Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forging the links between distributed leadership and educational outcomes

Purpose – Several arguments have been put forward about why distributed leadership in schools should contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which conceptual and empirical research in the field is aligned to this goal.Design/methodology/approach – The discussion of alignment was structured around two differing and overlapping conceptions of distributed leadership. The first conception examines the distribution of the leadership of those tasks designated by researchers as leadership tasks. The second conception examines the distribution of influence processes.Findings – The paper finds that the first conception has the advantage of giving leadership educational content by embedding it in the tasks and interactions that constitute educational work. The selected leadership tasks are typically not specified, however, in ways that discriminate the qualities required to make a positive difference to student outcomes. The knowledge base needed to make .
Using acceleration signatures from everyday activities for on-body device location

This paper is part of an effort to facilitate wearable activity recognition using dynamically changing sets of sensors integrated in everyday appliances such as phones, PDAs, watches, headsets etc. A key issue that such systems have to address is the position of the devices on the body. In general each devices can be in a number of different locations (e.g. headset on the head or in on of many pockets). At the same time most activity recognition algorithms require fixed, known sensor positions. Previously we have shown on a small data set how to recognize a set of on-body locations during a walking motion using an accelerometer signed. We now extend the method to work during arbitrary activity. We verify it on a much larger data set with a total 9 hours from real life activity by three divers users ranging from a 70 year old housewife to a 28 year male student.
Tumor‐specific immunity can be enhanced by transfection of tumor cells with syngeneic MHC‐class‐II genes or allogeneic MHC‐class‐I genes

Mouse Sal sarcoma cells are lethal in the autologous A/J (KkDd) host. In order to improve the immune response to the Sal tumor, Sal cells have been transfected with syngeneic MHC‐class‐II or allogeneic MHC‐class‐I genes. MHC‐class‐II transfectants are uniformly rejected by the autologous host and immunization with them protects against subsequent Sal challenge. The improved immunity is probably the result of enhanced generation of tumor‐specific Th cells. We hypothesize that class‐II+ tumor cells trigger an improved Th‐cell response because they directly present Sal tumor antigens in the context of class‐II molecules to Th cells, by‐passing professional APC. Studies by others have demonstrated that antigen presentation requires an intracellular signal transmitted by the cytoplasmic domain of the APC class‐II molecule. Sal cells expressing class‐ll antigens with truncated cytoplasmic domains are as malignant as wild‐type Sal cells. These experiments therefore support the role of tumor‐cell class‐II molecules as antigen presentation elements, and demonstrate the requirement for intact class‐II molecules for tumor protection. Sal cells have also been transfected with allogeneic MHC‐class‐I genes. Although Kb‐transfected cells are not rejected by A/J mice, Db‐transfected Sal cells and Kb‐ plus Db‐transfected cells are rejected. The Db transfectants effectively immunize A/J mice against subsequent Sal challenge. These experiments demonstrate that expression of certain allogeneic MHC‐class‐I genes can lead to tumor‐specific immunity, and that such transfectants can protect against challenges of wild‐type tumor cells. Transfection of tumor cells with syngeneic MHC‐class‐II or allogeneic MHC‐class‐I genes may therefore be a potential strategy for improving tumor‐specific immunity in the autologous host.
Cranberry flavonoids prevent toxic rat liver mitochondrial damage in vivo and scavenge free radicals in vitro

The present study was undertaken for further elucidation of the mechanisms of flavonoid biological activity, focusing on the antioxidative and protective effects of cranberry flavonoids in free radical‐generating systems and those on mitochondrial ultrastructure during carbon tetrachloride‐induced rat intoxication. Treatment of rats with cranberry flavonoids (7 mg/kg) during chronic carbon tetrachloride‐induced intoxication led to prevention of mitochondrial damage, including fragmentation, rupture and local loss of the outer mitochondrial membrane. In radical‐generating systems, cranberry flavonoids effectively scavenged nitric oxide (IC50 = 4.4 ± 0.4 µg/ml), superoxide anion radicals (IC50 = 2.8 ± 0.3 µg/ml) and hydroxyl radicals (IC50 = 53 ± 4 µg/ml). The IC50 for reduction of 1,1‐diphenyl‐2‐picrylhydrazyl radicals (DPPH) was 2.2 ± 0.3 µg/ml. Flavonoids prevented to some extent lipid peroxidation in liposomal membranes and glutathione oxidation in erythrocytes treated with UV irradiation or organic hydroperoxides as well as decreased the rigidity of the outer leaflet of the liposomal membranes. The hepatoprotective potential of cranberry flavonoids could be due to specific prevention of rat liver mitochondrial damage. The mitochondria‐addressed effects of flavonoids might be related both to radical‐scavenging properties and modulation of various mitochondrial events. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Conversion of cortisone to compound F.

In this Journal Burton, Keutmann, and Waterhouse (1) published data concerning excretion of corticosteroids in patients treated with cortisone. They concluded that cortisone is convertible into compound F in the human body and that an extra-adrenal mechanism is the most important one. In enzymatic studies we have confirmed these findings (2). After the incubation of cortisone with liver homogenates of rat, pork, and beef we demonstrated the presence of 17-hydroxycorticosterone (compound F) on paper chromatograms. The activity of rat liver in transforming cortisone to compound F varied from 10 to 80 per cent of the incubated cortisone; beef adrenals showed considerably less activity; rat kidneys and muscles gave negative results. The highest activity was in whole liver homogenates. After a differential centrifugation procedure microsomes, not mitochondria, were most active, whereas the supernatant fraction obtained at 105400 ×g demonstrated no activity. These data indicate that the enzyme system is associa.
Ethical considerations in synthesising research ‐ Whose representations?

Research syntheses play a powerful role in shaping further research, practice, policy and public perceptions. Accordingly, the ethical issues associated with how perspectives of different groups are included or censored in a research synthesis report must be paid adequate attention. Any research synthesis is inherently influenced by subjectivities associated with multiple layers of interpretation, selection and representation. In framing a research synthesis, it is vital that synthesists take into account: multiple interests and influences of different stakeholders; potential impact of the synthesis on different stakeholders; synthesists’ own multiple and shifting identities within the synthesis; synthesists’ methodological positioning within the synthesis; status accorded to authors and participants of the primary research studies included in the synthesis; influences of funding agencies; politics of who/what gets published; and biases introduced through common strategies for retrieving primary research studies. I have raised strategic questions and issues to structure and inform critical decision‐making throughout a synthesis process. I hope this article will stimulate debate and discussion on various ethical considerations associated with the process of synthesising research.
Cancellable multimodal biometric user authentication system with fuzzy vault

Biometrics refers to authentication techniques that rely on humans physical and behavioral characteristics that can be automatically checked. Biometric based authentication system provides robust security and ease of use than conventional methods of verification system. Multimodal biometric system is one of the major areas of study identified with large applications in recognition system. Unimodal biometric systems challenge with a wide variety of problems such as noisy data, Intra-class variations, non-universality, and spoof attacks. Some of these limitations can be solved in multimodal biometric system. In proposed work, face and fingerprint biometric traits are used for multimodal biometric authentication system. Biometric traits are transformed using distortion algorithm. After the transformation processes pre-processing of images are done to improve the clear visibility of images. The extractions of minutiae features from fingerprint are achieved using Crossing Number concept and the face features are extracted using the Local Binary Pattern algorithm. To combine both the face and fingerprint features feature level fusion is used. In order to provide additional security to the proposed work the fuzzy vault is introduced by adding duplicate values and having a secret key to lock and unlock the system. Fuzzy vault and distortion acts as an additional layer of security in multimodal biometric user authentication system.
A Rtigo a Rt I C L E

We conducted a case-control study of the association between SIL and HPV among whites (W) , African Americans (AA), and Hispanics (H) in Harris County, Tex a s . Cases were identified at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Colposcopy Clinic. C o n t rols were identified among women obtaining routine Pap screening at two Harris County Health De p a rtment Clinics. H P V was detected by a PCR-based fluorescent assay. Dichotomous and polytomous logistic re g re s s i o n models were used to estimate adjusted odd ratios (AOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for SIL among racial/ethnic groups and grade of disease. Pre valence of HPV infection was 64% in l ow grade SIL (LSIL), 84% in high grade SIL (HSIL), and 19% in contro l s . Risk of SIL was higher in H than in W and AA, AOR 29.5 (12.4-70.5), 15.3 (6.0-33.8), and 5.8 (2.6-12.6), re s p e c t i ve l y. Si m i l a rl y, racial/ethnic differences were observed for both LSIL (AOR = 16.6, 7 . 7 , and 4.3, re s p e ct i vely) and HSIL (AOR = 78.6, 3 4 . 6 , and 14.2, re s p e c t i ve l y ) . Findings support the association between SIL and HPV and differences in the strength of the association with LSILs and HSILs. Da t a also suggest a higher risk for H and a lower risk for AA.
Malware Similarity Identification Using Call Graph Based System Call Subsequence Features

Recent literature has proposed approaches to detect code-sharing relationships between malware artifacts, which helps to accelerate the malware reverse engineering process. In this paper we propose a novel code-sharing analysis technique that can complement existing methods. Our algorithm partitions malware system call logs into system call subsequences by identifying places in these logs where the set of saved instruction pointers on the program call stack changes significantly. The extracted subsequences thus reflect subsequences of system calls that occur in local regions of the program call graph. Having extracted subsequences, we then use the subsequences as features for computing a malware sample similarity matrix. A unique contribution of our method is that it incorporates sequence information into the features it uses to perform similarity analysis, but unlike previously proposed longest common substring methods it runs in linear time. Similarly, our method incorporates call stack information into its features but is computationally far more tractable than previously proposed call graph isomorphism techniques. Because we extract information from sample behavior logs, we avoid the problem of obfuscated samples resistant to static analysis tools. We have evaluated our method on a corpus of 959 samples and achieve high precision given known malware family labels.
Network Deployment for Maximal Energy Efficiency in Uplink with Zero-Forcing

This work aims to design a cellular network for maximal energy efficiency (EE). In particular, we consider the uplink with multi-antenna base stations and assume that zero- forcing (ZF) combining is used for data detection with imperfect channel state information. Using stochastic geometry and a new lower bound on the average per-user spectral efficiency of the network, we optimize the pilot reuse factor, number of antennas and users per base station. Closed- form expressions are computed from which valuable insights into the interplay between the optimization variables, hardware characteristics, and propagation environment are obtained. Numerical results are used to validate the analysis and make comparisons with a network using maximum ratio (MR) combining. The results show that a Massive MIMO setup arises as the EE-optimal network configuration. In addition, ZF provides higher EE than MR while allowing a smaller pilot reuse factor and a more dense network deployment.
Measurements of Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, and tensile strength of polysilicon

New techniques and procedures are described that enable one to measure the mechanical properties of polysilicon films that are 3.5 /spl mu/m thick. Polysilicon is deposited onto a silicon substrate which is then etched away to leave a tensile specimen in the middle of the die. The grip ends of the structure are glued to the grips of a linear air bearing attached to a piezoelectrically actuated loading system. Strain is measured directly on the specimen with laser interferometry. The specimens are fabricated at the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina with their MUMPs process. The results of 48 tests on five different sets of MUMPs specimens yield the following material properties: Young's modulus=169/spl plusmn/6.15 GPa, Poisson's ratio=0.22/spl plusmn/0.011, and tensile strength=1.20/spl plusmn/0.15 GPa These values have a reasonably low coefficient of variation which demonstrates the consistency of both the processing and the measurement techniques.
Cell transplantation for spinal cord injury focusing on iPSCs

Introduction: Reports of functional recovery from spinal cord injury (SCI) after the transplantation of neural stem cells (NSCs) derived from fetus/embryonic stem cells (ESCs), has raised great expectations for the successful clinical use of stem cell transplantation therapy. However, the ethical issues involved in destroying human embryos or fertilized oocytes to obtain NSCs have been a major obstacle to developing clinically useful stem cell sources, and the transplantation of stem cells isolated from other human embryonic tissues has not yet been developed for use in clinical applications. Areas covered: Recently, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can serve as a source of cells for autologous transplantation, have been attracting a great deal of attention as a clinically viable alternative to stem cells obtained directly from tissues. In this review, the authors outline the neural induction of ESC/iPSC, their therapeutic efficacy in SCI and their safety in vivo. Expert opinion: Although iPSCs offer great promise as the cell source for autologous transplantation for SCI, safety issues including tumorigenicity should be determined prior to the clinical trial.
Selective Extensions in Game-Tree Search †

Although most of today’s chess playing programs still adopt a brute-force approach in their search region, much has been done on search extensions to make the effort spent more worthwhile. In this paper, we discuss some successful search extension heuristics in the domain of Chinese Chess, a game that bears much resemblance to chess. We restrict our experiments to the following: knowledge search extensions, singular extensions, null move search (both in the brute-force and the quiescence search phase) and futility cutoffs. These heuristics have been implemented in Abyss, a Chinese Chess program participating in the 3rd Computer Olympiad. From the algorithmic point of view, since Chinese Chess differs most from chess in its repetition rules, some discussion is also devoted to that matter.
Spatiality, Built Form, and Creative Industry Development in the Inner City

Theoretical treatments of new industry formation within the inner city emphasise the significance of agglomeration economies, social relations, institutional factors, and representational (semiotic) features of the landscape. The author contributes to a larger understanding of generative processes of industrial innovation in the urban core by demonstrating through theoretical synthesis and case studies, the critical roles played by ‘material’ (or physical) space and form. First, Soja's idea of the ‘industry-shaping power of spatiality’ in the new economic spaces of the post-Fordist metropolis is interpreted as the boundedness of inner-city space, the intimacy of urban landscapes, and the integrity of urban form. Second, the cogency of Helbrecht's injunction regarding the complementarity of abstractive and ‘concrete’ dimensions of urban space in knowledge-based industry clusters is demonstrated by case-study references situated in London, Vancouver, and Singapore. Third, the author draws on Markus's incisive analysis of principal building types (and ‘durable taxonomies' of building function and social meaning) to link historic and contemporary industrialisation processes, including the comingling of production, housing, and consumption. The nexus of theoretical integration lies in the articulation of three-dimensional industrial landscapes comprised of physical space and form as well as symbolic constructs.
Population Forecasting with Endogenous Migration: An Application to Trans-Tasman Migration

Official population projections are often based on cohort component methods in which migration levels or rates enter exogenously. When net migration accounts for a large proportion of population change and fluctuates strongly, more reliable population forecasts can be derived by explicitly forecasting migration first. This article focuses on forecasting migration between Australia and New Zealand (trans-Tasman migration), which is largely visa-free and therefore resembles internal migration. Net trans-Tasman migration is a major component of New Zealand population change and is embedded in this article in a Bayesian or unrestricted vector autoregression (VAR) model, which includes foreign and domestic economic variables. When time series of net migration are available, this approach provides a useful input into forecasting population growth in the short run in the absence of major policy changes. This conclusion applies equally to interregional migration and to unrestricted international migration between economically integrated nations.
Gene Mutations Resulting in the Development of ARVC/D Could Affect Cells of the Cardiac Conduction System

In contrast to epithelial cells, cardiomyocytes are connected by complex hybrid-type adhering junctions, termed composite junctions (areae compositae). Composite junctions are found to be composed of typical desmosomal as well as adherens junction proteins. Therefore, in adult mammalian cardiomyocytes desmosomal proteins are not restricted to the relatively small desmosomes but are indirectly involved in anchoring the myofibrillar actin filaments. Subsequent investigations revealed that the formation of composite junctions is a rather late event during mammalian heart development and vertebrate heart evolution. Nascent, more round shaped cardiomyocytes of early developmental stages are connected by desmosomes and separate adherens junctions quite similar to cells of epithelial origin. During progression of development both types of adhering junctions seem to gradually fuse at the two poles of the mature mammalian cardiomyocytes to establish the hybrid-type composite junctions. Recently, we demonstrated that the specialized cardiomyocytes of the cardiac conduction system exhibit high amounts of desmosomes, not fully established composite junctions and adherens junctions. This underlines the fact that cells of the cardiac conduction system are known to resemble cardiomyocytes in their nascent state and do not undergo working myocardial differentiation. However, the astonishing high amount of desmosomal protein containing adhering junctions connecting, e.g., Purkinje fibers raises the possibility that pacemaker and conductive tissue may be affected by desmosomal gene mutations in ARVC/D patients.
Oxidative stress-induced dysregulation of arteriolar wall shear stress and blood pressure in hyperhomocysteinemia is prevented by chronic vitamin C treatment.

We aimed to test the hypothesis that an enhanced level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is primarily responsible for the impairment of nitric oxide (NO)-mediated regulation of arteriolar wall shear stress (WSS) in hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy). Thus flow/WSS-induced dilations of pressurized gracilis muscle arterioles (basal diameter: approximately 170 microm) isolated from control (serum Hcy: 6 +/- 1 microM), methionine diet-induced HHcy rats (4 wk, serum Hcy: 30 +/- 6 microM), and HHcy rats treated with vitamin C, a known antioxidant (4 wk, 150 mg. kg body wt-1.day-1; serum Hcy: 32 +/- 10 microM), were investigated. In vessels of HHcy rats, increases in intraluminal flow/WSS-induced dilations were converted to constrictions. Constrictions were unaffected by inhibition of NO synthesis by N omega-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME). Vitamin C treatment of HHcy rats reversed the WSS-induced arteriolar constrictions to L-NAME-sensitive dilations but did not affect control responses. Similar changes in responses were obtained for the calcium ionophore A-23187. In addition, diastolic and mean arterial blood pressure and serum 8-isoprostane levels (a marker of in vivo oxidative stress) were significantly elevated in rats with HHcy, changes that were normalized by vitamin C treatment. Taken together, our data show that in chronic HHcy long-term vitamin C treatment, by decreasing oxidative stress in vivo, enhanced NO bioavailability, restored the regulation of shear stress in arterioles, and normalized systemic blood pressure. Thus our study provides evidence that oxidative stress is an important in vivo mechanism that is primarily responsible for the development of endothelial dysregulation of WSS in HHcy.
The Artifical Fertilization of Date-Palms in the Time of Ashur-Nasir-Pal B.C. 885-860

The purpose of this note is to draw attention to facts which have long been known to Assyriologists but have not yet been integrated in the history of botany. It is one of the curiosities of the history of science that the scientific knowledge of plant sexuality was not established until I694 while an empirical knowledge of it in the cases of date-palm and fig-tree was immemorial (i). This contrast is the more remarkable because that empirical knowledge had not remained purely traditional but had been expressed in telling words by the early Greek writers. In his history of botany JULIUS VON SACHS traced the literary accounts of plant sexuality back to THEOPHRASTUS, but he might have adduced a text a century earlier, namely the one found in the History of HERODOTUS (Book I, chapter I93), dealing with the fruitfulness of Babylonia:
An Empirical Test of an Attributional Model of Leaders' Responses to Poor Performance.

Two studies tested an attributional model of leaders' responses to poor performance. The results showed that (1) consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness helped in determining attributions, (2) that internal attributions led to punitive responses on the part of supervisors, and (3) that supervisors used more internal attributions and punitive responses when the consequences of the performance were serious than not serious.