Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
P-GTM: privacy-preserving google tri-gram method for semantic text similarity

This paper presents P-GTM, a privacy-preserving text similarity algorithm that extends the Google Tri-gram Method (GTM). The Google Tri-gram Method is a high-performance unsupervised semantic text similarity method based on the use of context from the Google Web 1T n-gram dataset. P-GTM computes the semantic similarity between two input bag-of-words documents on public cloud hardware, without disclosing the documents' contents. Like the GTM, P-GTM requires the uni-gram and tri-gram lists from the Google Web 1T n-gram dataset as additional inputs. The need for these additional lists makes private computation of GTM text similarities a challenging problem. P-GTM uses a combination of pre-computation, encryption, and randomized preprocessing to enable private computation of text similarities using the GTM. We discuss the security of the algorithm and quantify its privacy using standard and real life corpora.
Face classification by a random forest

This paper presents a random forest-based face image classification method. The random forest is an ensemble learning method that grows many classification trees. Each tree gives a classification. The forest selects the classification that has the most votes. Three experiments are performed. The random forest-based method together with several existing approaches are trained and evaluated. The experimental results are presented and discussed.
Genetic Analysis of DEFECTIVE KERNEL1 Loop Function in Three-Dimensional Body Patterning in Physcomitrella patens1[C][W][OPEN]

A proposed regulatory loop segment of the DEK1 transmembrane domain is required for gametophore patterning in Physcomitrella patens. DEFECTIVE KERNEL1 (DEK1) of higher plants plays an essential role in position-dependent signaling and consists of a large transmembrane domain (MEM) linked to a protease catalytic domain and a regulatory domain. Here, we show that the postulated sensory Loop of the MEM domain plays an important role in the developmental regulation of DEK1 activity in the moss Physcomitrella patens. Compared with P. patens lacking DEK1 (∆dek1), the dek1∆loop mutant correctly positions the division plane in the bud apical cell. In contrast with an early developmental arrest of ∆dek1 buds, dek1∆loop develops aberrant gametophores lacking expanded phyllids resulting from misregulation of mitotic activity. In contrast with the highly conserved sequence of the protease catalytic domain, the Loop is highly variable in land plants. Functionally, the sequence from Marchantia polymorpha fully complements the dek1∆loop phenotype, whereas sequences from maize (Zea mays) and Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) give phenotypes with retarded growth and affected phyllid development. Bioinformatic analysis identifies MEM as a member of the Major Facilitator Superfamily, membrane transporters reacting to stimuli from the external environment. Transcriptome analysis comparing wild-type and ∆dek1 tissues identifies an effect on two groups of transcripts connected to dek1 mutant phenotypes: transcripts related to cell wall remodeling and regulation of the AINTEGUMENTA, PLETHORA, and BABY BOOM2 (APB2) and APB3 transcription factors known to regulate bud initiation. Finally, sequence data support the hypothesis that the advanced charophyte algae that evolved into ancestral land plants lost cytosolic calpains, retaining DEK1 as the sole calpain in the evolving land plant lineage.
Delayed rejection of porcine cartilage is averted by transgenic expression of α1,2‐fucosyltransferase

The use of xenogeneic cells or tissues for tissue engineering applications may lead to advances in biomedical research. Hyperacute and delayed rejection are immunologic hurdles that must be addressed to achieve xenograft survival in the pig‐to‐primate setting. Expression of human α1,2fucosyltransferase (HT) in the donor cell or tissue protects from hyperacute rejection (HAR) by reducing expression of Galα1,3‐Gal epitope, the major xenoantigen recognized by human natural antibodies. We hypothesized that Galα1,3‐Gal antigen contributes to delayed tissue rejection. To test this hypothesis, we transplanted control or HT‐transgenic engineered porcine cartilage s.c. into α1,3‐galactosyltransferase knockout (Gal KO) mice. Control porcine cartilage grafted in Gal KO mice was not susceptible to HAR but was rejected in several wk by a prominent cellular immune infiltrate and elevated antibody titers. In contrast, Gal KO mice receiving the HT engineered cartilage showed a markedly reduced anti‐pig antibody response and no anti‐Galα1,3‐Gal‐elicited antibody response. The HT implants had a mild cellular infiltrate that was confined to the graft periphery. Our study demonstrates that a marked reduction of Galα1,3‐Gal antigen in HT‐transgenic porcine cartilage confers resistance to a process of delayed rejection. Further development of tissue engineering applications that use genetically modified porcine tissues is encouraged.
A receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase, BIK1, associates with a flagellin receptor complex to initiate plant innate immunity

Plants and animals rely on innate immunity to prevent infections by detection of microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) through pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs). The plant PRR FLS2, a leucine-rich repeat-receptor kinase, recognizes bacterial flagellin and initiates immune signaling by association with another leucine-rich repeat-receptor-like kinase, BAK1. It remains unknown how the FLS2/BAK1 receptor complex activates intracellular signaling cascades. Here we identified the receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase BIK1 that is rapidly phosphorylated upon flagellin perception, depending on both FLS2 and BAK1. BIK1 associates with FLS2 and BAK1 in vivo and in vitro. BIK1 is phosphorylated by BAK1, and BIK1 also directly phosphorylates BAK1 and FLS2 in vitro. The flagellin phosphorylation site Thr237 of BIK1 is required for its phosphorylation on BAK1 and FLS2, suggesting that BIK1 is likely first phosphorylated upon flagellin perception and subsequently transphosphorylates FLS2/BAK1 to propagate flagellin signaling. Importantly, bik1 mutants are compromised in diverse flagellin-mediated responses and immunity to the nonpathogenic bacterial infection. Thus, BIK1 is an essential component in MAMP signal transduction, which links the MAMP receptor complex to downstream intracellular signaling.
Working for Adults: State Policies and Community College Practices to Better Serve Adult Learners at Community Colleges During the Great Recession and Beyond

As Americans remain in the workforce longer due to increased life expectancy, personal preference, and economic need, many adults seek education and training to gain the skills and credentials needed to start new careers or advance in their current careers. Community colleges, with their open access and focus on workforce preparation, are often highlighted as well suited to provide the education and training needed by adult workers. However, adults bring unique needs to postsecondary education that must be addressed to help them be successful, including the need for better access and services to support adult learners with disabilities.1 Numerous recent initiatives have focused on how to improve the success of a range of adult populations at community colleges, including working adults, lowskilled adults, and adults over age 50; none have focused on the specific issues of adults with disabilities. However, these different subpopulations may share common challenges and concerns in postsecondary education relative to younger students so that lessons from one adult subpopulation might be relevant to others, including adults with disabilities.
The Validation of the Edinburgh Post-natal Depression Scale on a Community Sample

The Edinburgh Post-natal Depression Scale (EPDS) was validated on a community sample of 702 women at six weeks post-partum using Research Diagnostic Criteria for depression. The estimates of sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value, being based on a large random sample, offer improved guidelines for the use of the EPDS by the primary care team.
Internal, Collaborative and Competitive Knowledge Capability

This study examined the components of knowledge capability and its relationship with organizational performance. Using factor analysis on a data set from Australia, valid components were confirmed as internal, collaborative and competitive capabilities. Knowledge capabilities were found to be significantly related to both innovation outcomes and the ultimate financial performance of firms, particularly competitive knowledge capabilities. Regression analysis was used on survey based data on validated scales of knowledge management factors, and independently collected financial performance data. The most significant relationships were found in 'competitive knowledge process capability', 'knowledge culture' and 'collaborative knowledge transfer processes'.
Stock Returns and Risk: Evidence from Quantile

This paper employs weighted least squares to examine the risk-return relation by applying high-frequency data from four major stock indexes in the US market and finds some evidence in favor of a positive relation between the mean of the excess returns and expected risk. However, by using quantile regressions, we find that the risk-return relation moves from negative to positive as the returns’ quantile increases. A positive risk-return relation is valid only in the upper quantiles. The evidence also suggests that intraday skewness plays a dominant role in explaining the variations of excess returns.
Geometrical recovery of missing data for shape from motion

This paper studies the geometrical recovery of an incomplete observation matrix for converting existing 2D video sequences to 3D content. In situations when converting previously recorded monoscopic video to 3D, several entries of the observation matrix have not been observed and other entries have been perturbed by the influence of noise. In such cases, there is no simple solution for SVD factorization for shape from motion. In this paper, a new recovery algorithm is proposed for recovering missing feature points, by minimizing the influence of noise, using iteratively geometrical correlations between a 2D observation matrix and 3D shape. Results in practical situations demonstrated with synthetic and real video sequences verify the efficiency and flexibility of the proposed method.
Challenges in the First Year of Teaching: Lessons Learned in an Elementary Education Resident Teacher Program

It is well known that the first years of teaching are a challenge for all beginning teachers. According to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future’s study (2010) firstyear teacher attrition has been steadily increasing and many leave the profession even before they are proficient educators who know how to work with colleagues to improve student learning. The immense expense of this departure is a concern to the future of the nation’s school districts. This paper will discuss an Elementary Education Resident Teacher Program that is a collaborative relationship between a College of Education and Human Development and a local public school system. This one year program mentoring program was developed to support first year teachers in their curriculum and instruction as well as to provide these individuals with educational growth as they pursue their master's degree. This paper will share the voices of six beginning teachers, in a resident teacher program, regarding the challenges they experienced during the first year of teaching, including classroom/time management, working with parents and other family members, differentiating instruction, handling difficult student behaviors, and how to effectively assess student learning. Each of the five challenges will be introduced with a brief review of literature and followed by the advice from the resident teachers to other beginning teachers.
Planned Obsolescence as an Incentive Device for Unobservable Quality

Stressing the multi-dimensional character of quality, I propose a new theory of planned obsolescence as an incentive device that benefits consumers. I argue that planned obsolescence increases the frequency of repurchases and, therefore, enables consumers to punish producers faster for a lack of overall quality. This strengthens the producers' incentives to provide adequate levels of quality. The theory implies a trade-off between a good's durability and its other unobservable quality attributes. This leads to an artificially high degree of obsolescence as compared to the first best where quality is observable. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2009.
Budgeting in the information age: a fresh approach

For hospitality organizations to compete successfully in the emerging information age, with its emphasis on innovation, quality and speed, it is suggested that they must adopt more flexible, responsive and empowered management structures. However, if such developments are to prove effective, it is essential that hospitality organizations also overhaul their accounting systems, most of which were designed to support the previous industrial era’s focus on volume and productivity. Indeed, there is a concern that traditional budgeting systems – with their typical bureaucratic encouragement of internally‐focused, department‐centred cost minimization – may present a significant barrier to effective change. It is proposed instead that a fresh approach to the objectives of budgeting is needed, involving “alternative steering mechanisms” that promote empowerment, flexibility and knowledge‐sharing. This suggestion is supported by evidence from an American hotel where such a fresh approach to budgeting has been developing, “matching” its more progressive management structure.
Postmenopausal Hormone Replacement: Effects on Autonomic, Neuroendocrine, and Immune Reactivity to Brief Psychological Stressors

Objective Postmenopausal status increases some aspects of women's physiological responses to psychological stress; however, the influences of chronic hormone replacement with estrogen and progestogen on these responses are not known. We investigated possible effects of long-term estrogen replacement therapy (ERT), both with and without progestogen, on physiological reactivity to brief laboratory stressors. Method We studied three groups of postmenopausal women: 16 on estrogen alone, 14 on estrogen and progestogen, and 25 control participants receiving no replacement therapy. Cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and immune data were collected at baseline and after speech and math tasks. Results In all groups, the stressors reduced vagal cardiac control (indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia); increased heart rate and plasma epinephrine, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and cortisol levels; and altered T lymphocyte response (measured by mitogen-induced cell proliferation), natural killer cell lysis, and circulating leukocyte subsets. Women on either type of ERT had higher total cortisol levels (reflecting an estrogen effect on cortisol binding globulin) and greater mitogen-induced blastogenesis across measurement periods than controls. They also showed greater vagal withdrawal and less decline in mitogen-stimulated blastogenesis in response to the stressors. Combined estrogen and progestogen was associated with higher epinephrine and lower circulating total lymphocytes, T cells, and CD4+ T cells across measurement periods, and with intermediate levels of vagal withdrawal in response to the stressors. Conclusions Long-term ERT was associated with enhanced parasympathetic responsiveness to stress, suggesting possible reduced demand for potentially detrimental sympathetic activation; and with higher overall levels and smaller stress-induced reductions of mitogen-stimulated blastogenesis, suggesting up-regulated T cell function.
Evidence of Collateral, Asymmetric Information, Credit Risk, and Banking Regulations from Firms

This article examines the determinants of a firm's proportion of collateralized loans within the context of Chinese firms. In particular, focus is placed on the effect of a new bank regulatory system on the firm's proportion of collateralized loans. The study found that a firm's proportion of collateralized loans is positively related to its level of credit risk and asymmetric information, and that this in turn is increasingly and significantly a consequence of the new banking regulatory law and guidelines of 2004. The results suggest that the new banking regulatory system has changed the way in which banks structure loan contracts in China.
The Effects of Teacher Education on Elementary and Secondary Preservice Teachers' Beliefs about Integration: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract The power of teacher education programs is an important issue with regard to the formation and sustainability of educational reform. This longitudinal study examines the beliefs and perceptions of 211 elementary and secondary preservice teachers concerning the concept of integrated teaching as they progress through their teacher education program. The coursework portion of the program provided statistically significant positive changes about the integration of subjects in the classroom. With the exception of secondary preservice Teachers' perceptions of support, the student teaching experiences did not significantly change the beliefs of either group. The results have implications for the importance of teacher education for the implementation of quality teaching.
Inverse Rendering and Relighting From Multiple Color Plus Depth Images

We propose a novel relighting approach that takes advantage of multiple color plus depth images acquired from a consumer camera. Assuming distant illumination and Lambertian reflectance, we model the reflected light field in terms of spherical harmonic coefficients of the bi-directional reflectance distribution function and lighting. We make use of the noisy depth information together with color images taken under different illumination conditions to refine surface normals inferred from depth. We first perform refinement on the surface normals using the first order spherical harmonics. We initialize this non-linear optimization with a linear approximation to greatly reduce computation time. With surface normals refined, we formulate the recovery of albedo and lighting in a matrix factorization setting, involving second order spherical harmonics. Albedo and lighting coefficients are recovered up to a global scaling ambiguity. We demonstrate our method on both simulated and real data, and show that it can successfully recover both illumination and albedo to produce realistic relighting results.
Lessons from the California Electricity Crisis

This paper describes the lessons that should be learned about electricity market design and regulating energy markets from the California electricity crisis. A necessary first step in determining the lessons learned from the California electricity crisis is a diagnosis of its causes. This requires a clear understanding of the federal and state regulatory infrastructure that governs the US electricity supply industry. I then discuss the conditions in the western US electricity supply industry that enabled the California crisis to occur. The paper then describes the important regulatory decisions by FERC that allowed what was a very solvable problem develop into a full-fledged economic disaster during the latter part of 2000. As part of this discussion of FERC's response to the events of the summer of 2000, I will also dispel a number of the myths that circulated around this same time about the causes and consequences of the California electricity crisis. I will also discuss the actions taken at the state and federal level that ultimately stabilized the California electricity market. This is followed by a discussion of what I believe are the major lessons for electricity market design that should be learned from the California crisis. The paper concludes with recommendations for how FERC should change the way it carries out its statutory mandate to set just and reasonable wholesale prices and how state PUCs should revise their retail market policies to prevent a future California crisis. In this discussion, I describe a worst-case scenario for how another California electricity crisis could occur if these recommendations are not followed.
An Analysis of Education Externalities with Applications to Development in the Deep South

A simplified medium term dynamic model of endogenous growth is used to analyze education externalities. Returns include direct but also indirect effects from education on growth and development. Indirect effects are externalities because they arise as the result of the education of others and prior generations. The existing growth literature often discounts these, although they are shown to be larger than short term effects. Simulations for the US Deep South indicate larger medium term net education impacts on growth, infant mortality, longevity, and democratization, so policies do matter. These are reasons micro rate of return estimates are larger than education effects in growth equations.
Extreme Variability Quasars in Their Various States. I. The Sample Selection and Composite SDSS Spectra

Extremely variable quasars (EVQs) are a population of sources showing large optical photometric variability revealed by time-domain surveys. The physical origin of such extreme variability is yet unclear. In this first paper of a series, we construct the largest-ever sample of 14,012 EVQs using more than 15 yr of photometric data from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Pan-STARRS1. We divide the EVQs into five subsamples according to the relative brightness of each EVQ during SDSS spectroscopic observation compared with the mean brightness from photometric observations. Corresponding control samples of normal quasars are built with matched redshift, bolometric luminosity, and supermassive black hole mass. We obtain the composite SDSS spectra of EVQs in various states and their corresponding control samples. We find EVQs exhibit clearly bluer SDSS spectra during bright states and clearly redder spectra during dim states, consistent with the “bluer-when-brighter” trend widely seen in normal quasars. We further find that the line equivalent widths (EWs) of broad Mg II, C IV and [O III] (but not broad Hβ, which is yet puzzling) gradually decreases from the dim state to the bright state, similar to the so-called intrinsic Baldwin effect commonly seen in normal active galactic nuclei. In addition, EVQs have consistently larger line EWs compared with the control samples. We also see that EVQs show slight excess in the very broad line component compared with control samples. Possible explanations for the discoveries are discussed. Our findings support the hypothesis that EVQs are in the tail of a broad distribution of quasar properties but are not a distinct population.
Purchasing Power Parity under the Gold Standard

Long-run purchasing power parity (LRPPP), the basis of most open economy macroeconomic models, has proved difficult to back up empirically. However, there is one standout exception to the otherwise mixed results. are consistently cited as having found strong evidence of LRPPP by using a fractionally integrated moving-average model whose restrictions are looser than those of traditional unit root tests. We propose structural change rather than fractional integration as a plausible behavior pattern for the data. Using the test for multiple structural change, we find mean shifts in each of the real exchange rates. When those shifts are included in the model, the speed of mean reversion is greatly improved. We assert that quick mean reversion around an occasionally changing mean provides a more reasonable representation of the data than does fractional integration.