Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lassen sich naturwissenschaftliche Lernstände im Grundschulalter mit schriftlichen Aufgaben valide erfassen

Im naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht ist die Diagnostik von Schulerkonzepten im Sinne eines formativen Assessments eine notwendige Voraussetzung, um die konzeptuelle Entwicklung angemessen fordern zu konnen. Wahrend qualitative Interviews zur Erfassung konzeptueller naturwissenschaftlicher Lernstande bei Grundschulern weit verbreitet sind, ist die Frage, inwiefern auch die okonomischeren, geschlossenen schriftlichen Antwortformate eine valide Diagnostik individueller Konzepte ermoglichen, bisher noch wenig untersucht. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt an jeweils zwei Klassen der dritten Jahrgangsstufe der Grundschule (Alter: M = 9.26 Jahre, SD = 0.42) fur die beiden naturwissenschaftlichen Themenbereiche "Schwimmen und Sinken" (N = 41) und "Verdunstung und Kondensation" (N = 32), dass ein substantieller Zusammenhang zwischen mundlichen Interviews und schriftlichen Testergebnissen besteht und somit - unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen - von einer validen Erfassung kindlicher Lernstande auch mit schriftlichen Aufgaben ausgegangen werden kann. (DIPF/Orig.) In science instruction, diagnosing students´ concepts in the sense of a formative assessment constitutes a necessary prerequisite for an adequate promotion of conceptual development. While qualitative interviews aiming at surveying conceptual learning levels in natural science among elementary school students are well established, hardly any studies exist that examine in how far the more economic, closed written answer formats allow for a valid diagnosis of individual concepts. Based on a survey carried out in two classes of third-grade elementary school students (Age: M = 9.26 years, SD = 0.42) with regard to the two science units "Floating and Sinking" (N = 41) and "Evaporation and Condensation" (N = 32), the present contribution shows that there is a substantial correlation between oral interviews and written test results and that, therefore, - given certain preconditions - it can be assumed that written tests, too, allow for a valid recording of children's learning levels. (DIPF/Orig.)
Expression of the bviIR and cepIR Quorum-Sensing Systems of Burkholderia vietnamiensis

ABSTRACT Burkholderia vietnamiensis has both the cepIR quorum-sensing system that is widely distributed among the Burkholderia cepacia complex (BCC) and the bviIR system. Comparison of the expression of cepI, cepR, bviI, and bviR-luxCDABE fusions in B. vietnamiensis G4 and the G4 cepR and bviR mutants determined that the expression of bviI requires both a functional cognate regulator, BviR, and functional CepR. The cepIR system, however, is not regulated by BviR. Unlike the cepIR genes in other BCC species, the cepIR genes are not autoregulated in G4. N-Acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) production profiles in G4 cepI, cepR, bviI, and bviR mutants confirmed the regulatory organization of the G4 quorum-sensing systems. The regulatory network in strain PC259 is similar to that in G4, except that CepR positively regulates cepI and negatively regulates cepR. AHL production and the bviI expression levels in seven B. vietnamiensis isolates were compared. All strains produced N-octanoyl-homoserine lactone and N-hexanoyl-homoserine lactone; however, only one of four clinical strains but all three environmental strains produced the BviI synthase product, N-decanoyl-homoserine lactone (DHL). The three strains that did not produce DHL expressed bviR but not bviI. Heterologous expression of bviR restored DHL production in these strains. The bviIR loci of the non-DHL-producing strains were sequenced to confirm that bviR encodes a functional transcriptional regulator. Lack of expression of G4 bviI in these three strains indicated that an additional regulatory element may be involved in the regulation of bviIR expression in certain strains of B. vietnamiensis.
An odd kind of fame : stories of Phineas Gage

In 1848 a railway construction worker named Phineas Gage suffered an accident that made him a major curiosity of medicine and a significant figure in psychology and neuroscience: an explosion caused a tamping iron to be blown competely through his head, destroying the left frontal lobe of his brain. Gage survived the accident and remained in reasonable physical health for another 11 years. But his behaviour changed markedly after the injury, and his case is considered to be the first to reveal the relation betwen the brain and complex personality characteristics. Yet almost nothing is known about him, and most of what is written is seriously in error. In this book Malcolm Macmillan, a leading authority on Gage, covers all aspects of this fascinating story. He describes Gage's family and personal background, the context of his work and the accident, and Gage's subsequent history. He analyzes contemporary medical and newspaper reports of the accident and its consequences, and evaluates the treatment Gage received form Dr. John Martyn Harlow. He also looks at Harlow's own life and work. Macmillan examines Gage's place in this history of how functions came to be localized in the brain. He explores the many ways that Gage's tale has been represented and misrepresented through the years in popular, fictional and scientific works. One of Macmillan's primary aims is to rescue the case from the predominantly fantastic accounts so that its real contribution to modern neuroscience can be understood. Partly for this reason, the appendices include facsimiles of Harlow's 1848 and 1868 reports, the primary sources about Gage and previously unpublished CAT scans of Gage's skull made in 1982.
An Empirical Study of Factors Affecting the Internet Banking Adoption among Malaysian Consumers

This paper examines factors that influence the Internet banking adoption among Malaysian consumers. The study sample consists of 100 respondents. The measurement items were adapted from Taylor and Todd (1995); Tan and Teo (2000) utilizing the seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 – strongly disagree to 7 – strongly agree. Data were analyzed by employing multiple regression analysis. The results shows that Hedonic oriented Internet banking sites, followed by the perceived Importance of Internet banking to banking needs and Compatibility all significantly affect the adoption of Internet banking by Malaysian consumers. Trialability has the weakest influence for consumer Internet banking adoption beside Complexity, Risk, and Utilitarian oriented Internet banking sites. The empirical data used for this study was collected in Malaysia market which may have a culturally and technologically different environment from some other countries. This paper makes a contribution to Internet banking literature by providing insights on the factors that affect Internet banking adoption. The results hint that information about Internet banking services and its benefits is a critical factor influencing the adoption. The findings made a contribution in terms of understanding the factors that can contribute to the adoption of Internet banking by Malaysian consumers.
Phonocardiogram Signal Processing Module for Auto-Diagnosis and Telemedicine Applications

© 2012 Moukadem et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Phonocardiogram Signal Processing Module for Auto-Diagnosis and Telemedicine Applications
Infrastructure for Usable Machine Learning: The Stanford DAWN Project

Despite incredible recent advances in machine learning, building machine learning applications remains prohibitively time-consuming and expensive for all but the best-trained, best-funded engineering organizations. This expense comes not from a need for new and improved statistical models but instead from a lack of systems and tools for supporting end-to-end machine learning application development, from data preparation and labeling to productionization and monitoring. In this document, we outline opportunities for infrastructure supporting usable, end-to-end machine learning applications in the context of the nascent DAWN (Data Analytics for What's Next) project at Stanford.
The effect of list two length on context information in list-method directed forgetting

The current study investigated the claim that in list-method directed forgetting, List 2 must be as long as List 1 in order to obtain directed forgetting (Pastotter & Bauml, 2010). Participants studied two lists of words for a later memory test, and were instructed to forget or remember List 1 following its presentation. The length of List 1 was fixed (18 items), whereas the length of List 2 varied across conditions. In the equivalent condition , the objective number of items on List 2 was equivalent to the number of items on List 1. In other conditions, the objective number of items on List 2 was fewer than on List 1 (nine items), but the items on List 2 were repeated within the list so that the total number of trials was identical across the two lists. In the spaced condition , List 2 items were repeated in a spaced fashion, with a lag of eight items between the repetitions, whereas in the massed condition, List 2 items were repeated back to back with a lag of zero. Finally, in the short condition , List 2 was half the length of List 1 items (nine items), and the items were presented only once. The spaced group did not show directed forgetting impairment, whereas the massed and the equivalent groups showed impairment of identical magnitude. The short group showed numerical impairment, and the magnitude of the effect was similar to the massed and the equivalent groups , although the results were trending toward significance. The results are discussed in terms of the theoretical mechanisms underlying directed forgetting.
Optimal Resource Allocation in Full-Duplex Wireless-Powered Communication Network

This paper studies optimal resource allocation in the wireless-powered communication network (WPCN), where one hybrid access point (H-AP) operating in full duplex (FD) broadcasts wireless energy to a set of distributed users in the downlink (DL) and, at the same time, receives independent information from the users via time-division multiple access in the uplink (UL). We design an efficient protocol to support simultaneous wireless energy transfer (WET) in the DL and wireless information transmission (WIT) in the UL for the proposed FD-WPCN. We jointly optimize the time allocations to the H-AP for DL WET and different users for UL WIT and the transmit power allocations over time at the H-AP to maximize the users' weighted sum rate of UL information transmission with harvested energy. We consider both the cases with perfect and imperfect self-interference cancellation (SIC) at the H-AP, for which we obtain optimal and suboptimal time and power allocation solutions, respectively. Furthermore, we consider the half-duplex (HD) WPCN as a baseline scheme and derive its optimal resource allocation solution. Simulation results show that the FD-WPCN outperforms the HD-WPCN when effective SIC can be implemented and more stringent peak power constraint is applied at the H-AP.
Epstein–Barr virus latent membrane protein 1 activation of NF-κB through IRAK1 and TRAF6

Epstein–Barr virus latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) activation of NF-κB is critical for Epstein–Barr virus-infected B lymphocyte survival. LMP1 activates the IκB kinase complex and NF-κB through two cytoplasmic signaling domains that engage tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor (TRAF)1/2/3/5 or TRADD and RIP. We now use cells lacking expression of TRAF2, TRAF5, TRAF6, IKKα, IKKβ, IKKγ, TAB2, IL-1 receptor-associated kinase (IRAK)1, or IRAK4 to assess their roles in LMP1-mediated NF-κB activation. LMP1-induced RelA nuclear translocation was similar in IKKα knockout (KO) and WT murine embryo fibroblasts (MEFs) but substantially deficient in IKKβ KO MEFs. NF-κB-dependent promoter responses were also substantially deficient in IKKβ KO MEFs but were hyperactive in IKKα KO MEFs. More surprisingly, NF-κB responses were near normal in TRAF2 and TRAF5 double-KO MEFs, IKKγ KO MEFs, TAB2 KO MEFs, and IRAK4 KO MEFs but were highly deficient in TRAF6 KO MEFs and IRAK1 KO HEK293 cells. Consistent with the importance of TRAF6, LMP1-induced NF-κB activation in HEK293 cells was inhibited by expression of dominant-negative TAB2 and Ubc13 alleles. These data extend a role for IKKα in IKKβ regulation, identify an unusual IKKβ-dependent and IKKγ-independent NF-κB activation, and indicate that IRAK1 and TRAF6 are essential for LMP1-induced NF-κB activation.
Segmentation of the full myocardium in echocardiography using constrained level-sets

In echocardiography, left ventricle detection is a common practice in order to retrieve indexes of myocardial health. Although a great attention has been given to the segmentation of the endocardium, very limited literature addresses the detection of both endo- and epicardial contours. Hereto, in this study we propose an original level-set technique specifically designed for the detection of the whole myocardium in short-axis ultrasound scans. A localized version of standard region-based methods is adopted, and allows to deal with low-contrast boundaries. Moreover, shape prior information is efficiently embedded in the evolution equation, thereby preventing the detection of undesired structures, like papillary muscles. An evaluation is presented on a set of 40 frames from 5 different patients. The proposed method is shown to be a reliable tool for an accurate segmentation of the full myocardium on ultrasound scans.
Collaborative Teaching and Learning in the Workplace

This article considers teaching and learning as a collaborative enterprise in the workplace. The empirical data have been extracted from a field study among apprentices engaged in electromechanical vocational training and education in a major Danish industrial company. Typically, studies of apprenticeship learning do not view aspects of teaching as decisive parts of workplace learning. In this article, I will pin down the specific character of collaborative teaching and learning in the workplace, and compare this with the features of a teaching situation in school with a teacher transmitting knowledge to the pupils. While instruction at school is organised as part of a specifically planned teaching situation, the instruction in the workplace is a more loosely organised part of the joint activity structure of the daily work tasks. The conclusions reached in the article should be useful for the conceptual understanding of instruction and teaching in workplace learning, as well as for policy makers and professionals responsible for the design of apprenticeships and workplace
Candesartan pretreatment is cerebroprotective in a rat model of endothelin‐1‐induced middle cerebral artery occlusion

Endogenous levels of angiotensin II (Ang II) are increased in the cortex and hypothalamus following stroke, and Ang II type 1 receptor blockers (ARBs) have been shown to attenuate the deleterious effects in animal stroke models using middle cerebral artery (MCA) intraluminal occlusion procedures. However, the endothelin‐1 (ET‐1)‐induced middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model of cerebral ischaemia is thought to more closely mimic the temporal events of an embolic stroke. This method provides rapid occlusion of the MCA and a gradual reperfusion that lasts for 16–22 h. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether systemic administration of an ARB prior to ET‐1‐induced MCAO would provide cerebroprotection during this model of ischaemic stroke. Injection of 3 μl of 80 μm ET‐1 adjacent to the MCA resulted in complete occlusion of the vessel that resolved over a period of 30–40 min. Following ET‐1‐induced MCAO, rats had significant neurological impairment, as well as an infarct that consisted of 30% of the ipsilateral grey matter. Systemic pretreatment with 0.2 mg kg−1 day−1 candesartan for 7 days attenuated both the infarct size and the neurological deficits caused by ET‐1‐induced MCAO without altering blood pressure. This study confirms the cerebroprotective properties of ARBs during ischaemic stroke and validates the ET‐1‐induced MCAO model for examination of the role of the brain renin–angiotensin system in ischaemic stroke.
The Effect of a Patient Portal With Electronic Messaging on Patient Activation Among Chronically Ill Patients: Controlled Before-and-After Study

Background It has been suggested that providing patients with access to their medical records and secure messaging with health care professionals improves health outcomes in chronic care by encouraging and activating patients to manage their own condition. Objectives The aim was to evaluate the effect of access to a patient portal on patient activation among chronically ill patients. Further, the relationship between temporal proximity of a severe diagnosis and patient activation were assessed. Methods A total of 876 chronically ill patients from public primary care were allocated to either an intervention group receiving immediate access to a patient portal that included their medical records, care plan, and secure messaging with a care team, or to a control group receiving usual care. Patient Activation Measure (PAM) at baseline and at 6-month follow-up was obtained from 80 patients in the intervention group and 57 patients in the control group; thus, a total of 137 patients were included in the final analysis. Results No significant effect of access to patient portal on patient activation was detected in this study (F 1,133=1.87, P=.17, η2=0.01). Patients starting at a lower level of activation demonstrated greater positive change in activation compared to patients starting at higher levels of activation in both the intervention and control groups. Further, patients diagnosed with a severe diagnosis during the intervention showed greater positive change in patient activation compared to patients whose last severe diagnosis was made more than 2 years ago. The results also suggest that the intervention had greatest effect on patients starting at the highest level of patient activation (difference in change of patient activation=4.82, P=.13), and among patients diagnosed within a year of the intervention (difference in change of patient activation=7.65, P=.12). Conclusions Time since last severe diagnosis and patient activation at baseline may affect changes in patient activation, suggesting that these should be considered in evaluation of activating chronic care interventions and in the specification of possible target groups for these interventions. This may be relevant in designing services for a heterogeneous group of patients with a distinct medical history and level of activation.
Development of the siriraj clinical asthma score.

INTRODUCTION Acute asthmatic attack in children commonly occurs despite the introduction of effective controllers such as inhaled corticosteroids and leukotriene modifiers. Treatment of acute asthmatic attack requires proper evaluation of attack severity and appropriate selection of medical therapy. In children, measurement of lung function is difficult during acute attack and thus clinical asthma scoring may aid physician in making further decision regarding treatment and admission. METHODS We enrolled 70 children with acute asthmatic attack with age range from 1 to 12 years (mean ± SD = 51.5 ± 31.8 months) into the study. Twelve selected asthma severity items were assessed by 2 independent observers prior to administration of salbutamol nebulization (up to 3 doses at 20 minutes interval). Decision for further therapy and admission was made by emergency department physician. Three different scoring systems were constructed from items with best validity. Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of these scores were assessed. Inter-rater reliability was assessed for each score. Review of previous scoring systems was also conducted and reported. RESULTS Three severity items had poor validity, i.e., cyanosis, depressed cerebral function, and I:E ratio (p > 0.05). Three items had poor inter-rater reliability, i.e., breath sound quality, air entry, and I:E ratio. These items were omitted and three new clinical scores were constructed from the remaining items. Clinical scoring system comprised retractions, dyspnea, O2 saturation, respiratory rate and wheezing (rangeof score 0-10) gave the best accuracy and inter-rater variability and were chosen for clinical use-Siriraj Clinical Asthma Score (SCAS). CONCLUSION A Clinical Asthma Score that is simple, relatively easy to administer and with good validity and variability is essential for treatment of acute asthma in children. Several good candidate scores have been introduced in the past. We described the development of the Siriraj Clinical Asthma Score (SCAS) in this report and reviewed the literature on the development of clinical asthma score for use in children.
A conformational switch at the 3′ end of a plant virus RNA regulates viral replication

3′ untranslated regions of alfamo‐ and ilar‐virus RNAs fold into a series of stem–loop structures to which the coat protein binds with high affinity. This binding plays a role in initiation of infection (‘genome activation’) and has been thought to substitute for a tRNA‐like structure that is found at the 3′ termini of related plant viruses. We propose the existence of an alternative conformation of the 3′ ends of alfamo‐ and ilar‐virus RNAs, including a pseudoknot. Based on (i) phylogenetic comparisons, (ii) in vivo and in vitro functional analyses of mutants in which the pseudoknot has been disrupted or restored by compensatory mutations, (iii) competition experiments between coat protein and viral replicase, and (iv) investigation of the effect of magnesium, we demonstrate that this pseudoknot is required for replication of alfalfa mosaic virus. This conformation resembles the tRNA‐like structure of the related bromo‐ and cucumo‐viruses. A low but specific interaction with yeast CCA‐adding enzyme was found. The existence of two mutually exclusive conformations for the 3′ termini of alfamo‐ and ilar‐virus RNAs could enable the virus to switch from translation to replication and vice versa. The role of coat protein in this modulation and in genome activation is discussed.
Improving Various Reversible Data Hiding Schemes Via Optimal Codes for Binary Covers

In reversible data hiding (RDH), the original cover can be losslessly restored after the embedded information is extracted. Kalker and Willems established a rate-distortion model for RDH, in which they proved out the rate-distortion bound and proposed a recursive code construction. In our previous paper, we improved the recursive construction to approach the rate-distortion bound. In this paper, we generalize the method in our previous paper using a decompression algorithm as the coding scheme for embedding data and prove that the generalized codes can reach the rate-distortion bound as long as the compression algorithm reaches entropy. By the proposed binary codes, we improve three RDH schemes that use binary feature sequence as covers, i.e., an RS scheme for spatial images, one scheme for JPEG images, and a pattern substitution scheme for binary images. The experimental results show that the novel codes can significantly reduce the embedding distortion. Furthermore, by modifying the histogram shift (HS) manner, we also apply this coding method to one scheme that uses HS, showing that the proposed codes can be also exploited to improve integer-operation-based schemes.