Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Critical theory and educational research

This paper explores the concept of 'socially critical' research in education as this term is used in action research. The paper takes a critical incident from a mathematics lesson reported by a teacher in her journal. An analysis is presented of this observation and the teacher's subsequent reflection on the incident in dialogue with the writer. This incident is used to exemplify methodological principles of this research approach, which are briefly outlined at the beginning of the paper.
The Impact of Classroom Evaluation Practices on Students

In most educational programs, a substantial proportion of teacher and student time is devoted to activities which involve (or lead directly to) evaluation by the teacher of student products or behavior. This review summarizes results from 14 specific fields of research that cast light on the relationships between classroom evaluation practices and student outcomes. Particular attention is given to outcomes involving learning strategies, motivation, and achievement. Where possible, mechanisms are suggested that could account for the reported effects. The conclusions derived from the individual fields are then merged to produce an integrated summary with clear implications for effective educational practice. The primary conclusion is that classroom evaluation has powerful direct and indirect impacts, which may be positive or negative, and thus deserves very thoughtful planning and implementation.
In Vitro Simulation and In Vivo Assessment of Tooth Wear: A Meta-Analysis of In Vitro and Clinical Research

Tooth wear may be described as a side-effect of occlusal forces that may be further induced by the common use of contemporary prosthetic materials in practice. The purpose of this systematic review was to appraise existing evidence on enamel wear from both in vitro and clinical research and explore whether evidence from these study designs lies on the same direction. Five databases of published and unpublished research were searched without limitations in August 2019 and study selection criteria included in vitro and clinical research on enamel tooth wear. Study selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment were done independently and in duplicate. Random effects meta-analyses of standardized mean differences (SMDs) or weighted mean differences (WMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were conducted while a Monte Carlo permutation test for meta-regression on the exploration of the effect of the study design on the reported outcomes was planned. A total of 27 studies (23 in vitro and 4 clinical) were eligible while 12 contributed to meta-analyses. Overall, some concerns were raised for the quality of the existing evidence and the potential for risk of bias. Enamel wear (mm) of antagonist teeth was more pronounced when opposed to conventional porcelain compared to machinable ceramics (SMD = 2.18; 95%CIs: 1.34, 3.02; p < 0.001). Polished zirconia resulted in decreased volumetric enamel wear (mm3) of opposing teeth compared to pure natural enamel (SMD = –1.06; 95%CIs: –1.73, –0.39; p = 0.002). Monolithic zirconia showed evidence of enhanced potential for antagonist wear (μm) compared to natural teeth (WMD = 107.38; 95%CIs: 30.46, 184.30; p = 0.01). Study design did not reveal an effect on the tooth wear outcome for the latter comparison when both clinical and in vitro studies were considered (three studies; Monte Carlo test, p = 0.66). In conclusion, there is an overriding need for additional evidence from clinical research to substantiate the findings from the already existing laboratory simulation studies.
The use of outlier detection methods in the log-normal distribution for the identification of atypical varietal experiments

Abstract In this study the Akaike information criterion for detecting outliers in a log-normal distribution is used. Theoretical results were applied to the identification of atypical varietal trials. This is an alternative to the tolerance interval method. Detection of outliers with the help of the Akaike information criterion represents an alternative to the method of testing hypotheses. This approach does not depend on the level of significance adopted by the investigator. It also does not lead to the masking effect of outliers.
Quantum Monte Carlo activation barrier for hydrogen dissociation on copper to unprecedented accuracy

Many chemical reactions involve bond-dissociation. This is also true for reactions at solid surfaces, in which the dissociation step is often limiting but facilitated in comparison to gas phase reaction channels. This work considers hydrogen dissociation. Reliable molecular beam results are available for this reaction at some copper surfaces. Heterogeneous catalysis by copper is simulated. It was investigated in our previous work since it is in many ways a prototype metal presenting a close-packed surface here. These hydrogen molecules are adsorbed at Cu(111) and fixed geometries on the dissociation reaction pathway for stretched and distant equilibrium H$_2$ are given by using Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations in a plane wave basis. The PBE wave-functions at these bond-lengths serve as trial input for Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations of the ground states to obtain highly accurate correlated results for the associated activation barriers indicating the catalytic effect on this dissociation. This correlation varies as bonds dissociate, requiring its accurate evaluation. Finite size effects and fixed-node error are possible limitations to accuracy of this type of QMC study. We are able to limit fixed node error, using certain trial wave-functions. The finite size effect is considerable, although comparing two adsorbed geometries cancels about 90% with respect to clean surfaces. The pseudo-potential used to represent the atomic core of copper must also be determined carefully: we leave 11 active electrons but include the 3d shell in the pseudo-potential.
An Adaptive Exposure Fusion Method Using Fuzzy Logic and Multivariate Normal Conditional Random Fields

High dynamic range (HDR) has wide applications involving intelligent vision sensing which includes enhanced electronic imaging, smart surveillance, self-driving cars, intelligent medical diagnosis, etc. Exposure fusion is an essential HDR technique which fuses different exposures of the same scene into an HDR-like image. However, determining the appropriate fusion weights is difficult because each differently exposed image only contains a subset of the scene’s details. When blending, the problem of local color inconsistency is more challenging; thus, it often requires manual tuning to avoid image artifacts. To address this problem, we present an adaptive coarse-to-fine searching approach to find the optimal fusion weights. In the coarse-tuning stage, fuzzy logic is used to efficiently decide the initial weights. In the fine-tuning stage, the multivariate normal conditional random field model is used to adjust the fuzzy-based initial weights which allows us to consider both intra- and inter-image information in the data. Moreover, a multiscale enhanced fusion scheme is proposed to blend input images when maintaining the details in each scale-level. The proposed fuzzy-based MNCRF (Multivariate Normal Conditional Random Fields) fusion method provided a smoother blending result and a more natural look. Meanwhile, the details in the highlighted and dark regions were preserved simultaneously. The experimental results demonstrated that our work outperformed the state-of-the-art methods not only in several objective quality measures but also in a user study analysis.
A comparable method to Gd-contrast enhancement in the preoperative evaluation of anal fistula

Abstract To explore a comparable method to Gd-contrast enhancement in the preoperative evaluation of anal fistula to evaluate its morphology changes. Forty-six patients with anal fistula were enrolled. Each patient acquired a 3.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) routine sequence, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) sequence and fat suppression T1 weighted imaging (FS T1WI) contrast enhancement (CE) scanning. To record the morphology performances of the internal orifice and the fistulas on the transverse images of fat suppression T2 weighted imaging (FS T2WI), DWI, FS T2WI combined with DWI, FS T1WI Gd-CE, with the standard of the surgical pathology results. Two observers evaluated images in consensus. The conspicuity and the diagnostic performance rate were compared between the 4 imaging data sets. The consistencies of interobservers about the conspicuity scores and the diagnostic performance rates of the internal orifice and the fistula were good. The conspicuity of the internal orifice was higher for the set of FS T2WI, FS T2WI+DWI, and FS T1WI+CE than DWI. The diagnostic performance rate of the internal orifice was higher for the set of FS T2WI, FS T2WI+DWI, and FS T1WI+CE than DWI. The conspicuity of the fistula was higher for the set of FS T2WI+DWI and FS T1WI+CE than FS T2WI or DWI. There were no significantly differences between the 4 sets of FS T2WI, DWI, FS T2WI+DWI, and FS T1WI+CE in the diagnostic performance rate of the fistula. The set of FS T2WI combined with DWI was comparable to FS T1WI CE in evaluation of anal fistula morphology changes.
TROPOMI: solar backscatter satellite instrument for air quality and climate

TROPOMI is a nadir-viewing grating-based imaging spectrograph in the line of OMI and SCIAMACHY. TROPOMI is part of the ESA Candidate Core Explorer Mission proposal TRAQ and also of the CAMEO satellite proposed for the US NRC decadal study. A TROPOMI-like instrument is part of the ESA/EU Sentinel 4&5 pre-phase A studies. TROPOMI covers the OMI wavelengths of 270-490 nm to measure O3, NO2, HCHO, SO2 and aerosols and adds a NIR channel and a SWIR module. The NIR-channel (710-775 nm) is used for improved cloud detection and aerosol height distribution. The SWIR module (2305 - 2385 nm) measures CO and CH4 and forms a separate module because of its thermal requirements. TROPOMI is a non-scanning instrument with an OMI-like telescope but optimized to have smaller ground pixels (10 x 10 km2) and sufficient signal-to-noise for dark scenes (albedo 2 %). TROPOMI has the same wide swath as OMI (2600 km). In TRAQ's mid-inclination orbit, this allows up to 5 daytime observations over mid-latitude regions (Europe, North-America, China). The paper gives a description of the TROPOMI instrument and focuses on several important aspects of the design, for example the sun calibration and detector selection status.
Association of hospital and surgeon volume with mortality following major surgical procedures

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text Abstract Accumulation of the literature has suggested an inverse association between healthcare provider volume and mortality for a wide variety of surgical procedures. This study aimed to perform meta-analysis of meta-analyses (umbrella review) of observational studies and to summarize existing evidence for associations of healthcare provider volume with mortality in major operations. We searched MEDLINE, SCOPUS, and Cochrane Library, and screening of references. Meta-analyses of observational studies examining the association of hospital and surgeon volume with mortality following major operations. The primary outcome is all-cause short-term morality after surgery. Meta-analyses of observational studies of hospital/surgeon volume and mortality were included. Overall level of evidence was classified as convincing (class I), highly suggestive (class II), suggestive (class III), weak (class IV), and non-significant (class V) based on the significance of the random-effects summary odds ratio (OR), number of cases, small-study effects, excess significance bias, prediction intervals, and heterogeneity. Twenty meta-analyses including 4,520,720 patients were included, with 19 types of surgical procedures for hospital volume and 11 types of surgical procedures for surgeon volume. Nominally significant reductions were found in odds ratio in 82% to 84% of surgical procedures in both hospital and surgeon volume-mortality associations. To summarize the overall level of evidence, however, only one surgical procedure (pancreaticoduodenectomy) fulfilled the criteria of class I and II for both hospital and surgeon volume and mortality relationships, with a decrease in OR for hospital (0.42, 95% confidence interval[CI] [0.35–0.51]) and for surgeon (0.38, 95% CI [0.30–0.49]), respectively. In contrast, most of the procedures appeared to be weak or “non-significant. ” Only a very few surgical procedures such as pancreaticoduodenectomy appeared to have convincing evidence on the inverse surgeon volume-mortality associations, and yet most surgical procedures resulted in having weak or “non-significant” evidence. Therefore, healthcare professionals and policy makers might be required to steer their centralization policy more carefully unless more robust, higher-quality evidence emerges, particularly for procedures considered as having a weak or non-significant evidence level including total knee replacement, thyroidectomy, bariatric surgery, radical cystectomy, and rectal and colorectal cancer resections.
Use Of Quantitative Modelling To Elucidate The Roles Of The Liver, Gut, Kidney, And Muscle In Ammonia Homeostasis And How Lactulose And Rifaximin Alter This Homeostasis

Abstract Humans must eliminate approximately 1M of ammonia per day while maintaining the blood concentration of this potent neurotoxin at a concentration of only about 30 µM. The mechanisms producing such effective ammonia homeostasis are poorly understood by clinicians due to the multiple organs (liver, gut, kidney and muscle) involved in ammonia homeostasis. Based on literature values we present a novel, simplified description of normal and disordered ammonia and the potential mechanisms whereby the drugs used to treat hepatic encephalopathy, lactulose and rifaximin, lower the blood ammonia concentration. Concepts discussed include the following: 1) only about 44 mmol of ammonia/day (4.4% of total production) reaches the peripheral circulation due to the efficient linkage of amino deamination and the urea cycle in hepatic mitochondria; 2) the gut and kidney contribute roughly equally to delivery of this 44 mmol/day to systemic blood; 3) the bulk of gut ammonia production seemingly originates in the small bowel from bacterial deamination of urea by bacteria and mucosal deamination of circulating and ingested glutamine; 4) the apparent production of ammonia in the small bowel markedly exceeds that quantity that enters the portal blood, indicating that ammonia disposal mechanisms in the small bowel play a major role in ammonia homeostasis. With regard to the hyperammonemia of chronic liver disease: 1) shunting of portal blood around the liver, by itself, can account for commonly observed ammonia elevations; 2) severe portal hypertension causes an increased release of ammonia by the kidney; 3) high blood ammonia is associated with an unexplained massive increase in the muscle uptake of ammonia that could play an important role in limiting hyperammonemia; and 4) a major action of lactulose administration may be the enhancement of ammonia uptake by small bowel bacteria, while the mechanism of action of rifaximin is unclear.
Three-dimensional cell culture of human mesenchymal stem cells in nanofibrillar cellulose hydrogels

Human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are the most intensely studied and clinically used adult stem cell type. Conventional long-term cultivation of MSCs as a monolayer is known to result in a reduction of their functionality and viability. In addition, large volumes of cell culture medium are required to obtain cell quantities needed for their clinical use. In this proof of concept study, we cultivated human MSCs within a three-dimensional nanofibrillar cellulose (NFC) hydrogel. We show that NFC is biocompatible with human MSCs, and represents a feasible approach to upscaling of their culture.
Thai Family Communication Patterns : Parent-Adolescent Communication and the Well-Being of Thai Families

This study draws from family studies, communication studies, sociology, and psychology to explore Thai parent – adolescent communication. Analysis of the data points to consensual patterns as best representing Thai family communication patterns. As might be expected, hierarchy plays a major role in Thai family communication, with parents striving to maintain their power. However, in consensual family communication, parents try to promote family discussions and initiate open dialogue within in their family while adolescents struggle to share their opinions and to re-negotiate their relationship with their parents. The findings are discussed in terms of their significance for understanding Thai families and family well-being Keywordsfamily communication patterns, family well-being, parentadolescent communication, parentadolescent relationship, Thai family
Measuring Antecedents of Service Quality in Hospitals A Comparative study of LRH and KTH Hospitals Peshawar Region Pakistan

Service quality is one of the most important factors in service industry. This research analyzes the antecedents of service quality in two major hospitals of Peshawar Region Pakistan. Study has identify a enrich theoretical framework and uses a structured questionnaire from 150 patients on equal basis from Leady Reading Hospital LRH and Khyber Teaching Hospital KTH. Study has used multiple regression technique to find importance of each variable and its contribution towards service quality. Study identify that cleanness and ambulance service is important in LRH while patients of KTH consider Blood bank and restaurants as major factors of quality service delivery.
Title Role of hypoxia inducible factor-1 in keratinocyte inflammatory response and neutrophil recruitment Permalink

Background: Hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) is a major regulator of the cellular adaption to low oxygen stress and the innate immune function of myeloid cells. Treatment with the novel HIF-1 stabilizing drug AKB-4924 has been shown to enhance the bactericidal activity of keratinocytes as well as phagocytic cells. In this study, we sought to investigate the effect of pharmacological boosting of HIF-1 with AKB-4924 in keratinocytes and their contribution to the innate immune response. Findings: Treatment with the novel HIF-1 stabilizing drug AKB-4924 can increase keratinocyte production of pro-inflammatory cytokines in vitro and enhance neutrophil recruitment in vivo. Conclusions: HIF plays an important role in cytokine production by keratinocytes and in neutrophil recruitment to the skin. The HIF-boosting drug AKB-4924 has the potential to enhance the immune response even in the complex environment of bacterial skin infections.
Figs and the Diversity of Tropical Rainforests

Abstract Ficus (Moraceae) is arguably one of the most important plant genera in lowland tropical rainforests. A brief review of tropical florulas also demonstrates that Ficus is the only ubiquitously diverse genus in lowland rainforests. Monoecious hemiepiphytic figs, constituting independent radiations in each tropical biome, make up a significant proportion of species everywhere, but in Asia dioecious figs have diversified into a variety of niches, making the assemblages of this region especially speciose. Pioneer attributes have endowed figs with tremendous evolutionary flexibility, while long-range seed dispersal ensures that a high proportion of the regional species pool is represented in local assemblages. Large numbers of Ficus species are able to coexist because many are extremely rare as a result of limited recruitment opportunities, which limits competition. They are nevertheless able to breed at low densities because they possess an efficient, long-range pollination system. These factors are likely to be important in the diversity of other plant groups in the tropics.
Effects of delayed drainage on subsidence modeling and parameter estimation

The use of delayed drainage in land subsidence modeling greatly complicates model calibration, particularly when the thickness of the fine-grained interbeds varies throughout the modeled region. This thesis documents two separate projects (chapters) related to the use of delayed drainage in groundwater flow and subsidence modeling with parameter estimation. The overall goal of these projects was to better understand how delayed drainage affects accurate parameter estimation and how it is currently affecting the subsidence processes occurring in Las Vegas Valley. Chapter 1 describes an investigation on the value of subsidence data for groundwater model calibration considering delayed drainage. The calibration results of 13 hydraulic parameters of a synthetic conceptual model evaluated for 24 test cases indicate that (1) the inverse of the square of the observation values is a reasonable method to weight the observations, (2) spatially abundant subsidence data typically produce superior parameter estimates even with observation error under constant and cyclical pumping, (3) when subsidence data are limited and combined with drawdown data, outstanding results are obtained for constant pumping conditions. However, for cyclical pumping with observation errors, the best parameter estimates are achieved when multiple years of seasonal subsidence data are provided. The results provide useful suggestions for real-world calibration problems. Chapter 2 outlines the development of an updated flow and subsidence model for Las Vegas Valley covering the entire period of development of the basin. The new model includes a subsidence package that takes into account delayed drainage of fine-grained interbeds. Previous models used subsidence packages that assumed instantaneous equilibration of heads across all hydrogeologic units. The new model resulted in an agreement with measured water-level and improved the simulation of land subsidence. The analysis shows that the typical residual subsidence in Las Vegas Valley can be accurately simulated by incorporating delayed drainage in a long-term model. The study also indicates the need for more sophisticated modeling practices that use delayed drainage with parameter estimation processes to accurately calibrate flow and subsidence models.
Nutrition, Religion, and Widowhood in Nigeria

Muslim women have appreciably lower nutritional status than Christian women in Nigeria. This difference is explained by covariates. Accounting for those covariates, we find that Muslim widows enjoy higher nutritional status than Christian widows, particularly in rural areas. The patterns are robust to including village effects and confirmed for mixed-religion ethnic groups. The data are consistent with more favorable processes following widowhood among Muslims, namely, inheritance practices and remarriage options. Muslim widows are less likely to be dispossessed of property or to be mistreated by in-laws. Muslim women are more likely to be chronically undernourished but less nutritionally vulnerable to this marital shock.