Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diode-pumped 2-μm pulse laser with noncomposite Tm,Ho:YLF rod conduction-cooled down to -80°C.

Q-switched operation of a diode-side-pumped, conduction-cooled Tm,Ho:YLF laser oscillator with 100-mJ output at a pulse repetition rate of 20 Hz and an eye-safe wavelength of 2-μm was achieved. The noncomposite Tm,Ho:YLF laser rod was conduction-cooled down to -80°C through thermal contact of In films from Cu heat sinks, and the laser diode arrays were conduction-cooled to approximately 20°C using Cu heat sinks in a vacuum container. A ring resonator of 3.86 m length with an acousto-optic Q-switch was used. The pulse width was 125 ns, and optical-to-optical efficiency was approximately 7% for an output of 100 mJ. The laser is used at 2.05 μm for applications of Doppler wind lidar measurements, CO2 differential absorption lidar measurements, and aerosol profiling.
Detracking in Context: How Local Constructions of Ability Complicate Equity-Geared Reform

Background/Context Recent sociocultural studies of detracking describe the ways in which notions of ability—local understandings of students’ intellectual capacities—are at play in these settings, shaping both the politics and the practice of the reform. This study extends this examination into the classrooms of detracking schools. Purpose This article considers the enactment of detracking in the ninth grade social studies classrooms of three public high schools. Through a detailed look at classroom life in racially and socioeconomically distinct public high school settings, it explores how local notions of ability shape the implementation of classroom practices in general and of detracking reform in particular. Setting The research took place in three public comprehensive high schools in a northeastern state with the following student populations: 1) low income and predominantly African American and Latino students; 2) high income and predominantly White students; 3) socioeconomically diverse and predominantly African American and White students. Research Design This study used an interpretive research methodology and a multiple case study design. Data Collection and Analysis Data was collected at each of the three schools over the course of an academic year in the following ways: 1) extensive observations of detracked ninth grade social studies classes; 2) interviews with students and teachers participating in those classes; 3) shadowing of students through the school day; 4) collection of school generated documents. Findings/Results At the low income, majority African American and Latino school, detracking reform was framed by a discourse of deficit that posited all of the school's students as unwaveringly low in ability, and classroom practices provided little opportunity for students to either display or develop competence. In contrast, detracking at the suburban, homogeneous school spurred a creative curriculum targeted to the needs of individual students in the heterogeneous classroom, all of whom were presumed to be bright, motivated and college bound despite varied skills. At the racially and socioeconomically integrated school, a community and school system in which people were highly concerned with issues of equity and diversity, teaching practices in the detracked classroom emphasized flexibility and personalization, providing opportunities for students to examine social and cultural issues in a discussion-centered framework. Students, both within and among the three schools, experienced detracking reform in ways that were distinct and not equally beneficial. Conclusions Translating a structural reform into change that is meaningful for students is a complex endeavor. Effective detracking involves changes at multiple levels: in institutional structures, classroom practices, and teacher and student beliefs about ability.
Reaching and treating Spanish‐speaking smokers through the National Cancer Institute's cancer information service

Although the prevalence of smoking is lower among Hispanics than among the general population, smoking still levies a heavy public health burden on this underserved group. The current study, Adiós al Fumar (Goodbye to Smoking), was designed to increase the reach of the Spanish‐language smoking cessation counseling service provided by the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Information Service (CIS) and to evaluate the efficacy of a culturally sensitive, proactive, behavioral treatment program among Spanish‐speaking smokers. Adiós was a 2‐group randomized clinical trial evaluating a telephone‐based smoking cessation intervention. Spanish‐speaking smokers (N = 297) were randomized to receive either standard counseling or enhanced counseling (EC). Paid media was used to increase the reach of the Spanish‐language smoking cessation services offered by the CIS. The Adiós sample was of very low socioeconomic status (SES), and more than 90% were immigrants. Calls to the CIS requesting smoking cessation help in Spanish increased from 0.39 calls to 17.8 calls per month. The unadjusted effect of EC only approached significance (OR = 2.4, P = .077), but became significant after controlling for demographic and tobacco‐related variables (OR = 3.8, P = .048). Adiós al Fumar demonstrated that it is possible to reach, retain, and deliver an adequate dose of treatment to a very low SES population that has traditionally been viewed as difficult to reach and hard to follow. Moreover, the findings suggest that a proactive, telephone‐counseling program, based on the Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence Clinical Practice Guideline and adapted to be culturally appropriate for Hispanics, is effective. Cancer 2007. © 2006 American Cancer Society.
Mastery Learning: Partly Boon, Partly Boondoggle

In the process of this analysis, components of the mastery model will be contrasted with components of other instructional models, and their relative advantages and disadvantages will be discussed. This approach is somewhat problematic in that it presupposes the existence of a catalogue of discrete instructional models, with their respective components formally recognized and established. Such is not the case. Existing instructional models, to the extent that they have been formalized at all, tend to overlap in their inclusion of and emphasis on various instructional and evaluative components. And even then there is not total consensus among proponents of the individual models. Perhaps, then, it would be more appropriate to say that this article will examine components of the family of mastery models, contrast them with components of real and hypothetical alternative models, and discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Sulfobutyl Ether7 β-Cyclodextrin (SBE7 β-CD) Carbamazepine Complex: Preparation, Characterization, Molecular Modeling, and Evaluation of In Vivo Anti-epileptic Activity

The objective of the present investigation was to study the ability of sulfobutyl ether7-β-cyclodextrin to form an inclusion complex with carbamazepine, an anti-epileptic drug with poor water solubility. The formation of the complex was carried out using the industrially feasible spray-drying method. The inclusion complex and physical mixtures were characterized by various techniques such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), infrared (IR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and molecular modeling. The DSC, IR, and NMR studies confirmed the formation of an inclusion complex between carbamazepine and sulfobutyl ether7 β-cyclodextrin whereas XRD studies indicated an amorphous nature of the inclusion complex. Molecular modeling studies disclosed different modes of interaction between carbamazepine and sulfobutyl ether7 β-cyclodextrin with good correlation with experimental observations. The inclusion complex exhibited significantly higher in vitro dissolution profile as compared with pure carbamazepine powder. The in vivo anti-epileptic activity of carbamazepine/sulfobutyl ether7 β-cyclodextrin complex was evaluated in pentylenetetrazole-induced convulsions model. The carbamazepine/sulfobutyl ether7 β-cyclodextrin complex showed significantly higher anti-epileptic activity (p <0.01) as compared with that of carbamazepine suspension on oral administration.
The Abstract Nature of Syntactic Representations: Consequences for a Theory of Learning

Introduction The modern study of syntax begins with the observation that people can produce and understand sentences that they have never heard before (Chomsky 1957). From this observation, we conclude that linguistic knowledge must be in the form of a generative symbol system. The term generative, in this context, refers to the property that a finite number of symbols describes a potentially infinite set of sentences. When someone knows a language he possesses a system of mental representations and computations that allows for the generation of an unbounded number of novel expressions. Of course, not any novel arrangement of words counts as a sentence and so the system must be constrained to distinguish the possible from the impossible. In short, syntactic knowledge consists of a system of rules and representations that allows for the generation of all and only the sentences that are possible in a given language.
A comparison of development effort estimation techniques for Web hypermedia applications

Several studies have compared the prediction accuracy of different types of techniques with emphasis placed on linear and stepwise regressions, and case-based reasoning (CBR). We believe the use of only one type of CBR technique may bias the results, as there are others that can also be used for effort prediction. This paper has two objectives. The first is to compare the prediction accuracy of three CBR techniques to estimate the effort to develop Web hypermedia applications. The second objective is to compare the prediction accuracy of the best CBR technique, according to our findings, against three commonly used prediction models, namely multiple linear regression, stepwise regression and regression trees. One dataset was used in the estimation process and the results showed that different measures of prediction accuracy gave different results. MMRE and MdMRE showed better prediction accuracy for multiple regression models whereas box plots showed better accuracy for CBR.
Outcome and Severe Hemorrhagic Complications of Intravenous Thrombolysis With Tissue Plasminogen Activator in Very Old (≥80 Years) Stroke Patients

Background and Purpose— Information on safety and efficacy of intravenous thrombolysis with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) (IV-tPA) in very old acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients is scarce. We studied outcome and severe hemorrhagic complications in patients aged 80 and older. Methods— We analyzed data of AIS patients, treated with IV-tPA, in 3 German stroke centers. Neurologic deficit on admission was assessed using the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS). Outcome was assessed after 90 days using the Modified Rankin Scale (MRS), and favorable outcome was defined as a MRS score of 0 to 1. Severe intracerebral bleeding complications were assessed on follow-up magnetic resonance imaging or cranial computed tomography. Data were compared between patients <80 years of age and patients aged ≥80 years. Results— A total of 228 patients were treated with IV-tPA; 38 (16%) were 80 years or older. There was no difference in NIHSS on admission or onset to treatment time between younger and older patients. Less patients ≥80 years of age achieved a favorable outcome (26.3 versus 46.8%, P=0.021), and mortality was higher in older patients (21.1 versus 5.3%, P=0.004). There was no difference in the rate of parenchymal hemorrhage (6.3%<80 years versus 5.3%≥80 years, P=1.000) and symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (2.6%<80 years versus 2.6%≥80 years, P=1.000) between both groups. Conclusion— There is no increase in severe intracerebral hemorrhage after IV-tPA in very old patients, but outcome is worse as compared with younger patients. There is no evidence to exclude ischemic stroke patients from thrombolysis based on a predefined age threshold.
A simple technique for bounding the pointwise redundancy of the 1978 Lempel-Ziv algorithm

If x is a string of finite length over a finite alphabet A, let LZ(x) denote the length of the binary codeword assigned to x by the 1978 version of the Lempel-Ziv data compression algorithm, let t(x) be the number of phrases in the Lempel-Ziv parsing of x, and let /spl mu/(x) be the probability assigned to x by a memoryless source model. Using a very simple technique, we probe the pointwise redundancy bound LZ(x)+log/sub 2//spl mu/(x)/spl les/8t(x)max{-log/sub 2//spl mu/(a):a/spl isin/A}.
The False-Positive in Universal Newborn Hearing Screening

Objectives. Concern has been raised about the frequency and subsequent emotional effect of a false-positive result during universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS). This study describes: 1) the results of 1 UNHS program and a potential method to significantly reduce the false-positive rate, and 2) the effect a false-positive result has on lasting maternal anxiety toward their children as well as their views toward UNHS in general. Methods. A retrospective analysis was conducted using data from 5010 infants screened with an automated auditory brainstem response (ABR) at the Women's Hospital of Greensboro (WHOG) from July 6, 1998 to June 30, 1999. In addition, a structured telephone survey was given to mothers of infants who had failed the initial hearing screen (stage 1) and who had completed an outpatient rescreen (stage 2). Results. Confirmed hearing loss occurred in non-neonatal intensive care unit infants at a rate of 1.8/1000. A false-positive rate of 1.9% occurred during stage 1 of UNHS (screening before newborn discharge). We attribute this relatively low rate to rescreening of 51% of those newborns who failed the initial screen before hospital discharge. Eighty percent of these rescreened infants passed, thus needing no additional follow-up. If we had rescreened all infants before discharge, the false-positive rate would have approached . 5%. Results of the survey were reassuring with regard to lasting emotional effects of false-positive tests. Only 9% of mothers said they “treated their child differently” before outpatient rescreening, and only 14% reported any lasting anxiety after their child passed the outpatient repeat screen. Although none reached statistical significance, potential risk factors for lasting anxiety include more educated mothers, lack of understanding of UNHS, and a false-positive result in both stage 1 and stage 2. Over 90% of all mothers believed that UNHS was a good idea. Conclusions. By rescreening all infants before hospital discharge, the false-positive rate of UNHS performed using automated ABR can be reduced to <1%. However, for the false-positive results that do occur, any long-lasting and detrimental emotional impact between mother and infant seems to be small and could be reduced even more with improved understanding about UNHS.
The time course of lipid formation in human sebaceous glands.

To observe the time course of lipid formation in human sebaceous glands, intradermal injections of [l-14C]acetate were made at a separate site each day in the scalps of 3 male volunteer subjects for 2 weeks. Following the final injection, the marked sites were removed with a full-thickness, 4-mm punch biopsy, and most of the subcutaneous fat was removed. The lipids were extracted from the biopsy specimens with chloroform:methanol and fractionated by thin-layer chromatography. The radioactivity in squalene, wax esters, triglycerides, and phospholipids was measured by autoradiography or by scintillation counting of the recovered lipid fractions. Quantitation of the amounts of the lipid fractions was achieved by charring and photodensitometry of thin-layer chromatograms. The data showed that during the experimental period the radioactivity in wax esters increased linearly more than 3-fold relative to both squalene and triglycerides while the radioactivity in phospholipids declined. This suggests that during sebaceous cell maturation the quantity of wax esters continues to increase after squalene and triglyceride synthesis has ceased and that the additional material for wax ester synthesis could come from fatty acids liberated by the degradation of phospholipids. The data serve to explain the low incorporation of radioactivity into wax esters, relative to squalene, that has frequently been observed in incubations of sebaceous tissue with labeled substrates. The results also provide an explanation for the less rapid decline in the proportion of wax esters in human skin surface lipid, relative to triglycerides, which occurs in the early stages of long-term starvation.
What is Expected of an Object-Oriented Data Model?

First consider a set of deductive databases (DDBs), each of which consists of de nite clauses. Consider each DDB as a set object with a type f dc g, where dc speci es a language. We can add an object identi er to each DDB and introduce an extent hierarchy [Ma] between object identi ers. By using such a hierarchy, we can express various kinds of DDBs under the hierarchy, construct new DDBs dynamically by changing the hierarchy or modifying a DDB, and pose a query to a
A framework for the comparison of nested software decompositions

The evaluation of results obtained from software clustering algorithms has attracted the attention of many reverse engineering researchers. Several methods that compare flat decompositions of software systems have been presented in the literature. However, software clustering algorithms often produce nested decompositions. Converting nested decompositions to flat ones in order to compare them may remove significant information. We introduce a framework called END that reuses comparison methods for flat decompositions in order to compare nested decompositions without loss of information. We also present experimental results with END using several existing methods as plugins that demonstrate its usefulness.
Joint range adjustment and channel assignment for overlap mitigation in dense WLANs

Dense wireless networks require advanced interference management for the performance improvement. In carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) networks, the mutual interference can be modeled as the overlap area, and range adjustment, such as transmission power control (TPC) and dynamic channel assignment (DCA), is effective to reduce the overlap area. A game-theoretic framework is utilized to construct a joint TPC and DCA scheme which reduces the total overlap area. Although the evaluation of the overlap area requires topology of neighboring APs, i.e., received power levels among neighboring APs are required, the proposed scheme does not require such information because decomposed overlap areas between any two APs are utilized. Moreover, unilateral improvement dynamics of channel assignment are guaranteed to converge to a Nash equilibrium because the game is shown to be a potential game. We evaluate the proposed scheme through simulations and experiments. Simulation results reveal that the proposed joint TPC and DCA scheme effectively reduces the total overlap area compared to another game-theoretic interference management scheme particularly when the number of APs is large. It is because the proposed scheme can efficiently manage the coverage overlap even when there is a variation in transmission power level. Experimental results demonstrate the convergence of the proposed scheme in a real environment.
The Continuous Hint Factory - Providing Hints in Vast and Sparsely Populated Edit Distance Spaces

Intelligent tutoring systems can support students in solving multi-step tasks by providing hints regarding what to do next. However, engineering such next-step hints manually or via an expert model becomes infeasible if the space of possible states is too large. Therefore, several approaches have emerged to infer next-step hints automatically, relying on past students' data. In particular, the Hint Factory (Barnes & Stamper, 2008) recommends edits that are most likely to guide students from their current state towards a correct solution, based on what successful students in the past have done in the same situation. Still, the Hint Factory relies on student data being available for any state a student might visit while solving the task, which is not the case for some learning tasks, such as open-ended programming tasks. In this contribution we provide a mathematical framework for edit-based hint policies and, based on this theory, propose a novel hint policy to provide edit hints in vast and sparsely populated state spaces. In particular, we extend the Hint Factory by considering data of past students in all states which are similar to the student's current state and creating hints approximating the weighted average of all these reference states. Because the space of possible weighted averages is continuous, we call this approach the Continuous Hint Factory. In our experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that the Continuous Hint Factory can predict more accurately what capable students would do compared to existing prediction schemes on two learning tasks, especially in an open-ended programming task, and that the Continuous Hint Factory is comparable to existing hint policies at reproducing tutor hints on a simple UML diagram task.
Group Invariant Deep Representations for Image Instance Retrieval

Most image instance retrieval pipelines are based on comparison of vectors known as global image descriptors between a query image and the database images. Due to their success in large scale image classification, representations extracted from Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are quickly gaining ground on Fisher Vectors (FVs) as state-of-the-art global descriptors for image instance retrieval. While CNN-based descriptors are generally remarked for good retrieval performance at lower bitrates, they nevertheless present a number of drawbacks including the lack of robustness to common object transformations such as rotations compared with their interest point based FV counterparts. In this paper, we propose a method for computing invariant global descriptors from CNNs. Our method implements a recently proposed mathematical theory for invariance in a sensory cortex modeled as a feedforward neural network. The resulting global descriptors can be made invariant to multiple arbitrary transformation groups while retaining good discriminativeness. Based on a thorough empirical evaluation using several publicly available datasets, we show that our method is able to significantly and consistently improve retrieval results every time a new type of invariance is incorporated. We also show that our method which has few parameters is not prone to overfitting: improvements generalize well across datasets with different properties with regard to invariances. Finally, we show that our descriptors are able to compare favourably to other state-of-the-art compact descriptors in similar bitranges, exceeding the highest retrieval results reported in the literature on some datasets. A dedicated dimensionality reduction step --quantization or hashing-- may be able to further improve the competitiveness of the descriptors.
Characteristics of Fire-Setters a Study and Proposed Multiaxial Psychiatric Classification

Background The study set out to review the relationship between mental disorder and fire-setting. Method Sociodemographic, psychiatric, and medical data were retrospectively obtained from case notes of a group of 36 fire-setters referred to the North West Thames Forensic Psychiatry Service over a four-year period. Results Of the sample, 28% were female and one-third had no mental illness; 28% had a previous medical history of possible relevance. Psychoactive substance abuse was common. There was a significant disturbance of interpersonal relationships. Eighty-five per cent lived alone, and 44% of the female fire-setters had a history of sexual abuse. Conclusion On the basis of this study, a multiaxial classification system of fire-setting is proposed.