Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corneal involvement in Graves' orbitopathy: an in vivo confocal study.

PURPOSE To study the clinical involvement of the ocular surface and the in vivo morphology of corneal cells and nerves, in patients affected by active and inactive Graves' orbitopathy (GO). METHODS The study included 26 consecutive GO patients and 20 age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects. GO was diagnosed on the basis of the criteria of the European Group on Graves' Orbitopathy, and disease activity was evaluated by the Clinical Activity Score (CAS). Each participant underwent a full eye examination, including an evaluation of symptoms (Ocular Surface Disease Index score), tear break-up time, fluorescein and lissamine green staining, corneal apex sensitivity, and Schirmer's test. The corneal apex was examined by means of confocal microscopy to investigate the number and morphology of epithelial and stromal corneal cells and subbasal nerves. RESULTS Eleven (43%) of the 26 patients had active GO. One-way ANOVA with the least-significant difference (LSD) post hoc test revealed statistically significant differences between patients and controls in all the evaluated parameters, except corneal sensitivity and nerve reflectivity. Among the GO patients, the only significant difference observed in active compared with inactive disease was in the number of hyperreflective (activated) keratocytes (P<0.001, LSD). Corneal sensitivity correlated inversely with proptosis (P<0.001, Spearman's test). CONCLUSIONS GO patients show clinical and confocal corneal alterations and signs and symptoms partially related to dry eye disease. The ocular surface inflammation in GO seems to be due to both the dry eye and the autoimmune orbitopathy.
Numerical Integration of Periodic Functions: A Few Examples

The constant K has the same meaning as above. 1CAS = Computer Algebra System. 2The interval [0, 2π] is for convenience only. Everything we say can easily be extended to an arbitrary interval [a, b]. 3One notices that the error bound for the midpoint rule is one half that of the trapezoidal rule; compare (2) with (3). For a pretty geometrical explanation of why one can expect the midpoint rule to be better by about a factor of two, the reader is referred to Stewart [13, p. 460].
The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement

Charter schools are public schools that are funded by a per-person fee for each student they attract. They are freed from some regulations on school management but obey safety regulations, follow non-discrimination rules, participate in state testing, and choose students by lottery when they are oversubscribed. We investigate the impact of a group of schools that enroll most of Chicagos and many of Illinoischarter school students. The schools have more applicants than places. We use the "lotteriedout" students as a control group for the "lotteried-in" students because randomization makes the groups similar on unobservable characteristics, such as motivation, as well as on observable traits, such as race and prior achievement. We estimate both the e¤ect of attending charter schools (the treatment-on-the-treated e¤ect) and the e¤ect of being o¤ered the chance to attend a charter school (the intent-to-treat e¤ect). We show that, compared to their lotteried-out fellow applicants, students who apply to and attend charter schools starting in the elementary grades score about six national percentile rank points higher in both math and reading. These e¤ects are for students who have spent an average of two years in charter school. In the Chicago schools we investigate, students who apply in later grades are too rare for the random lotteries to generate balanced groups of charter school and regular public school students. We therefore do not have meaningful estimates for them. This study includes discussions of methods for dealing with lotteries, pre-lottery information, re-application to charter schools, siblings, attrition, and grade-of-entry e¤ects. We also compare the results from the lottery method with results from value-added analysis and demonstrate the latter results are nonrepresentative and problematic.
Trade Union Recognition and Australia’s Neo-Liberal Voluntary Bargaining Laws

When Australia deregulated its economy in the 1980s, political pressures built up leading in the 1990s to the dismantling of Australia’s industry-wide conciliation and arbitration systems. New laws established regimes of collective bargaining at the level of the employing undertaking. This article analyzes the 1993 and 1996 federal bargaining laws and argues that they fail to protect the right of trade unions to bargain on behalf of their members. This is because the laws do not contain a statutory trade union recognition mechanism. The recognition mechanisms in the Common Law countries of the United States, Canada, Britain and New Zealand are examined, and it is argued that Australia should enact trade union recognition mechanisms that are consonant with its industrial relations history and practice.
Multilingual Question/Answering: the DIOGENE System

This paper presents the D IOGENE question/answering system developed at ITC-Irst. The system is based on a rather standard architecture which includes three components for question processing, search and answer extraction. Linguistic processing strongly relies on M ULTI W ORD N ET , an extended version of the English W ORD N ET . The system has been designed to address two promising directions: multilingual question/answering and question/answering on the Web. The results obtained in the TREC-10 main task will be presented and discussed.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Sensory Substitution: Closing the Gap between Basic Research and Widespread Practical Visual Rehabilitation

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) have come a long way since first developed for visual rehabilitation. They have produced exciting experimental results, and have furthered our understanding of the human brain. Unfortunately, they are still not used for practical visual rehabilitation, and are currently considered as reserved primarily for experiments in controlled settings. Over the past decade, our understanding of the neural mechanisms behind visual restoration has changed as a result of converging evidence, much of which was gathered with SSDs. This evidence suggests that the brain is more than a pure sensory-machine but rather is a highly flexible task-machine, i.e., brain regions can maintain or regain their function in vision even with input from other senses. This complements a recent set of more promising behavioral achievements using SSDs and new promising technologies and tools. All these changes strongly suggest that the time has come to revive the focus on practical visual rehabilitation with SSDs and we chart several key steps in this direction such as training protocols and self-train tools.
Federal Pipeline Rate Making: Alternative Approaches of the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

This article provides an overview of the alternative rate making methodologies adopted by the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in its regulation of transportation rates for oil and natural gas pipelines. In 1997, authority over rate making for interstate oil and natural gas pipelines was transferred to the newly created FERC. This article describes the history of interstate pipeline rate making and the transfer of rate making authority to the FERC. The author looks at the innovative pipeline rate making methodologies implemented by the FERC in its regulation of transportation rates for both oil and natural gas pipelines. The article describes the adoption by FERC of market based rates and a generally applicable indexed rate cap methodology for oil pipeline rate setting. In respect of natural gas pipelines, the legislative requirements and practical realities associated with cost-of-service rate making by FERC are described and FERC’s policies permitting selective discounting, shipper-specific negotiated rates, and market based rates for natural gas pipelines are reviewed. The Commission’s adoption of the alternative rate making methodologies has taken the emphasis off of general rate case litigation as a means of establishing just and reasonable rates for interstate oil and natural gas pipelines and related facilities. The alternative rate making methodologies also represent a significant departure from cost-of-service rate making, with increasing focus on rate flexibility and competition as a means of generating efficiencies for customers of interstate oil and natural gas pipelines.
Real-time status updating: Multiple sources

We examine multiple independent sources providing status updates to a monitor through a first-come-first-served M/M/1 queue. We formulate a status-age timeliness metric and find the region of feasible average status ages for a pair of updating sources. In the presence of interfering traffic with a given offered load, we show the existence of an optimal rate at which a source should generate its updates.
Pigment composition and photoacclimation as keys to the ecological success of Gonyostomum semen (Raphidophyceae, Stramenopiles)

Aquatic habitats are usually structured by light attenuation with depth resulting in different microalgal communities, each one adapted to a certain light regime by their specific pigment composition. Several taxa contain pigments restricted to one phylogenetic group, making them useful as marker pigments in phytoplankton community studies. The nuisance and invasive freshwater microalga Gonyostomum semen (Raphidophyceae) is mainly found in brown water lakes with sharp vertical gradients in light intensity and color. However, its pigment composition and potential photoadaptations have not been comprehensively studied. We analyzed the photopigment composition of 12 genetically different strains of G. semen by high performance liquid chromatography after acclimation to different light conditions. We confirmed the pigments chl a, chl c1c2, diadinoxanthin, trans‐neoxanthin, cis‐neoxanthin, α and β carotene, which have already been reported for G. semen. In addition, we identified, for the first time, the pigments violaxan‐thin, zeaxanthin, and alloxanthin in this species. Alloxanthin has never been observed in raphidophytes before, suggesting differences in evolutionary plastid acquisition between freshwater lineages and the well‐described marine species. The amount of total chl a per cell generally decreased with increasing light intensity. In contrast, the increasing ratios of the prominent pigments diadinoxanthin and alloxanthin per chl a with light intensity suggest photoprotective functions. In addition, we found significant variation in cell‐specific pigment concentration among strains, grouped by lake of origin, which might correspond to genetic differences between strains and populations.
The effect of sevoflurane and isoflurane anesthesia on interictal spike activity among patients with refractory epilepsy.

UNLABELLED The electrophysiologic effects of sevoflurane are not well characterized in humans. Among patients with refractory epilepsy, this study compared 1) electroencephalographic (EEG) interictal spike activity during wakefulness and sevoflurane anesthesia, and 2) electrocorticographically (ECoG) recorded interictal spike activity during sevoflurane and isoflurane anesthesia. We studied 12 patients undergoing insertion of subdural electrodes. Before commencing anesthesia, awake (baseline) EEG recordings were obtained. After inhaled induction, EEG interictal spike activity was evaluated during stable, normocapnic, and hypocapnic (Paco2 = 28-30 mm Hg), sevoflurane anesthesia administered at 1.5 times the minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration (1.5 MAC). Immediately after surgery, ECoG recordings were obtained from subdural electrodes during 1) 1.5 MAC isoflurane, 2) 0.3 MAC isoflurane, and 3) 1.5 MAC sevoflurane anesthesia. EEG spike frequency increased in all patients during sevoflurane anesthesia compared with awake recordings (P = 0.002). Compared with 0.3 MAC isoflurane anesthesia, ECoG interictal spike frequency was higher in all patients during 1.5 MAC sevoflurane anesthesia (P = 0.004) and in 8 of 10 patients during 1.5 MAC isoflurane anesthesia (P = 0.016). Under sufficiently rigorous conditions, both sevoflurane and isoflurane can provoke interictal spike activity at near burst-suppression doses. This property is more prominent with sevoflurane than isoflurane. IMPLICATIONS The results of this study suggest that the capacity to modulate neuroexcitability is a dose-dependent feature of volatile anesthetics that is manifested most prominently at near burst-suppression doses (i.e., 1.5 times the minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration) and is minimal or absent at low doses.
Education for Sustainability in Australian Universities: Where Is the Action?.

As institutions of education and learning, the higher education sector has a significant role to play in implementing the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). Some institutions have already acknowledged, and are shaping, their roles in working towards sustainability through appropriate development and implementation of institutional policy and practices, including the signing of international agreements related to sustainability. Such institutions are specifically linking learning to sustainable development. This study was initiated as a result of our interests to i) identify the current commitment to education for sustainability and ii) learn from the institutional lived experiences about how education for sustainability may be realised, within the Australian university context. This is a preliminary investigation to provide baseline insights into how education for sustainability with a focus on curriculum innovation is being implemented within the Australian university landscape. This investigation is informing our further research to understand institutional change of education for sustainability in universities.
Neighborhood Effects and Peer Effects : what Are the Consequences for Academic Achievement? [Effets contextuels et effets de pairs : quelles conséquences sur la réussite scolaire ?]

This study focuses on potential links between adolescents' neighborhoods and their academic achievement. Our aim is to show that local environment plays an important role in the same way that individual and family characteristics do. Using Labor Force Surveys (Enquetes Emploi) from 1992 to 2002, we study the behavior of adolescents over two years from their fifteenth birthday onward and analyze the impact of living in a neighborhood classified as "disadvantaged" in terms of the likelihood of these students having to repeat a grade. We test the effect of various neighborhood characteristics on the achievement levels of the adolescents as well as the existence of threshold effects, and we set up regressions with instrumental variables in order to control for any potential neighborhood endogeneity. Our results show that all things being equal, the local environment increased the likelihood of having to repeat a grade for those living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Motion sickness in automated vehicles

In an automated vehicle, the driver becomes a passenger. It is said that the driver seldom gets motion sickness or carsickness compared to passengers. This suggests that motion sickness could be a problem in highly automated vehicles. The present paper will discuss motion sickness in automated driving, including countermeasures using a new vehicle control method. Topics / Automated driving, Carsickness, motion sickness, ride comfort
Alive and kicking: the benefits of scuba diving leisure for older Australian women

ABSTRACT As the number of older people in the developed world continues to rise, attention has turned to the contribution of leisure activities to quality of life. Leisure behaviour has been studied in numerous activities, including outdoor leisure. Scuba diving research has revealed the typical diver profile to be young and male. Yet with an active and ageing population, these stereotypes are being challenged. One notable group is the over 40s female diver. To understand more about leisure and older women, a qualitative study investigated the benefits scuba diving brings to a group of mature aged Australian women. Utilizing empirical research conducted in a beachside community, this research revealed the benefits older women gained from participation in diving activities and how diving activities contributed to their well-being. Findings contribute to the knowledge of serious leisure and continuation theory for adventurous older Australian women, an unexplored segment of the growing scuba diving community.
Are People with High and Low Mental Rotation Abilities Differently Susceptible to the Alignment Effect?

We investigated whether the alignment effect (Levine et al, 1982 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 111 157–175) is influenced by mental rotation abilities. In two experiments, groups of undergraduate students with high and low performance in mental rotation tasks were required to study either schematic (experiment 1) or more complex (experiment 2) maps, and to perform a number of pointing tasks adopting a perspective which could be aligned, misaligned (45°, 135°), or counteraligned (180°) with the perspective assumed during learning. Cognitive styles in spatial representation have also been considered. Results of experiment 1 show that people with low performance in mental rotation tasks prefer to adopt a representation of space focused more on landmarks. Their performance in the pointing tasks depends on the alignment conditions, with more errors in the counteraligned condition followed by the two misaligned and aligned ones. In contrast to this, high-ability mental rotators prefer survey and route spatial representations and are affected only by the aligned and non-aligned conditions. In the second experiment, practice was studied as a function of mental rotation and alignment. The group high in mental rotation ability was found to be free from the alignment effect in the pointing tasks performed after the final of four learning phases.
Dual two-level inverter scheme for an open-end winding induction motor drive with a single DC power supply and improved DC bus utilisation

A dual two-level inverter fed open-end winding induction motor drive with a single DC-power supply is proposed. The proposed scheme produces voltage space vector locations identical to those of a conventional three-level inverter. In the conventional neutral-clamped three-level inverter, the series-connected DC link capacitors carry the load current, resulting in a fluctuating neutral point. Also, a three-level inverter requires bulky DC link capacitors. In the proposed scheme, the DC link capacitors carry currents of higher frequency and hence the neutral point fluctuations are reduced. A PWM switching strategy to suppress the zero sequence currents for all the voltage space phasor combinations is also proposed. This strategy is an improvisation of the one that uses a switched neutral to eliminate the triplen harmonic currents and results in an improved DC bus utilisation.
QSO variability: probing the starburst model

The consistency of the starburst model for AGN is tested using the optical variability observed in large data bases of QSOs. Theoretical predictions for the variability-luminosity relation­ ship and structure function are presented and compared with observations. If QSOs follow a variability-wavelength relation like that observed in nearby AGN, the model proves successful in reproducing the main characteristics of optical variability, The wavelength dependence (1) flattens the (otherwise monochromatic) Poissonian variability-luminosity relationship; and (2) decreases the asymptotic value of the structure function, which reveals that the elementary pulse driving the variations would have a characteristic time-scale of 85280 d. The upper limit is consistent with the time-scale found in nearby Seyfert galaxies. Shorter values of this time-scale are expected if the metallicity of high-redshift objects is high, as recent observations indicate. If distant QSOs do not follow the variability-wavelength dependence observed in Seyfert nuclei and nearby QSOs, the characteristic pulse of variation needs to be much faster in order to reproduce the variability-luminosity relationship, but then the single-parametric model explored in this work predicts a more rapidly rising structure function than that inferred from the data.
Maximizing the Filter Rate of L 0 Compiler-Managed Instruction Stores by Pinning

We present an allocation algorithm for small L0 compiler-managed instruction stores (cmiss) that significantly reduces the energy consumed by the instruction storage hierarchy. With our algorithm, cmiss simultaneously achieve low access energy, low performance overhead, and high filter rate. Despite the lack of associativity in cmiss, our algorithm achieves filter rates similar to those of filter caches by pinning— allocating frequently executed instructions to exclusive locations. An evaluation of our algorithm on 17 embedded applications shows that the energy consumed by the
Handling Missing Value in Decision Tree Algorithm

Nowadays all the decisions making and large data analysis is made using computer applications. In such kind of application we use the data mining techniques to analyses them. Different domains of research like management, engineering, medical, education are frequently using these techniques. Data mining in educational system is an emerging discipline that focuses on applying data mining tools and techniques on educational data. Educational data mining is used to study the data available in the educational field and bring out the hidden knowledge from it. In this research work, data mining techniques is used to make smart decisions for the student, additionally this technique is used to analysis the performance of the students in educational domain, to make analysis and making decisions here we are using C5.0 decision tree. Comparative study is done on ID3, C4.5 and C5.0. Among these classifiers C5.0 gives more accurate and efficient output with comparatively high speed. Memory usage to store the rule set in case of the C5.0 classifier is less as it generates smaller decision tree. This research work supports high accuracy, good speed and low memory usage as proposed system is using C5.0 as the base classifier. The classification process here has low memory usage compare to other techniques because it generates fewer rules. Accuracy is high as error rate is low on unseen cases. And it is fast due to yielding pruned trees.