Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Teaching Science for Empowerment In an Urban Classroom: A Case Study of a Hmong Teacher

This is a case study of Lee, a Hmong teacher, who reflects on her own schooling experiences in order to develop a culturally sensitive pedagogy based on empowerment and funds of knowledge. The findings indicate that Lee teaches science effectively using culturally sensitive pedagogy—utilizing Hmong students' and parents' funds of knowledge in science teaching and learning. The findings further indicate that Lee negotiates challenges and tensions associated with her science instructions by partnering with parents and some teachers.
The International Law Commission's Articles on State Responsibility: Introduction, Text and Commentaries

Preface Note on sources and style List of abbreviations Table of cases Introduction Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts: Part I. The Internationally Wrongful Act of a State: 1. General principles 2. Attribution of conduct to a state 3. Breach of an international obligation 4. Responsibility of a state in connection with the act of another state 5. Circumstances precluding wrongfulness Part II. Content of the International Responsibility of a State: 6. General principles 7. Reparation for injury 8. Serious breaches of obligations under peremptory norms of general international law Part III. The Implementation of the International Responsibility of a State: 9. Invocation of the responsibility of a state 10. Countermeasures Part IV. General Provisions Appendix 1: drafting history Appendix 2: Draft articles on state responsibility provisionally adopted by the International Law Commission on first reading (1996) Appendix 3: table of equivalent articles Select bibliography Index.
Optimizing memory efficiency for convolution kernels on kepler GPUs

Convolution is a fundamental operation in many applications, such as computer vision, natural language processing, image processing, etc. Recent successes of convolutional neural networks in various deep learning applications put even higher demand on fast convolution. The high computation throughput and memory bandwidth of graphics processing units (GPUs) make GPUs a natural choice for accelerating convolution operations. However, maximally exploiting the available memory bandwidth of GPUs for convolution is a challenging task. This paper introduces a general model to address the mismatch between the memory bank width of GPUs and computation data width of threads. Based on this model, we develop two convolution kernels, one for the general case and the other for a special case with one input channel. By carefully optimizing memory access patterns and computation patterns, we design a communication-optimized kernel for the special case and a communication-reduced kernel for the general case. Experimental data based on implementations on Kepler GPUs show that our kernels achieve 5.16× and 35.5% average performance improvement over the latest cuDNN library, for the special case and the general case, respectively.
Expatriate culture shock in China: a study in the Beijing hotel industry

Explores the occurrence of culture shock in the population of expatriate managers working in the joint venture hotels in Beijing, China. In particular, seeks to gauge the importance of a variety of factors that might influence the level of culture shock. Proposes a model which envisages culture shock as determined by situational factors and by the level of inter‐cultural sensitivity of an expatriate. In turn, the level of inter‐cultural sensitivity is seen as a function of biographical factors and cross cultural training. The findings demonstrate a strong inverse relationship between inter‐cultural sensitivity and culture shock. Training before and/or after arrival in China is received by only a small minority of expatriates but is associated with a higher level of inter‐cultural sensitivity. Among situational factors, a managerial emphasis on motivating employees is associated with lower culture shock. A surprising finding is the tendency for Asian expatriates to experience greater culture shock for a given level of inter‐cultural sensitivity. Outlines implications for personnel policy in selecting expatriate managers.
‘Our Little Secret’: How Publicly Heterosexual Women Make Meaning From Their ‘Undercover’ Same-Sex Sexual Experiences

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community is well aware of the phenomenon of ‘straight girls’ seeking out and engaging in intimate sexual relationships with women. However, there is a dearth of research on women who openly identify themselves as heterosexual, and even participate in relationships with men, yet seek out secret relationships with other women. This pilot study examined the experiences and meaning-making of women who are ‘undercover’ in this way and the factors that shape their construction of their sexual identity and compel them to live a secret, compartmentalized life. Four major themes emerged: a desire to remain married, the belief that ‘girls don't count’ as extramarital partners, shame, and ‘on and off the wagon. ’ For the women in this study, the decision to act on their desire for sexual contact with another woman was fraught with internal conflict, shame, and guilt. The data reveal that the constraints around one's sexuality are not nearly as powerful culturally as the constraints around one's public image.
Simultaneous Inversion for Space-Dependent Diffusion Coefficient and Source Magnitude in the Time Fractional Diffusion Equation

We deal with an inverse problem of simultaneously identifying the space-dependent diffusion coefficient and the source magnitude in the time fractional diffusion equation from viewpoint of numerics. Such simultaneous inversion problem is often of severe ill-posedness as compared with that of determining a single coefficient function. The forward problem is solved by employing an implicit finite difference scheme, and the inverse problem is solved by applying the homotopy regularization algorithm with Sigmoid-type homotopy parameter. The inversion solutions approximate to the exact solutions demonstrating that the proposed algorithm is efficient for simultaneous inversion problems in the fractional diffusion equation.
Regional Input-to-State Stability for Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

In this note, regional input-to-state stability (ISS) is introduced and studied in order to analyze the domain of attraction of nonlinear constrained systems with disturbances. ISS is derived by means of a non smooth ISS-Lyapunov function with an upper bound guaranteed only in a sub-region of the domain of attraction. These results are used to study the ISS properties of nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) algorithms
Ocular Drug Delivery for Glaucoma Management

Current glaucoma management modalities are hindered by low patient compliance and adherence. This can be due to highly complex treatment strategies or poor patient understanding. Treatments focus on the management or reduction of intraocular pressure. This is most commonly done through the use of daily topical eye drops. Unfortunately, despite effective therapies, glaucoma continues to progress, possibly due to patients not adhering to their treatments. In order to mitigate these patient compliance issues, many sustained release treatments are being researched and are entering the clinic. Conjunctival, subconjunctival, and intravitreal inserts, punctal plugs, and drug depots are currently in clinical development. Each delivery system has hurdles, yet shows promise and could potentially mitigate the current problems associated with poor patient compliance.
Integrating Sex Therapy Strategies and Techniques into Marital Therapy

Abstract Marital therapy is a growing field, while sex therapy is stagnating, and even shrinking. However, this does not mean sexual problems have lessened in frequency or severity. Traditionally, sexuality has not been a focus in marital therapy training, research, or practice. The Plissit model provides a format for marital therapies to integrate sexual interventions into their therapeutic repertoire. Sex therapists can provide workshops and consultations emphasizing permission giving, sexual information, and specific cognitive and behavioral suggestions. The supervision format helps the marital therapist assess interest in and ability to integrate sexual interventions into the therapeutic repertoire, as well as explore personal issues or values that might subvert therapeutic effectiveness.
Biweekly high-dose gemcitabine alone or in combination with capecitabine in patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma: a randomized phase II trial.

BACKGROUND Gemcitabine is an active antitumor agent in the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer, and has shown potential synergistic activity with the oral fluoropyrimidine capecitabine in previous phase I/II trials. Based on this background and in order to define the therapeutic potential and tolerance of this combination more precisely, the present randomized multicenter phase II trial was initiated. PATIENTS AND METHODS We prospectively randomized 83 patients to treatment with biweekly gemcitabine 2,200 mg/m(2) given as a 30 min intravenous infusion on day 1, or the same treatment plus oral capecitabine 2,500 mg/m(2) given from days 1 to 7. In both arms, chemotherapy was administered for a duration of 6 months unless there was prior evidence of progressive disease. The efficacy of the two treatment arms was evaluated according to standard criteria, i.e. objective response, progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), as well as by analysis of clinical benefit response. RESULTS The overall objective response rate among the 42 patients treated with gemcitabine alone was 14% compared with 7/41 (17%) among those treated with the combination arm. Similar to response rates, there was no apparent difference between the two groups in terms of median PFS (4.0 versus 5.1 months) and median OS (8.2 versus 9.5 months) in the gemcitabine and combination arm, respectively. Of 61 patients with tumor-related symptoms, who were considered evaluable for clinical benefit response, 10/30 (33%) and 15/31 (48.4%) experienced significant palliation in the gemcitabine and combination arm, respectively. Chemotherapy was well tolerated in both arms with only four versus six patients experiencing WHO grade 3 symptoms. Apart from the occurrence of hand-foot syndrome in 10 patients, no major increase in incidence and/or degree of adverse reactions was noted in the combination arm. CONCLUSIONS Results of this trial suggest a fairly good therapeutic index for the combination of biweekly high-dose gemcitabine and capecitabine for the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer. Despite a somewhat superior clinical benefit response rate, no advantage over single-agent gemcitabine, however, was noted in terms of objective efficacy parameters.
South African Serial Rapists

Serial rapists have the propensity to cause harm to a significant number of victims, meaning that they are of concern to the police as well as to treatment providers. Despite the serious nature of their offending, there are surprisingly few studies that provide information regarding their characteristics, the types of victim they target, or the nature of the sexual offenses they commit, and those studies that do exist are varied in their findings. This study provides a descriptive analysis of serial rape in South Africa. One hundred and nineteen sexual offenses committed by 22 serial rapists were sampled. Information regarding the victims, the offenders, and the crimes they had committed were extracted from police files. The characteristics of victims and offenders are reported as well as the frequencies for 114 different crime scene behaviors. When compared with samples of serial sex offenders from other countries, differences emerged in victim characteristics and crime scene behaviors, including how the victims were targeted, the sexual behaviors engaged in, and the incidence of physical violence. The implications of these observed differences for practice are discussed.
Chemokines: role in immune cell traffic.

Auteur(s) : Bernhard Moser Theodor-Kocher Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Introduction Motility is a hallmark of leukocytes. This property is of crucial importance for all aspects of immunity, and forms the basis for hematopoiesis and immune defense. Breakdown in the control of leukocyte mobilization contributes to chronic inflammatory diseases and, consequently, small molecular weight compounds that selectively interfere with leukocyte recruitment represent a promising approach [. ]
APE1 polymorphisms are associated with colorectal cancer susceptibility in Chinese Hans.

AIM To study the association between four base excision repair gene polymorphisms and colorectal cancer risk in a Chinese population. METHODS Two hundred forty-seven colorectal cancer (CRC) patients and three hundred cancer-free controls were enrolled in this study. Four polymorphisms (OGG1 Ser326Cys, APE1 Asp148Glu, -141T/G in the promoter region, and XRCC1 Arg399Gln) in components of the base excision repair pathway were determined in patient blood samples using polymerase chain reaction with confronting two-pair primers. The baseline information included age, gender, family history of cancer, and three behavioral factors [smoking status, alcohol consumption, and body mass index (BMI)]. χ(2) tests were used to assess the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the distributions of baseline characteristics, and the four gene polymorphisms between the cases and controls. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to analyze the correlations between the four polymorphisms and CRC risk, adjusted by the baseline characteristics. Likelihood ratio tests were performed to analyze the gene-behavior interactions of smoking status, alcohol consumption, and BMI on polymorphisms and CRC susceptibility. RESULTS The APE1 148 Glu/Glu genotype was significantly associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer (OR = 2.411, 95%CI: 1.497-3.886, P < 0.001 relative to Asp/Asp genotype). There were no associations between OGG1, XRCC1, or APE1 promoter polymorphisms and CRC risk. A multivariate analysis including three behavioral factors showed that the APE1 148 Glu/Glu genotype was associated with an increased risk for CRC among both smokers and non-smokers, non-drinkers and individuals with a BMI ≥ 25 kg/m(2) (ORs = 2.356, 3.299, 2.654, and 2.581, respectively). The XRCC1 399 Arg/Gln genotype was associated with a decreased risk of CRC among smokers and drinkers (OR = 0.289, 95%CI: 0.152-0.548, P < 0.001, and OR = 0.327, 95%CI: 0.158-0.673, P < 0.05, respectively). The APE1 promoter polymorphism -141 T/G genotype was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer among subjects with a BMI < 25 kg/m(2) (OR = 0.214, 95%CI: 0.069-0.660, P < 0.05 relative to T/T genotype). There were significant gene-behavior interactions between smoking status and XRCC1 Arg399Gln, as well as BMI and APE1 -141T/G polymorphism (all P < 0.05). CONCLUSION APE1 Asp148Glu is associated with increased CRC risk and smoking alters the association between XRCC1 Arg399Gln and CRC risk in the Chinese Han population.
The Cause of All Evils: Assessing Causality Between User Actions and Malware Activity

Malware samples are created at a pace that makes it difficult for analysis to keep up. When analyzing an unknown malware sample, it is important to assess its capabilities to determine how much damage it can make to its victims, and perform prioritization decisions on which threats should be dealt with first. In a corporate environment, for example, a malware infection that is able to steal financial information is much more critical than one that is sending email spam, and should be dealt with the highest priority. In this paper we present a statistical approach able to determine causality relations between a specific trigger action (e.g., a user visiting a certain website in the browser) and a malware sample. We show that we can learn the typology of a malware sample by presenting it with a number of trigger actions commonly performed by users, and studying to which events the malware reacts. We show that our approach is able to correctly infer causality relations between information stealing malware and login events on websites, as well as between adware and websites containing advertisements.
How Comprehensive School Students Perceive their Psychosocial School Environment

The aim of this study was to describe students’ perceptions of their psychosocial school environment and to examine the associations between such perceptions and students’ perceived school performance. Our analyses were based on data from the Health Behaviour in School‐Aged Children 2006 study, involving responses by Finnish students from grades 7 and 9. The results indicated that students’ perceptions of their school environment were fairly positive, but that a remarkably large proportion of the students reported negative attitudes towards school. School engagement, school strain, and teacher‐student relations were found to be the most influential predictors in the psychosocial school environment regarding perceived school performance; as were the grade and educational aspirations out of the selected background factors. The findings imply that despite good academic achievement in Finnish comprehensive schools, there is still a need to improve students’ school engagement and their satisfaction with school.
Lexical input to young children from extremely poor communities in Argentina: Effects of a home literacy program

The study analyzes the lexical properties of the linguistic context that children from marginalized urban neighborhoods from Buenos Aires, Argentina, are exposed to in the literacy situations generated by an at-home early literacy program. The analysis is focused on the comparison of the vocabulary that these children are exposed to daily with the characteristics of the lexical surround in the literacy settings induced by the implementation of the program. Results showed that literacy situations provided children with an enriched lexical input: a higher amount of word tokens and word types, and more unfamiliar words that represented phenomena, properties or actions not directly observable.
Functionality and Safety of an Ultra-Congruent Rotating Platform Knee Prosthesis at 5.6 Years: More than 5- Year Follow-Up of the e.motion® UC-TKA

Background: Mobile bearing TKA prostheses were designed to minimize polyethylene wear by increasing implant conformity and reducing stresses between the articulating prosthesis components. It is the purpose of this study to assess the mid-term functionality and clinical outcome associated with a highly congruent mobile platform design, the e.motion® UC total knee prosthesis. Material and Methods: Functional and clinical outcomes were assessed after an average of 5.6 years (5.1 – 6.0 years) after total knee arthroplasty in 28 patients (24 women), aged 77.8±7.5 years. The Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) was assessed. Secondary outcomes included the Knee Society Score (KSS), radiological evaluation of radiolucent lines and recording of adverse events. Results: The average KOOS subscore for the activities of daily life was 77.8 points after 5.6 years. Both the clinical and functional KSS improved at 2.4 and 5.6 years. Two patients showed radiolucent lines at 5.6 years. Adverse events over 5.6 years included 3 subluxations, 1 tilting and 1 misalignment of the patella. None of the prostheses were revised. Conclusion: This pilot study shows promising outcomes for the e.motion® UC prosthesis. In the small sample, the implant performed comparably to the LCS prosthesis (the gold standard). There were no loosenings or revisions observed at 5.6 years.
Exponential functionals of Levy processes

The distribution of the terminal value A∞ of the exponential functional $$ {A_t}(\xi ) = \smallint _0^t{e^{{\xi _s}}}ds $$ of a Levy process (ξ t ) t≥0 plays an important role in Mathematical Physics and Mathematical Finance. We show how this distribution can be computed by means of Lamperti’s transformation and generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes.
Generation of quantum logic operations from physical Hamiltonians (13 pages)

We provide a systematic analysis of the physical generation of single- and two-qubit quantum operations from Hamiltonians available in various quantum systems for scalable quantum information processing. We show that generation of single-qubit operations can be transformed into a steering problem on the Bloch sphere, which represents all R{sub z}-equivalence classes of single-qubit operations, whereas the two-qubit problem can be generally transformed into a steering problem in a tetrahedron representing all the local-equivalence classes of two-qubit operations (the Weyl chamber). We use this approach to investigate several physical examples for the generation of two-qubit operations. The steering approach provides useful guidance for the realization of various quantum computation schemes.
Meta-Analysis of Pathway Enrichment: Combining Independent and Dependent Omics Data Sets

A major challenge in current systems biology is the combination and integrative analysis of large data sets obtained from different high-throughput omics platforms, such as mass spectrometry based Metabolomics and Proteomics or DNA microarray or RNA-seq-based Transcriptomics. Especially in the case of non-targeted Metabolomics experiments, where it is often impossible to unambiguously map ion features from mass spectrometry analysis to metabolites, the integration of more reliable omics technologies is highly desirable. A popular method for the knowledge-based interpretation of single data sets is the (Gene) Set Enrichment Analysis. In order to combine the results from different analyses, we introduce a methodical framework for the meta-analysis of p-values obtained from Pathway Enrichment Analysis (Set Enrichment Analysis based on pathways) of multiple dependent or independent data sets from different omics platforms. For dependent data sets, e.g. obtained from the same biological samples, the framework utilizes a covariance estimation procedure based on the nonsignificant pathways in single data set enrichment analysis. The framework is evaluated and applied in the joint analysis of Metabolomics mass spectrometry and Transcriptomics DNA microarray data in the context of plant wounding. In extensive studies of simulated data set dependence, the introduced correlation could be fully reconstructed by means of the covariance estimation based on pathway enrichment. By restricting the range of p-values of pathways considered in the estimation, the overestimation of correlation, which is introduced by the significant pathways, could be reduced. When applying the proposed methods to the real data sets, the meta-analysis was shown not only to be a powerful tool to investigate the correlation between different data sets and summarize the results of multiple analyses but also to distinguish experiment-specific key pathways.
Teaching as a career: a perspective from Hong Kong senior secondary students

This study examined the views of teaching as a career choice held by Hong Kong students in their final year of upper secondary school (Secondary Seven). Significant differences were found between students' interest in teaching and demographic characteristics such as gender, religious beliefs, household income and parents' education levels, as well as their public examination scores and streams of study. Three attractive and three deterrent factors were identified among the reasons influencing students' choice of teaching as a career, respectively. Among 20 listed occupations, teaching was ranked relatively high by the students both as the occupation they ‘most wanted’ and ‘most respected’. The paper discusses the implications of these findings and draws conclusions which may be helpful to teacher education providers and policy makers on measures to recruit prospective students to initial teacher education.