Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Decentring Agenda: Europe as a post-colonial power

The aim in this contribution is to amplify the call, articulated across a range of disciplines relevant to international politics, for a paradigm shift that decentres the study and practice of Europe’s international relations. Such a perspective is necessary both to make sense of our multipolar order and to reconstitute European agency in a non-European world. The analytical categories proposed in this article for a decentring agenda – provincialization, engagement and reconstruction(s) – can help to navigate the nexus of the empirical and the normative in such a decentring process. Applying the decentring logic to the EU’s own foundational narrative, the authors suggest that, only by acknowledging the inflections of colonialism in the EU project itself, can the Union reinvent its normative power in the 21st century.
Legitimizing dialogue as textual and ideological goal in academic writing for assessment and publication

The semiotic world that we inhabit (within and outside the academy) is fast changing in terms of the resources that are used and the practices in which many engage. Yet the institutional norms governing highly consequential academic texts – students’ texts assessed as part of their disciplinary-based activity and scholars’ papers submitted for publication – lack engagement with this array of resources and, epistemologically, continue to drive a monologic stance towards academic meaning making. The aim of this article is to argue for a reconfiguring of the textual goal of academic writing, through one simple yet transformative tool, that of juxtaposition. Textual juxtaposition is illustrated in this article, and its intellectual and ideological value discussed, drawing on Bakhtin’s emphasis on dialogue, using several examples from published academic texts. The relevance to scholarly and student writing is explored.
An LSA Implementation Against Parallel Texts in French and English

This paper presents the results of applying the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) methodology to a small collection of parallel texts in French and English. The goal of the analysis was to determine what the methodology might reveal regarding the difficulty level of either the machine-translation (MT) task or the text-alignment (TA) task.In a perfectly parallel corpus where the texts are exactly aligned, it is expected that the word distributions between the two languages be perfectly symmetrical. Where they are symmetrical, the difficulty level of the machine-translation or the text-alignment task should be low. The results of this analysis show that even in a perfectly aligned corpus, the word distributions between the two languages deviate and because they do, LSA may contribute much to our understanding of the difficulty of the MT and TA tasks.
Towards an integrated approach to knowledge management: hard, soft and abstract issues

Companies are often unaware of the potential value of corporate information and extent of data held in their systems. It is increasingly argued that analysis of such data and information can be transformed into knowledge that in turn can be used to gain business benefits such as a competitive advantage, minimization of costs, improved quality, responsiveness, or improved service to customers. This paper investigates the benefits of a systematic and interdisciplinary approach to research in knowledge management, particularly in investigating technical (hard), organizational (soft), as well as philosophical (abstract) aspects of the concept. It describes in detail the framework used in research undertaken by the Centre for Knowledge and Business Process Management at Brunel University. We argue that this framework is useful to researchers and practitioners alike as it contributes to a systematic and more effective knowledge management approach.
Regional differences in skin blood flow as measured by radioactive microspheres.

Regional skin blood flows in the trunk were measured by means of radioactive labeled microspheres in anesthetized rats and monkeys. Mean arterial pressure, heart rate, cardiac output and arterial pH, pO2 and pCO2 were registered and body and ambient air temperature were kept constant for the duration of the experiments. The blood flows were determined on a total of 6 skin samples, 2 samples each from the thoracic, lumbar and sacral regions. The reproducibility of the microsphere technique for measurements were given with a 10 min interval. The coefficient of variation varied with the region from 10.3 to 22.7%. In both species the skin blood flows in the thoracic regions were significantly higher than in the lumbar and sacral regions (P less than 0.05). The skin blood flows in the thoracic region of the rat ranged from 39-45 ml.min-1.100 g-1, in the lumbar region from 32-33 and in the sacral region from 29-30. In the monkeys the corresponding values for the different regions were: thoracic: 7-9, lumbar 5-7 and sacral: 4-7 ml.min-1.100 g-1, respectively. Our results support the use of radioactive microspheres for skin blood flow measurements, and demonstrate the existence of regional differences in the skin blood flow of the trunk. We suggest that this may be an important consideration during the development, and interpretation of data from experimental models in which skin blood flow is important.
The Effects of Transaction Costs on Labor Market Participation and Earnings: Evidence from Rural Philippine Markets

The paper aims to measure transaction costs and its effects on labor market participation and on wage earnings. The observed differences between buying and selling prices of rice across households are used to calculate transaction costs indices for villages which are incorporated into the standard labor market participation and Mincer wage equations. The estimates indicate that transaction costs may be a source of the income differentials between (a) the landed and the landless, (b) the rural and the urban areas, and (c) the males and the females. Furthermore, biases can be noted in the regression coefficients of estimates that do not control for transaction costs.
Association between Serum Interleukin-6 Concentrations and Mortality in Older Adults: The Rancho Bernardo Study

Background Interleukin-6 (IL-6) may have a protective role in acute liver disease but a detrimental effect in chronic liver disease. It is unknown whether IL-6 is associated with risk of liver-related mortality in humans. Aims To determine if IL-6 is associated with an increased risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and liver-related mortality. Methods A prospective cohort study included 1843 participants who attended a research visit in 1984–87. Multiple covariates were ascertained including serum IL-6. Multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were used to examine the association between serum IL-6 as a continuous (log transformed) variable with all-cause, CVD, cancer, and liver-related mortality. Patients with prevalent CVD, cancer and liver disease were excluded for cause-specific mortality. Results The mean (± standard deviation) age and body-mass-index (BMI) of participants was 68 (±10.6) years and 25 (±3.7) Kg/m2, respectively. During the 25,802 person-years of follow-up, the cumulative all-cause, CVD, cancer, and liver-related mortality were 53.1% (N = 978), 25.5%, 11.3%, and 1.3%, respectively. The median (±IQR) length of follow-up was 15.3±10.6 years. In multivariable analyses, adjusted for age, sex, alcohol, BMI, diabetes, hypertension, total cholesterol, HDL, and smoking, one-SD increment in log-transformed serum IL-6 was associated with increased risk of all-cause, CVD, cancer, and liver-related mortality, with hazard ratios of 1.48 (95% CI, 1.33–1.64), 1.38 (95% CI, 1.16–1.65), 1.35 (95% CI, 1.02–1.79), and 1.88 (95% CI, 0.97–3.67), respectively. CRP adjustment attenuated the effects but the association between IL-6 and all-cause and CVD mortality remained statistically significant, independent of CRP levels. Conclusions In community-dwelling older adults, serum IL-6 is associated with all-cause, CVD, cancer, and liver-related mortality.
Learning to Play Guess Who? and Inventing a Grounded Language as a Consequence

Learning your first language is an incredible feat and not easily duplicated. Doing this using nothing but a few pictureless books, a corpus, would likely be impossible even for humans. As an alternative we propose to use situated interactions between agents as a driving force for communication, and the framework of Deep Recurrent Q-Networks (DRQN) for learning a common language grounded in the provided environment. We task the agents with interactive image search in the form of the game Guess Who? The images from the game provide a non trivial environment for the agents to discuss and a natural grounding for the concepts they decide to encode in their communication. Our experiments show that it is possible to learn this task using DRQN and even more importantly that the words the agents use correspond to physical attributes present in the images that make up the agents environment.
Rebound insomnia after abrupt discontinuation of hypnotic treatment: double‐blind randomized comparison of zolpidem versus triazolam

Rebound insomnia is a transient intense worsening of sleep usually appearing within 3 days from the abrupt discontinuation of benzodiazepines (mainly short‐acting), following long term use and abuse of these hypnotics. Zolpidem is an imidazopyridine, that binds selectively at ω1‐receptor subtypes within the GABAA receptor supramolecular complex. It has a rapid onset of action and short‐elimination half‐life; it reduces the latency of sleep and prolongs the duration of sleep in patients with insomnia, without any major effects on sleep stages and rebound effects upon discontinuation.
Needs of Beginning Special Education Teachers: Implications for Teacher Education

A study was conducted by surveying 156 teachers in South Carolina after their first year of teaching special education. The beginning special education teachers reported that they needed the most assistance in (a) learning special education policies, procedures, and paperwork, (b) receiving emotional support, (c) learning system information related to the school, and (d) learning about available materials and resources. To a lesser extent they needed assistance with curriculum and instruction, discipline, management issues, and interactions with others. Beginning special education teachers perceived that they received significantly less assistance than they needed in all areas, but particularly in learning special education policies, procedures, and paperwork; materials and resources; and curriculum and instruction. They reported receiving the most assistance from other special education teachers, than from their assigned mentor and from the building administrator, and lastly from general education teachers and special education administrators. The implications of these findings for teacher educators are discussed.
A Role for Giantin in Docking COPI Vesicles to Golgi Membranes

We have previously shown that p115, a vesicle docking protein, binds to two proteins (p130 and p400) in detergent extracts of Golgi membranes. p130 was identified as GM130, a Golgi matrix protein, and was shown to act as a membrane receptor for p115. p400 has now been identified as giantin, a Golgi membrane protein with most of its mass projecting into the cytoplasm. Giantin is found on COPI vesicles and pretreatment with antibodies inhibits both the binding of p115 and the docking of these vesicles with Golgi membranes. In contrast, GM130 is depleted from COPI vesicles and inhibition of the GM130 on Golgi membranes, using either antibodies or an NH2-terminal GM130 peptide, inhibits p115 binding and vesicle docking. Together these results suggest that COPI vesicles are docked by giantin on the COPI vesicles and GM130 on Golgi membranes with p115 providing a bridge.
Speeding up Collaborative Filtering with Parametrized Preprocessing

Collaborative filtering (CF) aims at producing recommendations for a user based on other users of similar taste, their k-neighbors. Since the computation of the neighborhood dominates the complexity of CF for a large number of users and ratings, this is done off-line in most commercial systems. As more and more systems allow users to continuously rate resources, neighborhoods are rapidly outdated and lose accuracy. Hence, neighborhoods have to be updated more often but traditional approaches do not meet the speed requirements. Our major contribution in this paper is to present a technique to split the computation of the neighborhood into an off-line and on-line task. This enables the system to speed up the on-line computation time up to 97% in relation to the time required by the state-of-theart approach, as our experiments on the MovieLens dataset demonstrate.
Waste Makes Haste

We consider the classic problem of envy-free division of a heterogeneous good (“cake”) among several agents. It is known that, when the allotted pieces must be connected, the problem cannot be solved by a finite algorithm for three or more agents. The impossibility result, however, assumes that the entire cake must be allocated. In this article, we replace the entire-allocation requirement with a weaker partial-proportionality requirement: the piece given to each agent must be worth for it at least a certain positive fraction of the entire cake value. We prove that this version of the problem is solvable in bounded time even when the pieces must be connected. We present simple, bounded-time envy-free cake-cutting algorithms for (1) giving each of n agents a connected piece with a positive value; (2) giving each of three agents a connected piece worth at least 1/3; (3) giving each of four agents a connected piece worth at least 1/7; (4) giving each of four agents a disconnected piece worth at least 1/4; and (5) giving each of n agents a disconnected piece worth at least (1 − ε)/n for any positive ε.
Prediction and structural characterization of an independently folding substructure in the src SH3 domain.

Previous studies of the conformations of peptides spanning the length of the alpha-spectrin SH3 domain suggested that SH3 domains lack independently folding substructures. Using a local structure prediction method based on the I-sites library of sequence-structure motifs, we identified a seven residue peptide in the src SH3 domain predicted to adopt a native-like structure, a type II beta-turn bridging unpaired beta-strands, that was not contained intact in any of the SH3 domain peptides studied earlier. NMR characterization confirmed that the isolated peptide, FKKGERL, adopts a structure similar to that adopted in the native protein: the NOE and 3JNHalpha coupling constant patterns were indicative of a type II beta-turn, and NOEs between the Phe and the Leu side-chains suggest that they are juxtaposed as in the prediction and the native structure. These results support the idea that high-confidence I-sites predictions identify protein segments that are likely to form native-like structures early in folding.
Valuation of Commodity Derivatives with an Unobservable Convenience Yield

This paper extends the existing literature on commodity derivatives to account for an unobservable stochastic convenience yield. Investors operate in an economy with incomplete information. In contrast to other incomplete information models, analytical formulas for forward and futures prices, as well as for European options on forward and futures contracts are obtained. These formulas reveal the important role played by the initial values of the estimator of the convenience yield and of the estimation error respectively when valuing commodity derivatives. We estimate Schwartz's 11 model and the incomplete information model based on the discrete-time Kalman filtering method. For futures prices, the latter seems to perform better than the former. Moreover, Schwartz's model provides higher option prices than the incomplete information model. The most important differences are obtained for higher futures prices and for longer options maturities. Extend the literature: pricing commodity derivatives under incomplete information.Closed-form solutions for vanilla commodity derivatives under incomplete information.Commodity derivatives depend on initial values of the estimate and the estimation error.Empirical evidence: for futures prices our model seems to behave better than Schwartz's 11.Schwartz's model provide higher option prices than our model.
Deubiquitinase Inhibition of 19S Regulatory Particles by 4-Arylidene Curcumin Analog AC17 Causes NF-κB Inhibition and p53 Reactivation in Human Lung Cancer Cells

Proteasome inhibitors have been suggested as potential anticancer agents in many clinical trials. Recent evidence indicates that proteasomal deubiquitinase (DUB) inhibitors, bearing a different mechanism from that of traditional proteasome inhibitors, would be appropriate candidates for new anticancer drug development. In the present study, we describe the deubiquitinase inhibition of 19S regulatory particles (19S RP) by AC17, a 4-arylidene curcumin analog synthesized in our laboratory. Although 4-arylidene curcumin analogs were reported to act as inhibitory κB (IκB) kinase (IKK) inhibitors, AC17 instead induced a rapid and marked accumulation of ubiquitinated proteins without inhibiting proteasome proteolytic activities. In contrast to its parent compound, curcumin, which is a proteasome proteolytic inhibitor, AC17 serves as an irreversible deubiquitinase inhibitor of 19S RP, resulting in inhibition of NF-κB pathway and reactivation of proapoptotic protein p53. In addition, in a murine xenograft model of human lung cancer A549, treatment with AC17 suppresses tumor growth in a manner associated with proteasome inhibition, NF-κB blockage, and p53 reactivation. These results suggest that 4-arylidene curcumin analogs are novel 19S deubiquitinase inhibitors with great potential for anticancer drug development. Mol Cancer Ther; 12(8); 1381–92. ©2013 AACR.
Walking the leadership tightrope: building community cohesiveness and social capital in schools in highly disadvantaged urban communities

School leaders in highly disadvantaged urban communities across the globe walk a tightrope, caught between the needs of communities and the requirements of national policies. This article aims to enrich our understanding of the potential of school-community relationships. It examines the policy discourse on urban schools and the practice of community leadership. The policy context is one of UK and international concerns about divisions in society and the rise of political extremism: concerns which, in the UK, have led to a policy focus on community cohesion. The article offers a conceptual framework - a theory of action - as a possible road map for school leaders to manage through this complex and evolving arena of policy and practice. The template - developed through earlier work on urban schools - is underpinned by a focus on trust (as the lubricant to link communities together) and social capital (as a way of harnessing the 'social energy' of communities for positive good). The template is tested against the leadership of two school principals in challenging contexts in London and Greater Manchester. The author concludes that there is potential for schools to create space for the voices of the marginalised and disenfranchised to be heard. This analysis will resonate with school leaders serving disadvantaged communities in many international contexts and signals a new departure for leadership. © 2012 British Educational Research Association.
COACHING: UN RETO PARA LOS ORIENTADORES

ABSTRACT Coaching is a type of guidance aiming to promote the establishment and explanation of goals, the development of personal and professional competencies to the optimal level, and the possibility of overcoming mental and emotional blockage and to help to achieve self-realization. Coaching is very much related with counselling. However, people engaged in coaching in our country come from studies different from guidance. This article is a call to guidance practitioners, for them to bear in mind coaching as a possible professional field.
Robust Invariants from Functionally Constrained Mot ion MS-CIS-98-08

We address in the problem of control-based recovery of robot pose and the environmental lay-out. Panoramic sensors provide us with an 1D projection of characteristic features of a 2D operation map. Trajectories of these projections contain the information about the position of a priori unknown landmarks in the environment. We introduce here the notion of spatiotemporal signatures of projection trajectories. These signatures are global measures, like area, characterized by considerably higher robustness with respect to noise and outliers than the commonly applied point correspondence. By modeling the 2D motion plane as the complex plane we show that by means of complex analysis our method can be embedded in the well-known affine reconstruction paradigm. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-98-08. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/cis_reports/809 Robust Invariants from Functionally Constrained Mot ion
Narrative Practice and its Potential Contribution to Sport Psychology: The Example of Flow

Narrative practice is an approach that enables researchers to alternately focus on the whats and hows of meaningful social interaction. The potential benefits of utilizing this approach in sport psychology are highlighted by focusing on the area of flow as an exemplar. It is suggested that the majority of work on flow has focused on the whats rather than on the equally important hows of this phenomenon. To illustrate the ways in which a concern for the hows of narrative practice can provide different insights into flow, data are provided from an interview-based study of a white water canoeing club. The findings suggest that describing flow is a relational performance, which is shaped by a number of narrative resources and auspices that operate differently according to gender.
Paraeducator-Supplemented Instruction in Structural Analysis With Text Reading Practice for Second and Third Graders at Risk for Reading Problems

Two studies—one quasi-experimental and one randomized experiment—were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of supplemental instruction in structural analysis and oral reading practice for second- and third-grade students with below-average word reading skills. Individual instruction was provided by trained paraeducators in single- and multiletter phoneme—grapheme correspondences; structural analysis of inflected, affixed, and multi-syllable words; exception word reading; and scaffolded oral reading practice. Both studies revealed short-term word level and fluency effects.