Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why we should focus on the burden of injuries and illnesses, not just their incidence

More and more sports medicine clinicians are taking an active approach to prevent injury and illness within their team.1–3 The first steps in developing a risk management plan is risk estimation and assessment.4–7 In this phase, the main questions are: what injuries can we expect? Or illnesses? And which are the most serious? Another question is: when is injury risk the greatest? The purpose is to identify which problems need to be focused on in a risk management plan in order to mitigate risk. These questions can be answered by establishing continuous injury surveillance within the team or by reviewing data from epidemiological studies on teams from a similar level.6 7 However, as a practitioner, you need to know how to interpret such data, whether they are your own or from others. A number of consensus statements have been published to encourage consistency in how injuries are defined and reported in epidemiological studies, initially on cricket (2005, updated in 2016),8 9 followed by football (2006)10 and several other sports such as rugby (2007),11 tennis (2009),12 athletics (2014)13 and aquatic sports (2016). 14 In general, these recommend that the rate of injury should be reported as injury incidence, calculated as number of injuries per 1000 hours of exposure. This recommendation has since been followed by the vast majority of surveillance studies, and incidence is typically also the main outcome used to compare sports, genders, age groups and so on. However, we argue that focusing on injury/illness incidence alone may give an incomplete and even erroneous picture of risk. It should be noted that the consensus statements also recommend that injury severity be reported, generally as the number of days from the date of injury to the date of the player’s return to full participation. …
Developmental analysis and squamous morphogenesis of the peripodial epithelium in Drosophila imaginal discs

Imaginal discs of Drosophila provide an excellent system with which to study morphogenesis, pattern formation and cell proliferation in an epithelium. Discs are sac-like in structure and are composed of two epithelial layers: an upper peripodial epithelium and lower disc proper. Although development of the disc proper has been studied extensively in terms of cell proliferation, cell signaling mechanisms and pattern formation, little is known about these same processes in the peripodial epithelium. We address this topic by focusing on morphogenesis, compartmental organization, proliferation and cell lineage of the PE in wing, second thoracic leg (T2) and eye discs. We show that a subset of peripodial cells in different imaginal discs undergo a cuboidal-to-squamous cell shape change at distinct larval stages. We find that this shape change requires both Hedgehog and Decapentapelagic, but not Wingless, signaling. Additionally, squamous morphogenesis shifts the anteroposterior (AP) compartment boundary in the peripodial epithelium relative to the stationary AP boundary in the disc proper. Finally, by lineage tracing cells in the PE, we surprisingly find that peripodial cells are displaced into the disc proper during larval development and this movement leads to Ubx repression.
Lessons Learned From Implementing Problem-Solving Teams in Urban High Schools

This qualitative study investigated an ambitious reform initiate undertaken by an urban high school district to support students at risk for failure in their general education classrooms. The initiative provided teachers with access to interdisciplinary problem-solving teams (IPSTs) designed to create and implement strategies for meeting instructional, behavioral, and motivational challenges within their classrooms. This study examined the adaptation of an IPST model by 12 high school teams. More specifically, the research investigated (a) the types of teams that evolved and (b) the issues that influenced the team types. The results indicated that 3 types of teams emerged. Some teams provided direct service to students, others established systemic interventions, and a few failed to thrive. The issues that influenced team types were (a) credit-driven instruction, (b) teacher involvement, (c) belief that teacher assistance is a supervisory function, (d) attribution of within-child etiology, (e) mistrustful relationships among staff, (f) support staff's lack of knowledge about classrooms and instruction, and (g) stability in school environment and team membership. The major themes and the implications of these findings are discussed. Lessons learned from implementation of this project both support earlier research and further new understandings to facilitate IPSTs in high schools.
The SIWIS Database: A Multilingual Speech Database with Acted Emphasis

We describe here a collection of speech data of bilingual and trilingual speakers of English, French, German and Italian. In the context of speech to speech translation (S2ST), this database is designed for several purposes and studies: training CLSA systems (cross-language speaker adaptation), conveying emphasis through S2ST systems, and evaluating TTS systems. More precisely, 36 speakers judged as accentless (22 bilingual and 14 trilingual speakers) were recorded for a set of 171 prompts in two or three languages, amounting to a total of 24 hours of speech. These sets of prompts include 100 sentences from news, 25 sentences from Europarl, the same 25 sentences with one acted emphasised word, 20 semantically unpredictable sentences, and finally a 240-word long text. All in all, it yielded 64 bilingual session pairs of the six possible combinations of the four languages. The database is freely available for non-commercial use and scientific research purposes. Index Terms: speech-to-speech translation, speech corpus, bilingual speakers, emphasis
Evaluation of High-Resolution Typing Methods for Chlamydia trachomatis in Samples from Heterosexual Couples

ABSTRACT We aimed to compare conventional ompA typing of Chlamydia trachomatis with multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat (VNTR) analysis (MLVA). Previously used MLST and MLVA systems were compared to modified versions that used shorter target regions and nested PCR. Heterosexual couples were selected from among persons with urogenital C. trachomatis infections visiting the sexually transmitted infection outpatient clinic in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We identified 30 couples with a total of 65 C. trachomatis-positive samples on which MLST and MLVA for eight target regions were performed. All regions were successfully sequenced in 52 samples, resulting in a complete profile for 18 couples and 12 individuals. Nine ompA genovars from D to K, with two variants of genovar G, were found. The numbers of sequence type and MLVA type profiles were 20 for MLST and 21 for MLVA, and a combination of MLST and MLVA yielded 28 profiles, with discriminatory indexes (D) ranging from 0.95 to 0.99. Partners in 17 couples shared identical profiles, while partners in 1 couple had completely different profiles. Three persons had infections at multiple anatomical locations, and within each of these three individuals, all profiles were identical. The discriminatory capacity of all MLST and MLVA methods is much higher than that of ompA genotyping (D = 0.78). No genotype variation was found within the samples of the same person or from heterosexual couples with a putative single transmission. This shows that the chlamydial genome in clinical specimens has an appropriate polymorphism to enable epidemiological cluster analysis using MLST and MLVA.
Moiré pattern removal from texture images via low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition

Moiré patterns, an artifact of aliasing interference between details in the subject matter and the grid of the sensor, heavily disturb the qualitative and quantitative analysis of images. It is hard to effectively remove moiré patterns since they are similar to image textures. We propose a novel low-rank and sparse matrix decomposition model for moiré pattern removal. This method is grounded on the observation: textures are locally well-patterned while moiré patterns are dissimilar, and the energy distribution of moiré patterns in the frequency domain is concentrated and almost no mixed with that of textures. For each patch, texture component is regularized by a low-rank prior and moiré component is regularized by a sparse prior in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain. This model is effectively solved by the alternating direction method under the augmented Lagrangian multiplier (ALM-ADM) algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
Encounters with action research in the african context: a case study in the school curriculum in lesotho

Abstract This article is based on an action research study undertaken in the African context, in Lesotho. It illustrates understandings and insights that developed in this context about action research by reference to the factors that influenced the comprehension and implementation of the method, reflections of the research team on the method, and the potential of the method to improve practice. It is argued that the method had potential to improve practice in this context, and that the contextualisation of action research by reflection on the method was essential.
Integrated Foreground Segmentation and Boundary Matting for Live Videos

The objective of foreground segmentation is to extract the desired foreground object from input videos. Over the years, there have been significant amount of efforts on this topic. Nevertheless, there still lacks a simple yet effective algorithm that can process live videos of objects with fuzzy boundaries (e.g., hair) captured by freely moving cameras. This paper presents an algorithm toward this goal. The key idea is to train and maintain two competing one-class support vector machines at each pixel location, which model local color distributions for both foreground and background, respectively. The usage of two competing local classifiers, as we have advocated, provides higher discriminative power while allowing better handling of ambiguities. By exploiting this proposed machine learning technique, and by addressing both foreground segmentation and boundary matting problems in an integrated manner, our algorithm is shown to be particularly competent at processing a wide range of videos with complex backgrounds from freely moving cameras. This is usually achieved with minimum user interactions. Furthermore, by introducing novel acceleration techniques and by exploiting the parallel structure of the algorithm, near real-time processing speed (14 frames/s without matting and 8 frames/s with matting on a midrange PC & GPU) is achieved for VGA-sized videos.
A Bidirectional Array of the Same Left-Handed Circular Polarization Using a Special Substrate

A novel bidirectional circularly polarized array is presented. The type of circular polarization is the same in both axial directions. The array consists of eight dipoles spaced by λ<sub>0</sub>/4(λ<sub>0</sub> is the wavelength in free space), which combines endfire array, crossed dipoles, and substrate loading. For the bidirectional circular polarization of the same rotation, the adjacent elements need to be excited in phase, and the adjacent +45<sup>°</sup>/ -45<sup>°</sup> dipoles need to be excited with 180<sup>°</sup> phase difference. To satisfy the special phase distribution, a substrate with dielectric constant of 6.0 is used, which makes the guided wavelength λ<sub>g</sub> equal to λ<sub>0</sub>/2. A prototype is developed at 2.5 GHz. With this array, the measured 3-dB axial-ratio (AR) bandwidth is 770 MHz (2.05 ~ 2.82 GHz), and the 10-dB return-loss bandwidth achieved is 580 MHz (2.32 ~ 2.9 GHz). The maximum bidirectional left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) gain is about 7.3 dBic achieved at 2.45 GHz.
Leaders and Leadership in Middle Level Schools

An online survey of more than 1,400 middle level leaders (grades 5-9) was conducted as part of a national study. This article reports the findings; compares the results with previous studies conducted in 1965, 1980, and 1992; and discusses the implications and recommendations for recruiting initial training, and continuing professional development offuture middle level principals.
Inter-group encounters of a different kind: The experiential research model

ABSTRACT The paper raises the question of what is an appropriate research model for studying higher education. It claims that while the traditional research model may be appropriate for situations where the researcher is outside the object of his or her research, the study of higher education by individuals within higher education is essentially reflexive self-study and would benefit from another model which we call the experiential model. We describe one form of this model, the inter-group exercise, derived from the Group-Relations tradition and our successive attempts to adapt and use it for the study of higher education. We show how it can metamorphose into a different model again—the model we call ‘serious play˚s. We conclude with a discussion on the nature of the ‘findings˚s produced by this method and this entails describing a model of the whole research process, including the phases of dissemination and implementation. Should we not, in view of our mortality, dance and sing, play our harps and flut.
Maintenance and agile development: Challenges, opportunities and future directions

Software entropy is a phenomenon where repeated changes gradually degrade the structure of the system, making it hard to understand and maintain. This phenomenon imposes challenges for organizations that have moved to agile methods from other processes, despite agile's focus on adaptability and responsiveness to change. We have investigated this issue through an industrial case study, and reviewed the literature on addressing software entropy, focussing on the detection of “code smells” and their treatment by refactoring. We found that in order to remain agile despite of software entropy, developers need better support for understanding, planning and testing the impact of changes. However, it is exactly work on refactoring decision support and task complexity analysis that is lacking in literature. Based on our findings, we discuss strategies for dealing with entropy in this context and present avenues for future research.
Practice Prize Paper - Applying a Dynamic Model of Consumer Choice to Guide Brand Development at Jetstar Airways

This paper describes the use of a marketing science model by Jetstar, a subsidiary of Australia's leading airline, Qantas, to effectively and profitably compete in the low-cost carrier marketplace. We trace the evolution of the Jetstar strategy from a baseline calibration of its initial position, to its efforts to attain price competitiveness and service parity, followed by its highly focused, cost-effective service delivery strategy. We develop a hierarchical model with parameters estimated at the individual level. This allows us to study not only how service design and pricing initiatives shift the perceived performance of Jetstar relative to its competitors but also how the airline can move market preferences toward areas in which it has competitive advantage. The contribution of the research is substantial. The Jetstar market share went from 14.0% to 18.1% during the first five quarterly waves of the research, and profits went from $79 million in 2006--2007, before the study was commissioned, to $124 million in 2008--2009.
A 10.7-MHz 68-dB SNR CMOS continuous-time filter with on-chip automatic tuning

A maximally flat 10.7-MHz fourth-order bandpass filter with an on-chip automatic tuning system is presented. The signal-to-in-band integrated noise ratio (SNR) of the automatically tuned filter is around 68 dB. The third intermodulation distortion (IM3) is lower than -40 dB for a two-tone input signal of 3.2 V peak to peak (V/sub p-p/). The complete system operates with supply voltages of +or-2.5 V. The power consumption of the system is 220 mW. All this has been achieved due to the use of a low-distortion transconductor, the development of a high-frequency CMOS resistor, and the realization of an advanced on-chip automatic tuning system for both frequency and bandwidth control. The chip has been fabricated in a standard 1.5- mu m n-well CMOS process. >
Production of Specific mRNA Transcripts, Usage of an Alternate Promoter, and Octamer-Binding Transcription Factors Influence the Surface Expression Levels of the HIV Coreceptor CCR5 on Primary T Cells12

Surface levels of CCR5 on memory CD4+ T cells influence HIV-1/AIDS susceptibility. Alternative promoter usage results in the generation of CCR5 mRNA isoforms that differ based on whether they contain or lack the untranslated exon 1. The impact of exon 1-containing transcripts on CCR5 surface expression is unknown. In this study, we show that the increased cell surface expression of CCR5 on primary T cells is associated with selective enrichment of exon 1-containing transcripts. The promoter that drives exon 1-containing transcripts is highly active in primary human T cells but not in transformed T cell lines. The transcription factors Oct-1 and -2 inhibit and enhance, respectively, the expression of exon 1-containing transcripts and CCR5 surface levels. However, polymorphisms at homologous octamer-binding sites in the CCR5 promoter of nonhuman primates abrogate the binding of these transcription factors. These results identify exon 1-containing transcripts, and the cis-trans factors that regulate the expression levels of these mRNA isoforms as key parameters that affect CCR5 surface expression levels, and by extension, susceptibility to HIV/AIDS among humans, and possibly, the observed interspecies differences in susceptibility to lentiviral infection.
An Aho-Corasick Based Assessment of Algorithms Generating Failure Deterministic Finite Automata

The Aho-Corasick algorithm derives a failure deterministic finite automaton for finding matches of a finite set of keywords in a text. It has the minimum number of transitions needed for this task. The DFA-Homomorphic Algorithm (DHA) algorithm is more general, deriving from an arbitrary complete deterministic finite automaton a language-equivalent failure deterministic finite automaton. DHA takes formal concepts of a lattice as input. This lattice is built from a state/out- transition formal context that is derived from the complete deterministic finite automaton. In this paper, three general variants of the abstract DHA are benchmarked against the specialised Aho-Corasick algorithm. It is shown that when heuristics for these variants are suitably chosen, the minimality attained by the Aho-Corasick algorithm can be closely approximated. A published non-lattice-based algorithm is also shown to perform well in experiments.
MicroRNAs: From Female Fertility, Germ Cells, and Stem Cells to Cancer in Humans

MicroRNAs are a family of naturally occurring small noncoding RNA molecules that play an important regulatory role in gene expression. They are suggested to regulate a large proportion of protein encoding genes by mediating the translational suppression and posttranscriptional control of gene expression. Recent findings show that microRNAs are emerging as important regulators of cellular differentiation and dedifferentiation, and are deeply involved in developmental processes including human preimplantation development. They keep a balance between pluripotency and differentiation in the embryo and embryonic stem cells. Moreover, it became evident that dysregulation of microRNA expression may play a fundamental role in progression and dissemination of different cancers including ovarian cancer. The interest is still increased by the discovery of exosomes, that is, cell-derived vesicles, which can carry different proteins but also microRNAs between different cells and are involved in cell-to-cell communication. MicroRNAs, together with exosomes, have a great potential to be used for prognosis, therapy, and biomarkers of different diseases including infertility. The aim of this review paper is to summarize the existent knowledge on microRNAs related to female fertility and cancer: from primordial germ cells and ovarian function, germinal stem cells, oocytes, and embryos to embryonic stem cells.
Pipeline Iteration

This paper presents pipeline iteration, an approach that uses output from later stages of a pipeline to constrain earlier stages of the same pipeline. We demonstrate signiﬁcant improvements in a state-of-the-art PCFG parsing pipeline using base-phrase constraints, derived either from later stages of the parsing pipeline or from a ﬁnite-state shallow parser. The best performance is achieved by reranking the union of un-constrained parses and relatively heavily-constrained parses
A phenotypic model recapitulating the neuropathology of Parkinson's disease

This study was undertaken to develop a phenotypic model recapitulating the neuropathology of Parkinson's disease (PD). Such a model would show loss of dopamine in the basal ganglia, appearance of Lewy bodies, and the early stages of motor dysfunction. The model was developed by subcutaneously injecting biodegradable microspheres of rotenone, a complex I inhibitor in 8–9 month old, ovariectomized Long–Evans rats. Animals were observed for changes in body weight and motor activity. At the end of 11–12 weeks animals were euthanized and the brains examined for histopathological changes. Rotenone treated animals gain weight and appear normal and healthy as compared to controls but showed modest hypokinesia around 5–6 weeks posttreatment. Animals showed loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons and the appearance of putative Lewy bodies in the substantia nigra. Neuroinflammation and oxidative stress were evidenced by the appearance of activated microglia, iron precipitates, and 8‐oxo‐2′‐deoxyguanosine a major product of DNA oxidation. The dorsal striatum, the projection site of midbrain DA neurons, showed a significant reduction in tyrosine hydroxylase immunostaining, together with an increase in reactive astrocytes, an early sign of DA nerve terminal damage. Levels of vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2) were significantly reduced in the dorsal striatum; however, there was an unexpected increase in dopamine transporter (DAT) levels. Old, ovariectomized females treated with rotenone microspheres present with normal weight gain and good health but a modest hypokinesia. Accompanying this behavioral phenotype are a constellation of neuropathologies characteristic of PD that include loss of DA neurons, microglia activation, oxidative damage to nuclear DNA, iron deposition, and appearance of putative Lewy bodies. This phenotypic model recapitulating the neuropathology of Parkinson's disease could provide insight into early mechanisms of pathogenesis and could aid in the identification of biomarkers to identify patients in early stage, PD.