Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools*

Reproduction, storage, adaptation or translation, in any form or by any means, of this publication is prohibited without prior written permission of the publisher, unless within the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Excerpts may be reproduced for the purpose of research, private study, criticism or review, or by educational institutions solely for educational purposes, without permission, providing full acknowledgement is given. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is an exempt charity under Schedule 2 of the Charities Act 1993. The Young People's Parliament, Birmingham, (YPP) – Educating for Democracy – gives young people in Birmingham and the West Midlands a voice-whether on school, local quality of life or wider national issues; and on global concerns such as sustainable development and human rights. The initiative is a partnership between The University of the First Age, Birmingham City Council and the new centre for learning and leisure, Millennium Point. Already by using ICT, websites, video conferencing and e-mail, as well as use of the City's Council Chamber, the young people of Birmingham and beyond have been able to participate in two pilot projects. The General Election project in 1997 linked young people in the West Midlands directly with politicians and provided a lively and robust exchange of views. The first G8 Young People's Summit (YPS) was held in May 1998 to coincide with the G8 Summit meeting in Birmingham. Two youth delegates came from each of the G8 countries as well as the EU. A communiqué was drafted, mainly on the issues of third world debt relief, after a meeting with the Prime Minister. It made a powerful statement for the right of young people to be heard in international affairs. The Youth Parliament Competition is now in its eighth year, organised by the Citizenship Foundation and sponsored by Motorola. Each participating secondary school holds a mock parliamentary session of the pupils' own choosing. There are ministers and shadow ministers and a host of backbenchers on both sides. A twenty minute video of the debate is sent to regional judges and regional winners are then judged by a national panel. There is also a separate political writing competition. The national winners are invited to a presentation at the Houses of Parliament to receive their prizes and to meet senior politicians. The entry for this year's national winner (for the second time), St Michael's Roman Catholic School, Billingham, Cleveland, included …
Evolution for our time: a theory of legal memetics

The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance for legal thought of recent developments in evolutionary theory which are associated with the notion of 'memetics'. 'Memetics' aims to account for processes of cultural transmission and change using a version of the 'genetic metaphor'. This is the idea that patterns of cultural evolution are closely analogous to those which occur in the natural world as a result of the interaction between genes, organisms and environments. At a further, more ambitious level, the initial metaphor gives way to a search for mechanisms which unite biological and cultural evolution. Identifying these general evolutionary mechanisms is part of a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary research agenda.
Activation of Autophagy Pathway Suppresses the Expression of iNOS, IL6 and Cell Death of LPS-Stimulated Microglia Cells

Microglia play a role in maintaining and resolving brain tissue homeostasis. In pathological conditions, microglia release pro-inflammatory cytokines and cytotoxic factors, which aggravate the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Autophagy pathway might be involved in the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and cytotoxic factors in microglia, though details of the mechanism remain largely unknown. In the present study, we examined the role of the autophagy pathway in activated BV2 microglia cells. In BV2 cells, rapamycin treatment activated the formation of anti-LC3-labeled autophagosomes, whereas the ATG5 depletion using siRNA-ATG5 prevented the formation of LC3-labeled autophagosomes, indicating that BV2 cells exhibit an active classical autophagy system. When treated with LPS, BV2 cells expressed an increase of anti-LC3-labeled dots. The levels of LC3-labeled dots were not suppressed, instead tended to be enhanced, by the inhibition of the autophagy pathway with siRNA-ATG5 or wortmannin, suggesting that LPS-induced LC3-labeled dots in nature were distinct from the typical autophagosomes. The levels of LPS-induced expression of iNOS and IL6 were suppressed by treatment with rapamycin, and conversely, their expressions were enhanced by siRNA-ATG5 treatment. Moreover, the activation of the autophagy pathway using rapamycin inhibited cell death of LPS-stimulated microglia. These results suggest that although microglia possess a typical autophagy pathway, the glial cells express a non-typical autophagy pathway in response to LPS, and the activation of the autophagy pathway suppresses the expression of iNOS and IL6, and the cell death of LPS-stimulated microglia.
Characteristics of intracellularly grown Brucella abortus.

of altered bacteria seemed technically unfeasible, use was made of the blocking effect of immune serum to show that the change in resistance to normal serum bactericidal factors probably has a quantitative and not qualitative basis. In addition, data are presented which indicate that intracellularly grown B. abortus are more easily phagocytized and survive better following phagocytosis than their slant-grown sister
Estimating 3D Facial Pose using the EM Algorithm

This paper describes how 3D facial pose may be estimated by fitting a template to 2D feature locations. The fitting process is realised as projecting the control points of the 3D template onto the 2D feature locations under orthographic projection. The parameters of the orthographic projection are iteratively estimated using the EM algorithm. The method is evaluated on both contrived data with known ground-truth together with some more naturalistic imagery. These experiments reveal that under favourable conditions the algorithm can estimate facial pitch to within 3 degrees.
Mathematical Modeling of HIV Prevention Measures Including Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis on HIV Incidence in South Korea

Background Multiple prevention measures have the possibility of impacting HIV incidence in South Korea, including early diagnosis, early treatment, and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). We investigated how each of these interventions could impact the local HIV epidemic, especially among men who have sex with men (MSM), who have become the major risk group in South Korea. A mathematical model was used to estimate the effects of each these interventions on the HIV epidemic in South Korea over the next 40 years, as compared to the current situation. Methods We constructed a mathematical model of HIV infection among MSM in South Korea, dividing the MSM population into seven groups, and simulated the effects of early antiretroviral therapy (ART), early diagnosis, PrEP, and combination interventions on the incidence and prevalence of HIV infection, as compared to the current situation that would be expected without any new prevention measures. Results Overall, the model suggested that the most effective prevention measure would be PrEP. Even though PrEP effectiveness could be lessened by increased unsafe sex behavior, PrEP use was still more beneficial than the current situation. In the model, early diagnosis of HIV infection was also effectively decreased HIV incidence. However, early ART did not show considerable effectiveness. As expected, it would be most effective if all interventions (PrEP, early diagnosis and early treatment) were implemented together. Conclusions This model suggests that PrEP and early diagnosis could be a very effective way to reduce HIV incidence in South Korea among MSM.
A new geometric 3D LiDAR feature for model creation and classification of moving objects

In this paper, we introduce a new geometric 3D feature combined with a clustering approach. Besides 3D data provided by a LiDAR point cloud, reflectivity information is used to further enhance the descriptivity of the feature. The proposed feature can be extracted and compared in real-time. Similar parts of an object, such as features belonging to an automobile headlight, are automatically clustered in an object model without explicit specification. Additionally, we provide a method for autonomous vehicles to automatically learn the shapes of observed moving objects and use them for real-time classification. The resulting object models consisting of the extracted feature clusters are interpretable by humans.
Direct-test PCR for detection of meningococcal DNA and its serogroup characterization: standardization and adaptation for use in a public health laboratory.

A direct PCR test (DT-PCR) was established to detect Neisseria meningitidis DNA in clinical samples from patients with suspected bacterial meningitis. Specific primers for the 16S rDNA of N. meningitidis were designed to amplify a 600 bp DNA fragment. One hundred and ninety-three clinical samples were analysed, corresponding to 114 samples from patients diagnosed as positive and 79 as negative for infection by N. meningitidis using conventional methods (culture, latex agglutination and counterimmunoelectrophoresis). These samples were submitted to PCR by two different clinical sample preparation approaches (with and without DNA extraction and purification) and submitted to different PCR protocols to improve the results. In agarose gel detection, the sensitivity value for DT-PCR was 88.5 % and, using dot-blot DNA detection, the sensitivity increased to 96.4 %. The detection limit for meningococcus in cerebrospinal fluid was 2x10(2) c.f. u. ml(-1). Serogroup prediction was done using a multiplex PCR protocol and the sensitivity was 83 % for agarose gel DNA detection and 96.4 % using dot-blot DNA detection.
The role of codeswitched input to children in the origin of a new mixed language

Abstract Light Warlpiri is a mixed language, with Warlpiri and Aboriginal English/Kriol as its sources. It was developed by a group who received codeswitched input in a baby talk register from when they were young. The innovating group conventionalized the input they received and developed morphosyntactic structures beyond those in the input. The development of Light Warlpiri shows that commonly occurring processes in language contact situations, codeswitching and re-analyses of existing forms, play an important role in the extreme outcome of the development of a mixed language, through a two-part process: a) an adult group directed codeswitched speech to children, and b) the children conventionalized and expanded the morphosyntactic structures they heard. The new code is an in-group language and did not emerge in order to indicate a new dual-cultural identity, but since its development it has come to signal the identity of young Warlpiri from Lajamanu.
Differences, difficulties and adaptation: Stress and social networks in families with a handicapped child.

This paper discusses differences in 100 families with and without a handicapped child with respect to three types of stress (individual, marital, and parenting) and three structural characteristics of their social support networks (size, density, and boundary density). Generally, higher levels of stress and distinct network structures were found for the families with handicapped children. Despite the presence of high levels of stress, the families were found to have successful coping strategies. The results are discussed in terms of recognizing family strengths, and incorporating existing adaptational patterns in clinical interventions.
Activity-dependent release of endogenous adenosine modulates synaptic responses in the rat hippocampus

Adenosine is a potent inhibitory modulator of synaptic transmission in the CNS, but its role in normal physiological function is unclear. In the present experiments, we have found electrophysiological evidence for activity-dependent release of adenosine from hippocampal slices evoked by physiologically relevant stimulation, and have demonstrated that this adenosine modifies synaptic activity in this brain region. When two independent excitatory pathways to the CA1 pyramidal neurons are used to evoke field EPSP responses, prior activation of one pathway will inhibit the EPSP evoked via the other input. This inhibition can be antagonized by the nonselective adenosine receptor antagonist theophylline, and by the selective A1 receptor antagonist 8- cyclopentyltheophylline, suggesting that the inhibitory response is due to the release of endogenous adenosine that activates presynaptic release-modulating A1 receptors. This inhibition can be observed following a single stimulus to the conditioning pathway, although it is more pronounced when a train of conditioning pulses is used, and is maximal following a train of 16–32 stimuli (at 100 Hz). When a train of four conditioning pulses is used, the inhibition appears with a latency of approximately 50 msec, peaks approximately 200–250 msec following the conditioning train, and recovers to baseline between 1 and 2 sec. Further evidence that this inhibition of excitatory transmission is mediated via adenosine is provided by the observation that superfusion with dipyridamole (an adenosine uptake inhibitor), and the adenosine deaminase inhibitor erythro-(2-hydroxy-3-nonyl)adenine, enhanced both the duration and amplitude of the inhibition. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Motion Planning in a Stratified Workspace Manifold of a Quadruped Walking Robot

Stratified manifolds are encountered in the configuration manifolds of many robots. Some typical examples are the walking robots [4, 5]. The configuration manifolds of such robots are in general high dimensional with some distinctive features. The most important characteristic feature of stratified manifolds are that they are filled with discontinuities [5]. These discontinuities give rise to certain sub-manifolds which are essentially the boundaries of the workspace manifold. These boundaries or sub-manifolds are known as strata [5]. The most interesting feature of a stratified manifold is that the system is allowed to stay only on these strata. That means even though the workspace of the robot is NW dimensional, it is allowed to stay only on certain sub-manifolds of its workspace whose dimension in general is NS < NW. However there is still a lot more to these stratified manifolds. Even while residing on a stratum in a stratified manifold, the flow of the system is allowed only along certain directions on the strata, called leaves or foliages of the strata [5]. These foliations basically constitute some subsets of the tangent space of the strata. The following example in context to a quadruped robot will make the concept more clear.
A Platform-Based Methodology for System-Level Mixed-Signal Design

The complexity of today's embedded electronic systems as well as their demanding performance and reliability requirements are such that their design can no longer be tackled with ad hoc techniques while still meeting tight time to-market constraints. In this paper, we present a system level design approach for electronic circuits, utilizing the platform-based design (PBD) paradigm as the natural framework for mixed-domain design formalization. In PBD, a meet-in-the-middle approach allows systematic exploration of the design space through a series of top-down mapping of system constraints onto component feasibility models in a platform library, which is based on bottom-up characterizations. In this framework, new designs can be assembled from the precharacterized library components, giving the highest priority to design reuse, correct assembly, and efficient design flow from specifications to implementation. We apply concepts from design centering to enforce robustness to modeling errors as well as process, voltage, and temperature variations, which are currently plaguing embedded system design in deep-submicron technologies. The effectiveness of our methodology is finally shown on the design of a pipeline A/D converter and two receiver front-ends for UMTS and UWB communications.
Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction.
Bisexuality and Health Psychology – strange bedfellows?

What does it mean to be bisexual? If a woman who has previously had only male partners during her life takes a woman as a sexual partner is she then bisexual? If a person’s long term relationships alternate between men and women are they alternately heterosexual and homosexual or are they bisexual? Why do people who identify as bisexual have worse sexual and reproductive health outcomes than people who identify as heterosexual or homosexual? Why are women more likely to identify as bisexual than are men? Why do the majority of people with sexual histories that include contact with both men and women identify as heterosexual?
Begging the Question: The Nonindependence Error in fMRI Data Analysis

You sit with a deck of fifty-two cards in front of you, face down. You flip the first card: a 10 of diamonds. What are the odds of that? One out of fifty-two. Remarkable. You flip the next card: a queen of hearts. Unbelievable! The odds of this sequence were 1/52 * 1/51 (less than 1 in 2000). You continue flipping cards: a 4 of clubs follows, then an 8 of diamonds, then an 8 of hearts. Once you have flipped them all over you stare in disbelief; the particular sequence of cards you just observed happens one out of every 8*10 67 (52 factorial) times. Every person in the world could shuffle a deck of cards and flip through it every minute of their entire lives, and even then, the odds of the world seeing your particular sequence of cards will be less than 1/10 50 ! Extraordinary. Something is very wrong here. The conclusion is absurd. Yet similar logic is prevalent in both lay and scientific reasoning. Some have used variants of this argument to account for the origins of humans on earth: Proteins could be randomly shuffled for eons before humans emerged in all their glory. Since the likelihood of human existence by pure chance is so slim, surely intelligent design is the most parsimonious explanation. The card example was introduced to illustrate just how preposterous this objection to evolution is. Unfortunately, this logical fallacy, which we will call here the " non-independence " error, is not restricted to arguments from the scientifically unsophisticated. It is prevalent in cognitive neuroscience as well. For instance, of the eight papers in a recent special issue of Neuroimage, five contained variants of this error 1. The prevalence of this error is troubling because it can produce apparently significant effects out of pure noise (Figure 1). In this chapter we will describe the error formally, consider why it appears to be more common in fMRI than other fields, provide examples of this error in its most common guises, and propose a few heuristics that may help lay people and scientists alike avoid the error. 1. Formal description of the non-independence error What exactly is the error that leads to the absurd conclusion in the card example? We can describe it in different theoretical frameworks: statistical hypothesis testing, propositional logic, probability theory, and information theory. These frameworks are rarely discussed together, and …
Thienopyridines or aspirin to prevent stroke and other serious vascular events in patients at high risk of vascular disease? A systematic review of the evidence from randomized trials.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Aspirin is the most widely studied and prescribed antiplatelet drug for patients at high risk of vascular disease. We aimed to establish how the thienopyridines (ticlopidine and clopidogrel) compare with aspirin in terms of effectiveness and safety. METHODS We did a systematic review of all unconfounded randomized trials comparing either ticlopidine or clopidogrel with aspirin for patients at high risk of vascular disease. The primary outcome was vascular events (stroke, myocardial infarction, or vascular death). Adverse outcomes were intracranial and extracranial hemorrhage, upper and lower gastrointestinal disturbances, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, and skin rash. RESULTS In 4 trials among 22 656 patients (including 9840 presenting with a transient ischemic attack/ischemic stroke), the thienopyridines reduced the odds of a vascular event by 9% (odds ratio 0.91, 95% CI 0.84 to 0. 98; 2P=0.01), preventing 11 (95% CI 2 to 19) events per 1000 patients treated for approximately 2 years. The thienopyridines produced significantly less gastrointestinal hemorrhage and upper gastrointestinal upset (indigestion/nausea/vomiting) than did aspirin. Both thienopyridines increased the odds of skin rash and of diarrhea (ticlopidine by approximately 2-fold and clopidogrel by approximately one third). Only ticlopidine increased the odds of neutropenia. CONCLUSIONS The thienopyridines appear modestly more effective than aspirin in preventing serious vascular events in high-risk patients. Clopidogrel appears to be safer than ticlopidine and as safe as aspirin, making it an appropriate, but more expensive, alternative antiplatelet drug for patients unable to tolerate aspirin. However, there is insufficient information to determine which particular types of patients would benefit most, and which least, from clopidogrel instead of aspirin.