have many applications in teaching mathematics, writing, and art. This dissertation describes the design, implementation and testing of a software application, Popup Workshop, that was designed to enable children to learn how to make pop-ups. Features of Popup Workshop include the ability to make a variety of pop-up elements, the automatic enforcement of the geometric constraints necessary to keep the elements smoothly foldable and allow for changing elements, and the use of a constraint system to allow animation of the 3D representation of the pop-up being designed. A framework of craft learning and practice is developed consisting of the competencies of knowledge, skill and appreciation. This framework is applied to paper engineering to guide the design and testing of Popup Workshop and to assess the changes seen in five young paper engineers who used the software.
Preoperative therapy with pazopanib in high-risk soft tissue sarcoma: a phase II window-of-opportunity study by the German Interdisciplinary Sarcoma Group (GISG-04/NOPASS)

Introduction For resectable soft tissue sarcoma (STS), radical surgery, usually combined with radiotherapy, is the mainstay of treatment and the only potentially curative modality. Since surgery is often complicated by large tumour size and extensive tumour vasculature, preoperative treatment strategies with the aim of devitalising the tumour are being explored. One option is treatment with antiangiogenic drugs. The multikinase inhibitor pazopanib, which possesses pronounced antiangiogenic effects, has shown activity in metastatic and unresectable STS, but has so far not been tested in the preoperative setting. Methods and analysis This open-label, multicentre phase II window-of-opportunity trial assesses pazopanib as preoperative treatment of resectable STS. Participants receive a 21-day course of pazopanib 800 mg daily during wait time for surgery. Major eligibility criteria are resectable, high-risk adult STS of any location, or metachronous solitary STS metastasis for which resection is planned, and adequate organ function and performance status. The trial uses an exact single-stage design. The primary end point is metabolic response rate (MRR), that is, the proportion of patients with >50% reduction of the mean standardised uptake value (SUVmean) in post-treatment compared to pre-treatment fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography CT. The MRR below which the treatment is considered ineffective is 0.2. The MRR above which the treatment warrants further exploration is 0.4. With a type I error of 5% and a power of 80%, the sample size is 35 evaluable patients, with 12 or more responders as threshold. Main secondary end points are histopathological and MRI response, resectability, toxicity, recurrence-free and overall survival. In a translational substudy, endothelial progenitor cells and vascular epithelial growth factor receptor are analysed as potential prognostic and predictive markers. Ethics and dissemination Approval by the ethics committee II, University of Heidelberg, Germany (2012-019F-MA), German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (61-3910-4038155) and German Federal Institute for Radiation Protection (Z5-22463/2-2012-007). Trial registration number NCT01543802, EudraCT: 2011-003745-18; Pre-results.
CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC SOURCES OF HOMICIDE IN THE UNITED STATES

Are high rates of homicide better explained by cultural or economic factors? Some research suggests that a regional culture of violence underlies high rates of homicide, whereas other research suggests that poverty or economic inequality increases the likelihood of homicide. A major limitation of this body of research has been the failure of researchers to include an indicator of cultural support for violence that is analytically separate from measures of southern region. In this article, a 12-item Legitimate Violence Index (LVX) is introduced that measures cultural support for violence. Using the 50 states as the units of analysis, hypotheses derived from cultural and economic theories of homicide are investigated using multiple regression. Several additional variables are included in the analysis to control for spurious relationships. The results show that legitimate violence, poverty, and economic inequality are significantly associated with state-to-state differences in the incidence of homicide. Language: en
Serum markers of bone turnover in children and adolescents with classic galactosemia.

PURPOSE Classic galactosemia is an inherited metabolic disease resulting from galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase (GALT) deficiency. Dietary lactose exclusion reverses many clinical manifestations of acute phase of the disease. Unfortunately most of the patients, despite dietary treatment, develop long-term complications among them disturbances of bone mineralization resulting in decrease of bone mineral density (BMD). The aim of our study was to assess bone formation and resorption processes with bone turnover markers in children and adolescents with galactosemia. MATERIALS AND METHODS We studied 62 galactosemic children (mean age+/-SD 5.9+/-2.7 years) and adolescents (mean age+/-SD 15.6+/-2,4 years). The clinical diagnosis had been confirmed by the absence of GALT activity in erythrocytes. All patients were diagnosed in the neonatal period and had good dietary control. Healthy children (n=70) were the reference group. Serum osteocalcin (OC), bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP), collagen type I crosslinked C-telopeptide (CTX-I), 25(OH)D metabolite of vitamin D were determined by ELISA assays. RESULTS We observed similar mean values of bone formation markers in children with galactosemia as compared to the age-matched controls. The level of bone resorption marker CTX-I in these patients was lower by about 20% (p<0.001) than in healthy children. On the contrary we obtained slightly higher values of CTX-I in adolescents with galactosemia in comparison to the age-matched controls. In these patients the values of OC and BALP were significantly higher than in healthy adolescents (111.8+/-52.1 microg/L versus 82.3+/-43.0 microg/L, p<0.02; and 95.4+/-45.7 U/L versus 72.6+/-40.6 U/L, p<0.05 respectively). CONCLUSION Our results suggest that bone turnover in galactosemic patients elevates from childhood to adolescence, whereas in healthy individuals there is a decline during aging. Further studies on adults with galactosemia are necessary to assess bone status in these patients.
Religion and the dualism of the social condition in Durkheim and Bataille

One important legacy of the Collège de sociologie is its development of certain Durkheimian themes, particularly those concerning religion. Both Durkheim and Bataille sought to understand religion and the sacred not as mere cultural phenomena but as defining features of personal, social and economic life. The members of the Collège, and especially Bataille, sought to subject both society and sociology to a radical form of interrogation. Like Durkheim, if in different ways, they sought to situate and address the commitments of social inquiry at the centre of their work rather than at its margins. This article suggests how Bataille can be said to have adopted and radicalized a Durkheimian emphasis on a dualism central to both personhood and society, while rejecting a Durkheimian faith in an evolving sociological enlightenment.
Forecasting Traffic Flow Conditions in an Urban Network: Comparison of Multivariate and Univariate Approaches

Several univariate and multivariate models have been proposed for performing short-term forecasting of traffic flow. Two different univariate [historical average and ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average)] and two multivariate [VARMA (vector autoregressive moving average) and STARIMA (space–time ARIMA)] models are presented and discussed. A comparison of the forecasting performance of these four models is undertaken with data sets from 25 loop detectors located in major arterials in the city of Athens, Greece. The variable under study is the relative velocity, which is the traffic volume divided by the road occupancy. Although the specification of the network’s neighborhood structure for the STARIMA model was relatively simple and can be further refined, the results obtained indicate a comparable forecasting performance for the ARIMA, VARMA, and STARIMA models. The historical average model could not cope with the variability of the data sets at hand.
Soils apart from equilibrium – consequences for soil carbon balance modelling

Abstract. Many projections of the soil carbon sink or source are based on kinetically defined carbon pool models. Para\-meters of these models are often determined in a way that the steady state of the model matches observed carbon stocks. The underlying simplifying assumption is that observed carbon stocks are near equilibrium. This assumption is challenged by observations of very old soils that do still accumulate carbon. In this modelling study we explored the consequences of the case where soils are apart from equilibrium. Calculation of equilibrium states of soils that are currently accumulating small amounts of carbon were performed using the Yasso model. It was found that already very small current accumulation rates cause big changes in theoretical equilibrium stocks, which can virtually approach infinity. We conclude that soils that have been disturbed several centuries ago are not in equilibrium but in a transient state because of the slowly ongoing accumulation of the slowest pool. A first consequence is that model calibrations to current carbon stocks that assume equilibrium state, overestimate the decay rate of the slowest pool. A second consequence is that spin-up runs (simulations until equilibrium) overestimate stocks of recently disturbed sites. In order to account for these consequences, we propose a transient correction. This correction prescribes a lower decay rate of the slowest pool and accounts for disturbances in the past by decreasing the spin-up-run predicted stocks to match an independent estimate of current soil carbon stocks. Application of this transient correction at a Central European beech forest site with a typical disturbance history resulted in an additional carbon fixation of 5.7±1.5 tC/ha within 100 years. Carbon storage capacity of disturbed forest soils is potentially much higher than currently assumed. Simulations that do not adequately account for the transient state of soil carbon stocks neglect a considerable amount of current carbon accumulation.
Performance evaluation of dynamic resource allocation in cloud computing platforms using Stochastic Process Algebra

Cloud computing is a revolutionary concept in which computing services are provided to end users via virtualization. Computing resource are provisioned and released on demand. This elastic nature of resource provisioning allows for the “pay as you go” concept. Hence, it makes the major benefit of adopting cloud-based solutions. Accordingly, there is a need to evaluate the performance of the resource provisioning algorithm adopted by cloud computing platforms. In this paper, an approach for modeling and analyzing the performance of the resource provisioning process in a cloud computing platform is presented. The proposed model utilizes Stochastic Process Algebra (SPA) as an engine to simulate the components involved in the resource provisioning process along with the interactions among them. A case study using the cloud computing platform Aneka is performed. Experimental results show the effect of different parameters on the provisioning process which suggests the suitability of the proposed approach to evaluate design alternatives.
Isolation and Characterization of Rice Phytochrome A Mutants

To elucidate phytochrome A (phyA) function in rice, we screened a large population of retrotransposon (Tos17) insertional mutants by polymerase chain reaction and isolated three independent phyA mutant lines. Sequencing of the Tos17 insertion sites confirmed that the Tos17s interrupted exons of PHYA genes in these mutant lines. Moreover, the phyA polypeptides were not immunochemically detectable in these phyA mutants. The seedlings of phyA mutants grown in continuous far-red light showed essentially the same phenotype as dark-grown seedlings, indicating the insensitivity of phyA mutants to far-red light. The etiolated seedlings of phyA mutants also were insensitive to a pulse of far-red light or very low fluence red light. In contrast, phyA mutants were morphologically indistinguishable from wild type under continuous red light. Therefore, rice phyA controls photomorphogenesis in two distinct modes of photoperception—far-red light–dependent high irradiance response and very low fluence response—and such function seems to be unique and restricted to the deetiolation process. Interestingly, continuous far-red light induced the expression of CAB and RBCS genes in rice phyA seedlings, suggesting the existence of a photoreceptor(s) other than phyA that can perceive continuous far-red light in the etiolated seedlings.
Exploring total quality management for information systems in Indian firms: Application and benefits

Purpose – Considering IS as an integral part of the Indian firms under the purview of this study the paper seeks to investigate the TQM‐IS relationship. Describing total quality management (TQM) on the basis of five principles: top management commitment, customer‐centric advancements, benchmarking, relentless improvement and strengthening the employee base, it aims to analyze the realization of pragmatic goals by Indian firms through TQM for IS.Design/methodology/approach – Data collection was done by mail survey questionnaires. The data set was intended to represent a large variance in their annual turnovers, worth of assets, IS budgets and the segment of the industry to which they catered. Addressed to the top executive In charge of the IS department the survey questionnaire was mailed to 300 Indian companies assumed to be making use of TQM in their information systems department. The questionnaire recipients were selected from a wide array of business areas and the firms belonged to different classes s.
Constructing Finite State Automata for High-Performance XML Web Services

This paper describes a validating XML parsing method based on deterministic finite state automata (DFA). XML parsing and validation is performed by a schema-specific XML parser that encodes the admissible parsing states as a DFA. This DFA is automatically constructed from the XML schemas of XML messages using a code generator. A twolevel DFA architecture is used to increase efficiency and to reduce the generated code size. The lower-level DFA efficiently parses syntactically well-formed XML messages. The higher-level DFA validates the messages and produces application events associated with transitions in the DFA. Two example case studies are presented and performance results are given to demonstrate that the approach supports the implementation of high-performance Web services.
Improving early childhood teacher education: Preservice teachers' beliefs about inclusion

Abstract The purpose of this study is to describe early childhood preservice teachers’ beliefs about the inclusion of children with special needs in early childhood settings. Nineteen female undergraduate early childhood education preservice teachers participated in one of five focus groups. Students were divided into three groups based on the courses they were enrolled in or had completed: Beginner (sophomore and junior courses), Intermediate (senior courses), and Advanced (student teaching). Additionally, 6 of the 19 students participated in individual interviews. Data analysis resulted in themes related to students’ beliefs and philosophies of inclusion, as well as their thoughts concerning practice in inclusive programs. This paper describes students’ beliefs within each group and compares responses across the different groups. Implications are discussed in relation to teacher education programs and directions for future research.
Fast adaptive control of a 3-DOF inertial stabilised platforms based on quaternions

Inertial Stabilised Platform, better known as gimbal are becoming increasingly popular, with a large range of products now available in mainstream shops. Most of these items are nonetheless controlled using very basic algorithms that do not offer best achievable performances. First, each axis is controlled independently of one another. Then, they make use of trigonometry for their calculation. Lastly, their behaviour depends on the type of payload or on the orientation of this latter. Present paper proposes an advanced control which aims at solving these classic control issues without requiring as much computational power. It is based on quaternion representation and self-adapts to the characteristics of the payload it stabilises. Although only simulation could be performed to check the performances of such control, results look very promising and may help to construct more polyvalent and efficient gimbals which would further facilitate their expansion.
Substitution of motor function of polio survivors who have permanent paralysis of limbs by using Cybernic Voluntary Control

are 10 to 20 millions polio survivors living around the world. Some of them cannot move their limbs by themselves. They feel inconveniences at several situations: climbing stairs; moving in a narrow space; walking. It is very difficult for polio survivors, who have permanent paralysis, to restore motor functions by using conventional rehabilitation approaches. Our aim is the assistance of motor functions of these polio survivors by using HAL. The movement support by using HAL with Cybernic Voluntary Control is possible if electrical signals based on intention of motions can be detected from the polio survivors. However, there are two issues to apply the CVC: First, the bioelectrical signal activity is extremely small and sparse in comparison with unimpaired person's signals. Second, we cannot apply conventional calibration methods to these polio survivors. This paper proposes a specific simplified CVC method for polio survivor with permanent paralysis or severe muscle weakness in their limbs. The method consists of two parts to solve the mentioned issues: a preprocessing algorithm for particular bioelectrical signals and a procedure for assistive torque generation without calibration. We applied the proposed method to the participant who has paralysis due to polio viral infection and confirmed the effectiveness. As a result, the HAL with proposed method generated enough assistive torque to lift up the participant's shank from extremely small and sparse bioelectrical signals. Although the participant's bioelectrical signal activity was extremely small and sparse, and also he could not move the left knee by himself. After we applied the proposed method, the participant was able to move his knee voluntarily. Consequently, we confirmed that the proposed method could assist the basic motor function of paralyzed polio survivor.