Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grade Retention

Academic accountability is of great concern, therefore grade retention is being considered for both students with and without disabilities who are not meeting end-of-the-year achievement benchmarks. The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher attitudes toward grade retention and whether practices differ when recommending retention of students with or without disabilities. This mixed-methods study utilized a paper-and-pencil questionnaire using a Likert-type scale, as well as two open-ended questions and a checklist. Teacher interviews were also conducted. The findings of this study indicate that teachers are considering a multitude of factors when considering grade retention for their struggling students. Academic performance was the factor that teachers (77%) indicated the most frequently. Although teachers felt pressure and accountability from high stakes testing, they felt test results should be one of many factors considered in the retention decision.
Low BMD affects initial stability and delays stem osseointegration in cementless total hip arthroplasty in women

Background and purpose Immediate implant stability is a key factor for success in cementless total hip arthroplasty (THA). Low bone mineral density (BMD) and age-related geometric changes of the proximal femur may jeopardize initial stability and osseointegration. We compared migration of hydroxyapatite-coated femoral stems in women with or without low systemic BMD. Patients and methods 61 female patients with hip osteoarthritis were treated with cementless THA with anatomically designed hydroxyapatite-coated femoral stems and ceramic-ceramic bearing surfaces (ABG-II). Of the 39 eligible patients between the ages of 41 and 78 years, 12 had normal systemic BMD and 27 had osteopenia or osteoporosis. According to the Dorr classification, 21 had type A bone and 18 had type B. Translational and rotational migration of the stems was evaluated with radiostereometric analysis (RSA) up to 2 years after surgery. Results Patients with low systemic BMD showed higher subsidence of the femoral stem during the first 3 months after surgery than did those with normal BMD (difference = 0.6, 95% CI: 0.1–1.1; p = 0.03). Low systemic BMD (odds ratio (OR) = 0.1, CI: 0.006–1.0; p = 0.02), low local hip BMD (OR = 0.3, CI: 0.1–0.7; p = 0.005) and ageing (OR = 1.1, CI: 1.0–1.2; p = 0.02) were risk factors for delayed translational stability. Ageing and low canal flare index were risk factors for delayed rotational stabilization (OR = 3, CI: 1.1–9; p = 0.04 and OR = 1.1, CI: 1.0–1.2; p = 0.02, respectively). Harris hip score and WOMAC score were similar in patients with normal systemic BMD and low systemic BMD. Interpretation Low BMD, changes in intraosseous dimensions of the proximal femur, and ageing adversely affected initial stability and delayed osseointegration of cementless stems in women.
Modeling a MIMO system with an ARX model and input-output data with noise

Although conventional controllers based on PID, Fuzzy logic and Neural networks are able to meet the working requirements, the ever increasing thirst to achieve perfection by reducing overshoots, undershoots, transient and steady state errors have led to Model Predictive Controllers (MPC). These controllers depend on the error between the actual output from the plant and the computed output generated / predicted by a model of the plant. The proper operation of the MPC is therefore dependent on the accuracy of the plant model. An easy, practical and implementable method used is generation of a plant model using the input-output data generated while the plant is in operation. The chief requirement thus is to have a model as close as possible to the physical system being controlled. The dynamic behavior of any system can be estimated and controlled accurately using Model Predictive Controller. To design an MPC controller initially the system identification is done using ARX model. In this paper, the Model is computed both with and without noise in the inputs and the outputs.
Speech Recognition with Hidden Markov Models in Visual Communication

Speech is produced by the vibration of the vocal cords and the configuration of the arti-culators. Because some of these articulators are visible, there is an inherent relationship between the acoustic and the visual forms of speech. This relationship has been historically used in lipreading. Today's advanced computer technology opens up new possibilities to exploit the correlation between acoustic and visual speech. One such possibility is speech-driven facial animation, where the aim is to automatically convert acoustic speech into mouth movements. This would have applications in education, movies and computer games, as well as in video telephony and other kinds of visual communication. Unfortunately, a method capable of doing the required conversion accurately and reliably is yet to be found. In this thesis, one approach will be examined that has been proposed for the acoustic-to-visual speech conversion task. The applicability of the method to real-time communication is studied in particular. This so-called phonetic approach consists of three phases: (1) recognizing the basic speech sounds, or phonemes; (2) converting the phonemes to corresponding mouth shapes, or visemes; (3) generating facial animation based on the visemes The construction and animation of synthetic head models (phase 3) will be discussed briefly. A mapping from phonemes to visemes (phase 2) will be devised, as well. For the most part, however, we will concentrate on speech recognition. The most common and successful speech recognition methods are based on statistical modeling, and especially on hidden Markov models (HMMs). In this thesis, the theory of HMMs and the related algorithms will be presented, and then applied to speech recognition. Additionally, the major problems in HMM-based speech recognition will be reviewed. Finally, a speech-driven facial animation prototype will be developed, and the results analyzed. The results indicate, that the phonetic approach is not very suitable for real-time communication, because it causes too much latency with respect to the progressing speech. In order to keep the animation and the sound synchronized to each other, audio playback must be deferred to compensate for the latency. This, in turn, causes annoying delays in the conversation. Furthermore, the accuracy attainable with current phoneme recognizers (about 60 %) is too low: the errors in recognition are instantly reflected as erroneous mouth movements.
One-class classification models for financial industry information recommendation

In finance domain, the acquisition of in-time and comprehensive intra-industry information is important for decision-makers and stock investors to maximize their investment profits. But there are following problems in the retrieval and recommendation of financial industry information. (l)Unlike the concrete conceptions, industry could not be perfectly delineated with keywords. (2)It's difficult to calculate the relevance between document and industry. (3)The massive search results confused the user as a result of the information overload. In this paper, this problem is treated as a classification of relevance. The one-class classification model is adopted to calculate the relevance between document and industry since the lack of well sampled non-relevant documents. Based on selected industry-specific description terms, three different one-class classifiers k-means, one-class SVM and language model algorithm are trained with only relevant (positive) documents to help making recommendation decisions. The experimental results show that the proposed methods perform well with high micro-average F1 and macro-average F1 both up to the 80%. We also perform experiments to verify the relationship between parameters and performance.
Universal quantum computation in a neutral-atom decoherence-free subspace

In this paper, we propose a way to achieve protected universal computation in a neutral-atom quantum computer subject to collective dephasing. Our proposal relies on the existence of a decoherence-free subspace (DFS), resulting from symmetry properties of the errors. After briefly describing the physical system and the error model considered, we show how to encode information into the DFS and build a complete set of safe universal gates. Finally, we provide numerical simulations for the fidelity of the different gates in the presence of time-dependent phase errors and discuss their performance and practical feasibility.
Reliability and Construct Validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory in a Sample of University Students

A sample of 72 university students was administered the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Item responses were intercorrelated and subjected to a principal factors analysis followed by a varimax rotation of the factors. In each of the rotated factor matrices, empirical support was obtained for the presence of the three hypothesized factors of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment.
Information Attributes as Related to Psychological Symptoms and Perceived Control Among Information Seekers in the Aftermath of Technological Disaster

The relationship among information attributes, psychological symptoms, and perceived control was examined among residents in the vicinity of Three Mile island who attended the Three Mile Island Health and Environmental Information Series on cancer, radiation, and epidemiology of cancer 6 years after the nuclear accident that had occurred and shortly before restart of the plant. Among course participants, greater understanding of information was associated with slightly fewer psychological symptoms. Higher rated reliability of information was associated with less perceived control. Findings are discussed with reference to information delivery under conditions of uncertainty.
Annotating the Human Proteome

The completion of the human genome has shifted the attention from deciphering the sequence to the identification and characterization of the encoded components. The identification and functional annotation of the proteome is here of special interest and starts with the identification of genes and transcripts as a prerequisite of proteome annotation. Gene predictions are very powerful in predicting most of the exons in a genome, but reliable gene structure predictions of both known and novel genes are dependent on existing transcript and protein information. An enormous amount of data already exists on the function of many human proteins, but this is scattered over many resources. Public domain databases are required to manage and collate this information and present it to the user community in both a human and machine readable manner.
Realtime-Processing of Nanocrystallography Images

In nanocrystallography, diffraction images are captured to gain insights into the structure of macromolecules. A new generation of experiments is able to take a vast amount of images in a short time. However, most of the images are not suitable for further research. It is not feasible to store and process all images in a reasonable amount of time. In previous work we proposed algorithms able to distinguish useful from useless data in photon science. In this article we propose and discuss a prototype implementation of the algorithms including further optimizations. We also consider its feasibility to cope with the realtime constraints.
Leadership Content Knowledge

Drawing inspiration from Shulman’s (1986) construct of pedagogical content knowledge, we propose that leadership content knowledge is a missing paradigm in the analysis of school and district leadership. After defining leadership content knowledge as that knowledge of academic subjects that is used by administrators when they function as instructional leaders, we present three cases of instructional leadership—situated at different school and district levels—and examine each for evidence of leadership content knowledge in use. Based on a cross-case analysis, we argue that as administrative levels increase and functions become broader, leadership content knowledge becomes less fine-grained, though always anchored in knowledge of the subject, how it is learned (by adults as well as students), and how it is taught. We go on to suggest that all administrators have solid mastery of at least one subject (and the learning and teaching of it) and that they develop expertise in other subjects by “postholing,” that is, conducting in-depth explorations of an important but bounded slice of the subject, how it is learned, and how it is taught. We conclude with an exploration of how content knowledge and leadership knowledge might be intertwined and suggestions for further research.
Familial risk across three generations and psychosocial correlates for developing psychopathology in a changing world

Background: Human development is a highly complex, environment-dependent process including mental health and psychopathology among its outcomes. Thus, it needs to be studied comprehensively in order to identify correlations and interactions among different biological, economical and psychosocial variables across time and generations. Objective: Is familial psychopathology risk across three generations significantly associated with ongoing psychosocial variables reported by probands? Methods: The study was designed as a household survey on a representative sample of the adult population aged 18 - 65 years in Mexico City. The family-history method was used to obtain information about psychiatric antecedents on their parents and a validated screening instrument was used to evaluate caseness in their offspring. Lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders on probands was evaluated using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Morbid risk in terms of the odds ratio and prevalence ratio were calculated using logistic regression with fixed effects as well as with generalized estimating equations (GEE) population-averaged models with an exchangeable structure. Aditionally, the population attributable risk percent was also calculated for selected variables associated with the outcome in the complete models. Results: The strenght of the association of familial psychiatric antecedents is moderate between generations on either direction: backwards in regards of proband’s parents or downwards in regards of their children. However, when interaction between the two previous generations was considered, the strenght of the association was higher, crude OR=7.8, and showing significant variations when controlling for the effect of the rest of the variables and especially for probands’ psychosocial correlates. The population attributable risk percent for these variables across generations is sometimes higher than the obtained for familial risk. Conclusions: Findings suggest that besides psychiatric familial risk, socioeconomial and psychodynamic risk factors have been interacting across time and generations contributing to the high prevalence of psychiatric disorders recently reported on youth Mexican population
Twitter: An Underutilized Potential During Sudden Crises?

The widespread use of Twitter by citizens during sudden crises has convinced communications experts that governments should also actively use Twitter during crises. However, this position seems insufficiently empirically validated. In this article, we want to provide empirical building blocks for an informed approach to the use of Twitter by the government. To this end, we analyze the tweets posted by citizens and governments about the large‐scale fire in Moerdijk (2011), the Netherlands. The results show that by far, most tweets do not contain any new and relevant information for governments and that the tweets posted by governments got buried under an avalanche of citizen tweets. We may conclude that the Moerdijk case does not give rise to advocate a (more) active role of governments on Twitter during sudden crises.
Immunosuppressive activity of a subline of the mouse EL-4 lymphoma. Evidence for minute virus of mice causing the inhibition

Filtered culture fluids from the early in vitro passages of a subline of the C57BL/6 mouse EL-4 lymphoma, EL-4(G-), were strongly inhibitory for BABL/c vs. C57BL/6 mixed lymphocyte cultures (MLC). The inhibitory activity could be preserved by storage at -75 degrees C or 4 degrees C, thus allowing its further characterization. The inhibitory factor was particulate (nondialyzable, sedimentable at 100,000 g for 1 h), very small (recovered after 0.10 mum filtration), sensitive to UV irradiation, but heat stable (56 degrees C, 1 h) and resistant to chloroform. It was infectious, since later, noninhibitory passages of EL-4(G-) tissue culture cells became strongly inhibitory upon inoculation with the culture fluid. This data was consistent with the inhibitory factor being an infectious virus. Virus analysis by mouse antibody production tests revealed that viruses were indeed present in EL-4(G-) ascites cells and in the culture fluid, and not in a late passage of EL-4(G-) tissue culture cells which were not inhibitory. Neutralization of the inhibitory factor was achieved by pretreatment with ascitic fluid or with the sera raised against those (EL-4(G-)- derived materials which contained viruses. Mouse reference immune sera against minute virus of mice (MVM) completely neutralized the inhibitory factor in the culture fluid or in EL-4(G-) ascites cells. Two prototype MVM strains, and one Kilham rat virus preparation, did not inhibit the mouse MLC. Thus, the possibility exists that a variant of MVM, or an unidentified virus, has been grown and selected for in EL- 4(G-) cells and recognized, due to its immunosuppressive characteristics. In any event, immunosuppression by EL-4(G-) cells was not mediated by the tumor cells, their metabolic products, or associated endogenous type C viruses, but by an exogenous virus, most likely a variant MVM with immunosuppressive characteristics. This adds weight to a parallel observation from our laboratory on the immunosuppressive effects of Kilham rat virus in rat lymphocyte cultures.
Sequence Variations and Protein Expression Levels of the Two Immune Evasion Proteins Gpm1 and Pra1 Influence Virulence of Clinical Candida albicans Isolates

Candida albicans, the important human fungal pathogen uses multiple evasion strategies to control, modulate and inhibit host complement and innate immune attack. Clinical C. albicans strains vary in pathogenicity and in serum resistance, in this work we analyzed sequence polymorphisms and variations in the expression levels of two central fungal complement evasion proteins, Gpm1 (phosphoglycerate mutase 1) and Pra1 (pH-regulated antigen 1) in thirteen clinical C. albicans isolates. Four nucleotide (nt) exchanges, all representing synonymous exchanges, were identified within the 747-nt long GPM1 gene. For the 900-nt long PRA1 gene, sixteen nucleotide exchanges were identified, which represented synonymous, as well as non-synonymous exchanges. All thirteen clinical isolates had a homozygous exchange (A to G) at position 73 of the PRA1 gene. Surface levels of Gpm1 varied by 8.2, and Pra1 levels by 3.3 fold in thirteen tested isolates and these differences influenced fungal immune fitness. The high Gpm1/Pra1 expressing candida strains bound the three human immune regulators more efficiently, than the low expression strains. The difference was 44% for Factor H binding, 51% for C4BP binding and 23% for plasminogen binding. This higher Gpm1/Pra1 expressing strains result in enhanced survival upon challenge with complement active, Factor H depleted human serum (difference 40%). In addition adhesion to and infection of human endothelial cells was increased (difference 60%), and C3b surface deposition was less effective (difference 27%). Thus, variable expression levels of central immune evasion protein influences immune fitness of the human fungal pathogen C. albicans and thus contribute to fungal virulence.
Adaptive Reed-Solomon Coding Scheme for OFDM Systems Over Frequency-Selective Fading Channels

This paper discusses an adaptive modulation/coding (AMC) strategy based on frequency-domain channel statistical information for OFDM systems in a frequency-selective fading environment. The proposed approach is based on the fact that the statistical properties of a time-varying channel vary very slowly with time and thus it is possible to obtain reliable knowledge at the transmitter. A programmable Reed-Solomon RS (n,k) code used with an adaptive multi-level modulation scheme is proposed as an illustrative example. Derivations of the frequency-domain channel statistical properties and performance of the proposed technique are presented along with illustrative results.
Exploring Personality and Game Preferences in the Younger and Older Population: A Pilot Study

Aim: Engagement in gamified applications can be increased by effectively meeting end-user preferences for game content. To design this tailored content insight in user preferences is necessary, obtained from user classification models. This pilot study aims to explore the hypothesised relation between personality traits and preference for game characteristics that is the basis for a new user classification model, deduced from the Five Domains of Play theory. Methods: An online questionnaire consisted of the 10-item Big Five Inventory to determine personality, and five questions on the preference for game examples to determine game preference. Results: 216 participants completed the questionnaire (M=39 years, SD=17). For the group of participants younger than 60, four out of five personality traits correlate significantly but weakly with their corresponding game preference domains (r=0,13-0,30, p<0,05). For the participants older than 60, no significant correlations were found. Conclusion: Personality and game preferences are weakly related in persons younger than sixty years old, while no relation was found for the older participants. For the latter, this may be due to a lack of gaming experience. We therefore propose to extend research towards a field study by providing actual games to play on beforehand.
Calcium Signaling and Neurodegeneration

Neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s disease (HD), and spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA) are very important both for fundamental science and for practical medicine. Despite extensive research into the causes of these diseases, clinical researchers have had very limited progress and, as of now, there is still no cure for any of these diseases. One of the main obstacles in the way of creating treatments for these disorders is the fact that their etiology and pathophysiology still remain unclear. This paper reviews results that support the so–called “calcium hypothesis of neurodegenerative diseases. ” The calcium hypothesis states that the atrophic and degenerative processes in the neurons of AD, PD, ALS, HD, and SCA patients are accompanied by alterations in calcium homeostasis. Moreover, the calcium hypothesis states that this deregulation of calcium signaling is one of the early–stage and key processes in the pathogenesis of these diseases. Based on the results we reviewed, we conclude that the calcium channels and other proteins involved in the neuronal calcium signaling system are potential drug targets for AD, PD, ALS, HD, and SCA therapy.
Load Modeling for Power Flow and Transient Stability Computer Studies at BAKHTAR Network

A method has been developed for preparing load models for power flow and stability. The load modeling (LOADMOD) computer software transforms data on load class mix, composition, and characteristics into the from required for commonly-used power flow and transient stability simulation programs. Typical default data have been developed for load composition and characteristics. This paper defines LOADMOD software and describes the dynamic and static load modeling techniques used in this software and results of initial testing for BAKHTAR power system.