Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing Inquiry and Reflection Skills in Student-Teachers: The Use of Action Research

In this paper, I present a study I conducted in the University of Athens on the reflective orientation of teacher education and the ways student teachers interpreted it. The paper consists of three parts. The first part presents the theoretical framework of the course: action research and the reflective model of teacher education. The second part attempts to roughly describe the course, focusing on the parameters governing its reflective perspective: it is an investigation of the student teachers' beliefs, tacit knowledge on teaching and awareness of their influence on their decisions in practice. The third part presents the results of the analysis of student teachers' journals, that confirmed the dynamics developed through the interaction of student teachers both in research groups and in the plenary meetings, where views could be exchanged and questions supported the development of a reflective practice. However, it also revealed the limitations and dysfunctions of this effort, mainly due to the dominant culture of technical rationality, which was only slightly changed by the way the course was organised.
Astemizole, a Second-Generation Histamine H1-Receptor Antagonist, Did Not Attenuate the Aggregation Process of α-Synuclein In Vitro

The antihistamine astemizole has shown disease-modifying effects in several preclinical disease models of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Astemizole also interacts with an anomalous aggregation of Alzheimer’s disease-related amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide and has inhibitory activity on the human prion protein PrPSc. We hypothesized that the proposed preclinical benefits of astemizole on PD can be associated with the attenuation of pathological α-synuclein (α-syn) aggregation. We tested the effects of astemizole on the fibrillation processes of amyloid peptides using thioflavin T aggregation monitoring, Congo red spectral analysis, cell viability study, and transmission electron microscopic imaging. We found that astemizole did not inhibit α-syn aggregation in vitro even at a high molar ratio but inhibited the assembly of Aβ aggregates. Our results suggest that the inhibitory effect of astemizole on amyloid formation is target-protein selective, and the proposed beneficial effects of this compound observed in translational PD models might not be due to its ameliorating effects on α-syn aggregation.
A Formal Framework for the Derivation of Machine-Specific Optimizers

The derivation of machine-specific code optimizers starts from a description of the target machine. A formal instruction-set semantics precisely defmes the concepts characteristic to the machine-code level, such as addressing modes and instructions, side effects, and overlapping of registers or memory cells. The context information relevant for local optimizations is defined by abstract interpretation of instruction semantics. This leads to a notion of instruction equivalence relative to a given context. Based on this notion, optimization rules whose machine-specific applicability criteria can be derived automatically are introduced. The formal nature of this approach serves not only to guarantee the correctness of these criteria, but also to isolate program-dependent from only machine-dependent aspects. This leads to criteria which are most efficient in the sense that they only contain subconditions that must in fact be evaluated at optimization time, while those referring to properties of the instruction set only are folded away in the derivation process.
The Relationship between Family Factors and Academic Achievement of Junior High School Students in Rural China: Mediation Effect of Parental Involvement

This study aims to understand how socioeconomic status and the family environment impact students’ academic achievement through the mediation of parental involvement in rural China. To achieve this, a cross-sectional design was adopted, and a total of 525 parents of rural junior high school students from S province in southwest China were surveyed. The proposed conceptual framework was tested by structural equation modeling. The results claimed that both socioeconomic status and the family environment are important factors affecting the academic achievement of rural students, and the role of the family environment is more pronounced. Furthermore, parental involvement has a significant mediating effect between socioeconomic status and academic achievement, especially between the family environment and academic achievement. The findings highlighted the importance of the family environment and parental involvement to compensate for the negative impact of disadvantaged family socioeconomic status on academic achievement.
Synthesis and electrochemical evaluation of nickel hydroxide nanosheets with phase transition to nickel oxide

Transition metal hydroxides are commonly used to develop nanostructures with desired functionalities by controlling their size, morphology, and structure. In this study, nickel hydroxide nanosheets with a hexagonal island shape are synthesized via a surfactant-assisted method. Using this method, nickel hydroxide nanosheets can be easily achieved in a quick manner. The synthesized nanosheets are 3–6 nm thick and exhibit a curly and wrinkled morphology with increasing surfactant concentration. These nanosheets demonstrate superior catalytic properties for the oxygen evolution reaction activity compared to nickel oxide sheets obtained via a simple heat treatment. Furthermore, we conduct surface enhanced Raman scattering analysis to confirm that the nickel hydroxide nanosheets serve as active species for NiOOH during the oxygen evolution reaction, and we propose an electrochemical mechanism for this system. This study not only presents the detailed synthesis process but also proposes a straightforward approach, offering valuable insights into the structural and electrochemical properties of the resulting nanosheets.
Why Seamless? Towards Exploiting WLAN-Based Intermittent Connectivity on the Road

This paper discusses new mobile usage scenarios for WLAN technologies and presents an architecture that is based on the notion of intermittent connectivity instead of seamless connectivity. The Drive-thru Internet approach is intended to support Internet applications of mobile users in environments where no permanent connectivity is available, a common case for nomadic users. We have chosen the extreme scenario of users in vehicles moving at high speed on the road and provide connectivity by means of WLAN access points. Our service architecture takes the transient character of local network access into account and provides for persistent transport connections and application layer mobility. From reviewing common Internet applications, we derive application-specific extensions to optimise various kinds of protocols and provide a concrete usage example. We also discuss the relation of Drive-thru Internet to technologies such as network layer mobility, authenticated network access, common WLAN hot spot setups, and WLAN roaming.
Business Model Innovation from an Open Systems Perspective: Structural challenges and managerial solutions.

There is an emerging consensus that business models are systemic and transcend firm boundaries. Yet, existing research on Business Model Innovation (BMI) challenges focus almost exclusively on intra-firm factors such as capabilities, cognition and leadership. We explore challenges related to BMI by instead drawing on an open systems perspective on organisations. In particular, we argue that the systemic and boundary-spanning nature of business models imply that firms are forced to act under conditions of interdependence and restricted freedom, since they do not have executive control over their surrounding network. Consequently, we propose that suitable managerial solutions include the development of shared knowledge, appropriability regimes based on trust, network stability and the alignment of heterogeneous interests.
The use of antidepressants.

Amine metabolism in the brain is disturbed in depression; tricyclic antidepressants and MAOIs both increase free amines in the brain, tricyclics by inhibiting the re-uptake of amines, the MAOIs by limiting their breakdown. No effective antidepressant, fundamentally different in structure or action to these two groups, has so far appeared. This perhaps needs qualifying, because lithium has recently been rediscovered for the treatment of recurrent affective disorders.
J ENA E CONOMIC R ESEARCH P APERS

This paper analyzes whether ﬁrms conducting internal R&D and acquiring external high-tech equipment experience a complementarity eﬀect. For German CIS data we conduct a complete set of indirect and direct complementarity tests reﬁning the analysis by looking at various types of innovations and industries. Complementary eﬀects are found in the indirect but not so in the direct approach. In contrast to previous literature, we ﬁnd the distinct R&D strategy choices to be signiﬁcant drivers of innovative activity and we identify contextual variables explaining the joint occurrence of the two strategies.
Health and Quality of Life Outcomes

Background: The aim was to investigate HRQoL and psychosocial function among patients with carcinoid tumours, longitudinally and prospectively, and to compare HRQoL among patients with carcinoid tumours to that of the Swedish general population. The aim was also to investigate the prevalence of distress during the first year after diagnosis. Methods: At four assessments during the first year after diagnosis, HRQoL was measured by the EORTC QLQ-C30 3.0, anxiety and depression by the HADS, and prevalence, and worst aspects of distress by an interview guide. ANOVA was performed in order to study changes over time with regard to HRQoL, anxiety and depression. Comparisons regarding HRQoL between patients and the Swedish population were made by the use of one-sample t-tests and changes over time regarding the prevalence of distress was investigated by means of Cochran's Q. Results: High levels of physical-, emotional-, cognitive-, and social function and somewhat lower levels of role function and global quality of life were reported at all assessments. Roleand emotional function increased over time. Patients reported lower role function and global quality of life and more problems with fatigue and diarrhoea than the Swedish general population, at all assessments. Fatigue, limitations to work and pursue daily activities, and worry that the illness will get worse were among the most prevalent aspects at all assessments. At all assessments the majority reported worrying about the family's situation, the ability to care for the family, and worrying before the check-up. Conclusion: It is concluded that HRQoL and psychosocial function among patients with carcinoid tumours remains stable during the first year, that the patients report a lower HRQoL than the Swedish general population, and that a majority of the patients report a number of aspects of emotional distress. In the clinical care, it should be considered that the majority of patients report not only fatigue and diarrhoea but also worries about their prognosis, their families, tests, and examinations. Efforts to reduce these worries should be made. Published: 11 April 2007 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2007, 5:18 doi:10.1186/1477-7525-5-18 Received: 18 January 2007 Accepted: 11 April 2007 This article is available from: http://www.hqlo. com/content/5/1/18 © 2007 Fröjd et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uptake of cervical cancer screening in The Netherlands is mainly influenced by women's beliefs about the screening and by the inviting organization.

BACKGROUND This study aims to examine the impact of women's characteristics (demographics, risk behaviour, and beliefs) on the uptake of cervical cancer screening, taking practice characteristics (demographic and organizational) into account. METHODS Routinely collected data of screening status were sampled from electronic medical records of 32 Dutch general practices. Additionally, a questionnaire was sent to a sample of 2224 listed women-1204 screened, 1020 unscreened. We used a step-by-step, logistic, multilevel approach to examine determinants of the screening uptake. RESULTS Analyses of data for 1392 women (968 screened and 424 unscreened) showed that women's beliefs about cervical screening and attendance are the best predictors of screening uptake, even when demographic and organizational aspects are taken into account. Women aged 40-50 years who felt high personal moral obligation, who had only one sexual partner ever, and who were invited and reminded by their own general practice had the greatest likelihood of screening uptake. A non-response study was performed; the non-responders to the questionnaire (mainly unscreened) thought they had less risk of cervical cancer, were less motivated, less often intended to get future screening, and were more convinced that cervical cancer cannot be cured. CONCLUSION To improve the uptake rate, we should focus on the personal moral obligation of eligible women, beliefs about the risks of cervical cancer, and available cures. Invitations and reminders within general practices enhance the uptake rate.
Exposure to organic solvents and adverse pregnancy outcomes.

BACKGROUND Organic solvents are among the most common exposures in the workplace. Our objective was to elaborate the relationship between prenatal occupational solvent exposure and fetal growth as well as duration of pregnancy, and to quantify the impact of occupational organic solvent exposure. METHODS We conducted a population-based study of 1670 singleton newborns of women who participated in The Finnish Prenatal Environment and Health Study after their delivery (response rate 94%) and who were working during pregnancy (65%). Exposure information was based on questions about exposure to solvents at work before and during pregnancy. The health outcomes, based on information from a questionnaire and the Finnish Medical Birth Registry, were low birth weight (<3000 g), small-for-gestational-age and preterm delivery (<37 weeks). RESULTS In logistic regression analysis, the risk of the baby being small-for-gestational-age was related to any exposure to solvents 3 months before or during pregnancy with an adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 1.67 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02-2.73]. Also the adjusted OR for low birth weight was elevated with exposure, although it did not reach statistical significance (1.17; 95% CI = 0.71-1.93). The population attributable fraction for small-for-gestational-age was 2.3% for all pregnant women. CONCLUSIONS Work exposure to organic solvents may reduce intrauterine growth by increasing the risk of the baby being small-for-gestational-age.
Ryanodine Receptor Activation Induces Long-Term Plasticity of Spine Calcium Dynamics

A key feature of signalling in dendritic spines is the synapse-specific transduction of short electrical signals into biochemical responses. Ca2+ is a major upstream effector in this transduction cascade, serving both as a depolarising electrical charge carrier at the membrane and an intracellular second messenger. Upon action potential firing, the majority of spines are subject to global back-propagating action potential (bAP) Ca2+ transients. These transients translate neuronal suprathreshold activation into intracellular biochemical events. Using a combination of electrophysiology, two-photon Ca2+ imaging, and modelling, we demonstrate that bAPs are electrochemically coupled to Ca2+ release from intracellular stores via ryanodine receptors (RyRs). We describe a new function mediated by spine RyRs: the activity-dependent long-term enhancement of the bAP-Ca2+ transient. Spines regulate bAP Ca2+ influx independent of each other, as bAP-Ca2+ transient enhancement is compartmentalized and independent of the dendritic Ca2+ transient. Furthermore, this functional state change depends exclusively on bAPs travelling antidromically into dendrites and spines. Induction, but not expression, of bAP-Ca2+ transient enhancement is a spine-specific function of the RyR. We demonstrate that RyRs can form specific Ca2+ signalling nanodomains within single spines. Functionally, RyR mediated Ca2+ release in these nanodomains induces a new form of Ca2+ transient plasticity that constitutes a spine specific storage mechanism of neuronal suprathreshold activity patterns.
High-Performance Storage Support for Scientific Applications on the Cloud

Although cloud computing has become one of the most popular paradigms for executing data-intensive applications (for example, Hadoop), the storage subsystem is not optimized for scientific applications. We believe that when executing scientific applications in the cloud, a node-local distributed storage architecture is a key approach to overcome the challenges from the conventional shared/parallel storage systems. We analyze and evaluate four representative file systems (S3FS, HDFS, Ceph, and FusionFS) on three platforms (Kodiak cluster, Amazon EC2 and FermiCloud) with a variety of benchmarks to explore how well these storage systems can handle metadata intensive, write intensive, and read intensive workloads.
CPR: A CRC-based packet recovery mechanism for wireless networks

In wireless networks, the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) technique often cooperates with retransmission schemes to achieve reliable transmission. However, too many retransmissions in error-prone wireless environments not only create potential latency but also limit the overall bandwidth capacity. In general, an erroneously received packet is likely to possess some useful information, by which receivers can derive the original packet from a number of erroneously received copies. This study proposes a CRC-based packet recovery (CPR) mechanism to determine the original packet by minimizing the number of retries per packet. The CPR mechanism only buffers the first erroneously received copy and maintains a bitmap vector to relax the buffer requirement to derive the positions of inconsistent bits from erroneous copies. Based on these bit positions, the CPR mechanism generates all candidate packets, one of which is likely to be the correct packet. This study also designs two architectures with different numbers of CRC encoders to implement the proposed CPR mechanism for evaluations and comparisons. Performance evaluation results confirm that the proposed CPR mechanism can significantly reduce unnecessary retransmissions and buffer space consumption, compared with the existing mechanisms. Results also show that different architectures reveal a tradeoff between hardware cost and processing delay.
Retroperitoneal perirenal myxoid liposarcoma

Liposarcomas are neoplasms of mesodermic origin, are derived from adipose tissue and represent <1% of all malignant tumours. Primary liposarcomas of the kidney are very rare. Here, we present the cases of two patients diagnosed with retroperitoneal perirenal myxoid liposarcoma. The patients were diagnosed via imaging, which in both cases revealed a huge right retroperitoneal tumour mass compressing the abdominal organs and large blood vessels. Surgical intervention consisting of en bloc resection of the tumour and the right kidney was performed using a transperitoneal approach. Three years after the surgery, both patients presented local recurrence, for which they underwent chemotherapy. Liposarcomas with renal origin are rare clinical entities with a high rate of malignancy and a poor prognosis. Because the use of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the treatment of such liposarcomas is controversial, the treatment of choice is wide surgical resection with clean margins.
Extending Global Continuous Geomagnetic Field Reconstructions on Timescales Beyond Human Civilization

Study of the late Quaternary geomagnetic field contributes significantly to understanding the origin of millennial‐scale paleomagnetic secular variations, the structure of geomagnetic excursions, and the long‐term shielding by the geomagnetic field. A compilation of paleomagnetic sediment records and archeomagnetic and lava flow data covering the past 100 ka enables reconstruction of the global geomagnetic field on such long‐term scales. We use regularized inversion to build the first global, time‐dependent, geomagnetic field model spanning the past 100 ka, named GGF100k (Global Geomagnetic Field over the past 100 ka). Spatial parametrization of the model is in spherical harmonics and time variations with cubic splines. The model is heavily constrained by more than 100 continuous sediment records covering extended periods of time, which strongly prevail over the limited number of discrete snapshots provided by archeomagnetic and volcanic data. Following an assessment of temporal resolution in each sediment's magnetic record, we have introduced smoothing kernels into the forward modeling when assessing data misfit. This accommodates the smoothing inherent in the remanence acquisition in individual sediment paleomagnetic records, facilitating a closer fit to both high‐ and low‐resolution records in regions where some sediments have variable temporal resolutions. The model has similar spatial resolution but less temporal complexity than current Holocene geomagnetic field models. Using the new reconstruction, we discuss dipole moment variations, the time‐averaged field, and paleomagnetic secular variation activity. The new GGF100k model fills the gap in the geomagnetic power spectrum in the frequency range 100–1,000 Ma−1.
Role of Environmental Pollutants in Liver Physiology: Special References to Peoples Living in the Oil Drilling Sites of Assam

The populations residing near polluted sites are more prone to various types of diseases. The important causes of air pollution are the suspended particulate matter, respirable suspended particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. As limited information is available enumerating the effect of these pollutants on liver physiology of the population living near the polluted sites; in the present study, we tried to investigate their effect on liver of the population residing near the oil drilling sites since birth. In this study, a randomly selected 105 subjects (46 subjects from oil drilling site and 61 subjects from control site) aged above 30 years were taken under consideration. The particulate matter as well as the gaseous pollutants, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, were analyzed through a respirable dust sampler. The level of alkaline phosphatase, alanine transaminase and aspartate transaminase enzymes in serum were measured by spectrophotometer. The generalized regression model studies suggests a higher concentration of respirable suspended particulate matter, suspended particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide lowers the alkaline phosphatase level (p<0.0001) by 3.5 times (95% CI 3.1-3.9), 1.5 times (95% CI 1.4 - 1.6) and 12 times (95% CI 10.74 -13.804), respectively in the exposed group. The higher concentration of respirable suspended particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide in air was associated with increase in alanine transaminase level (p<0.0001) by 0.8 times (95% CI 0.589-1.049) and by 2.8 times (95% CI 2.067-3.681) respectively in the exposed group. The increase in nitrogen dioxide level was also associated with increase in aspartate transaminase level (p<0.0001) by 2.5 times (95% CI 1.862 – 3.313) in the exposed group as compared to control group. Thus, the study reveals that long-term exposure to the environmental pollutants may lead to liver abnormality or injury of populations living in polluted sites.