Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Innovative Collaborative Cultures: Bridges to Successful High School Reform

As the Great Depression of the 1930s held Americans in its grip educator, historian, social and political activist George Sylvester Counts boldly electrified listeners with a call to reformative action (Urban, 1978, preface in Counts, 1932). In “Dare the School Build a New Social Order? ” a compilation of several powerful speeches, Counts framed the critical educational and economic issues of his time as issues of security. America of the 1930s, like America of today, was a society of great contradictions. Dire poverty and starvation existed side by side with extravagance, abundance, and deliberate waste. Counts recognized that despite severe economic depression, America in the 1930s possessed technological and industrial capabilities to ensure basic needs of food and shelter for all Americans. He wrote, “We hold within our hands the power to usher in an age of plenty, to make secure the lives of all, and to banish poverty forever from the land. The only cause for doubt or pessimism lies in the question of our ability to rise to the stature of the times in which we live” (Counts, 1932, p. 32-33).
Contribution of the anterior thalamic nuclei to conditional learning in rats

The anterior thalamic region is intimately linked anatomically and functionally with the hippocampus, which is critical for various forms of spatial learning. Rats with lesions to the anterior thalamic nuclei and a control group were trained on a visual–spatial conditional associative learning task in which they had to learn to go to one of two locations depending on the particular visual cue presented on each trial; the rats approached the cues from different directions. The animals were subsequently tested on a spatial working memory task, the eight‐arm radial maze. Performance on both these tasks had previously been shown to be impaired by hippocampal lesions. Rats with anterior thalamic damage were able to acquire the conditional associative task at a rate comparable to that of the control animals, but were impaired on the radial maze task. The finding of a dissociation between the effects of lesions of the anterior thalamic nuclei on two different classes of behavior known to be associated with hippocampal function suggest that while different neural stations within the extended hippocampal circuit may all play a role in spatial learning, the role of each of these regions in such learning may be more selective than previously considered. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Social Capital and Entrepreneurship

Social capital is a widely used concept in the social sciences, but its precise meaning is elusive. It has been variously and broadly defi ned as involving the building and maintaining of networks and the norms of behaviour that underpin them (Putman, 2000); the goodwill that is engendered by the fabric of social relations and that can be mobilized to facilitate action (Adler and Kwon, 2002: 17); and taken to be the sum of the resources that accrue to an individual or group, by virtue of possessing networks (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). The majority of individuals are embedded in social situations and consequently can take advantage of the wider social relations in which their ties are embedded (Kim and Aldrich, 2005). A recent survey of the meanings and application of social capital confi rmed that by making connections with others, with whom they share values, individuals are able to achieve more than if they acted alone. The network thus becomes a resource underpinned by social capital, which constitutes an intangible asset (Field, 2003). The diffi culty of actually defi ning social capital makes it controversial and an ideal focus for conference discussion. This special issue is based on a selection of papers presented at a symposium, hosted by the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development, Lancaster University Management School, in November 2004, to discuss the relationship between social capital and entrepreneurship. Interestingly, this symposium demonstrated the trans-disciplinary nature of both entrepreneurship and social capital, and brought perspectives from sociology, economics, history and from practitioners. In this Editorial we fi rst illustrate the relevance of social capital to the development of our understanding of entrepreneurship. Second, we highlight a number of themes emerging from the study of social capital within the entrepreneurial context. Third, we outline the articles presented in this special issue and identify the key themes in each of the contributions. Finally, we conclude with a number of suggestions for further research.
An artificial neural network approach to improving the correlation between protein energetics and the backbone structure

Computational approaches to modeling protein structures have made significant advances over the past decade. However, the current limitation in modeling protein structures is to produce protein structures consistently below the limit of 6 Å compared to their native structure. Therefore, improvement of protein structures consistently below the 6 Å limit using simulation of biophysical forces is of significant interest. Current protein force fields such as those implemented in CHARMM, AMBER, and NAMD have been deemed complete, yet their use in ab initio approaches to protein structure determination has been unsuccessful. Here, we introduce a new approach in evaluation of protein structures based on analysis of energy profiles produced by the SCOPE software package. The latest version of SCOPE produces a hydrogen bond profile that is substantially more informative than a single hydrogen bond energy value. We demonstrate how analysis of SCOPE's energy profile by an artificial neural network shows a significant improvement compared to the traditional force‐based approaches to evaluation of structures. The artificial neural network based analysis of SCOPE's energy profile showed identification of structures to within the range of 1.5–3.0 Å of the native structure. These results have been obtained by testing structures in the same Homology, Topology, Architecture, or Class of the CATH family.
GABAergic and non‐GABAergic neurons in the nucleus of the optic tract project to the superior colliculus: An ultrastructural retrograde tracer and immunocytochemical study in the rabbit

Both the nucleus of the optic tract (NOT) and the superior colliculus (SC) are thought to play important roles in the regulation of eye movements. The superior colliculus contributes to visual orientation and saccades, and the nucleus of the optic tract contributes to the detection of slow movements of the visual surround. Recently, a GABAergic projection has been described between these two nuclei in the cat, a species with frontal vision. The present study aimed at determining whether a similar GABAergic pathway exists in the rabbit, a species with lateral vision. To study this pathway we used the retrograde tracer cholera‐toxin (CTB) to identify NOT neurons projecting to the SC and GABA‐antibody immunostaining to identify GABA‐containing neurons and processes.
Inequality Aversion and Stochastic Decision-making after Land Reform: Experimental Evidence from Zimbabwean Villages

Inequality considerations are a motive for making positive oers in the Ultimatum Game and rejecting small ones, but decision error could have the same eect. I …nd evidence for both of these considerations and a dierent relative importance, amongst Zimbabwean villagers, of whom some resettled after a 1980s government organized land reform. While resettled villagers have higher inequality aversion and lower decision error than those who live in traditional villages, there are no gender dierences in preferences. The model estimated was …rst used by De Bruyn and Bolton (2004) on a large set of bargaining data, but the best …t of 64 percent overall coincidence of observed and predicted behavior is achieved for a dierent 'symmetric'speci…cation of inequality aversion in the model. As the use of …eld data is a recent development in experimental economics, I reestimate the model applied to the Zimbabwean data on the laboratory Ultimatum Game data of Roth et al. (1991) and further …eld data from Henrich et al. (2005). Estimates are compared comprehensively.
Normal Hepatocyte Transplantation Delays the Emergence of Chemically Induced Preneoplastic Nodules in Rat Liver

Cancer often arises in a background of chronic tissue damage. It is also increasingly appreciated that such an injured tissue microenvironment might foster the selective emergence of altered cells, leading to neoplasia. Accordingly, reversal of chronic tissue damage could represent a potential strategy to counteract neoplastic disease. In these studies, we aim to investigate whether transplantation of normal cells in the context of an injured, neoplastic-prone microenvironment might impact on the evolution of the carcinogenic process. A rat model of chemically induced hepatocarcinogenesis was used. Animals were given a single dose of diethylnitrosamine (DENA), followed by two injections of retrorsine (RS), a pyrrolizidine alkaloid that imposes a persistent block on hepatocyte cell cycle. At the end of this protocol, rats were either given no further treatment or injected, via the portal circulation, with 4 million normal hepatocytes isolated from a syngenic donor. After 3 months, rats given DENA+RS alone displayed numerous discrete nodular lesions (up to 30 per liver), ranging 1 to 3 mm in size. On the other hand, in animals receiving DENA+RS and transplantation, donor hepatocytes were able to repopulate over 50% of the host liver, as expected. Most importantly, both the number and the size of hepatocyte nodules were greatly reduced in these animals (percent nodular area was 1.8 ± 0.3, down from a control value of 8.5 ± 2.8). The above data indicate that strategies aimed at reestablishing a normal tissue microenvironment might be relevant to the management of neoplastic disease.
Thymidilate Synthase and Methionine Synthase Polymorphisms in Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Western Iran

Introduction: Polymorphism in genes involved in folate metabolism may cotribute to the susceptibility to acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Patients and Methods : To examine the influence of polymorphism in thymidylate synthase (TS 28-bp repeat) and methionine synthase (MS A2756G) genes on the susceptibility to ALL, 73 children with ALL and 128 age and gender matched, unrelated healthy individuals from Kermanshah Province were studied. Detection of TS 28-bp repeat and MS A2756G polymorphisms were performed by PCR and PCR-RFLP, respectively. Results: The frequency of TS 2R allele in patients and controls were 41.5 and 38%, respectively (OR 1.4, 95%CI 0.76-2.56, P=0.27). The allelic frequency of G allele of MS was higher (25%) in patients compared with healthy subjects (23%) [OR 1.04, 95%CI 0.58-1.87, P=0.8]. Considering MS AA and TS 3R3R genotypes as references indication where that individuals with MS GG+TS 2R2R genotypes have 1.3 - fold increase risk of ALL (OR 1.3, 95%CI 0.6-2.7, P=0.5). Conclusions : For the first time, our study has determined the frequency of polymorphism in two genes involved in the folate metabolism in a homogenous ethnic group of ALL patients. It seems that neither TS 28bp-repeat nor MS A2756G polymorphisms might be risk factors for susceptibility to ALL in western Iran.
The plant – arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi – bacteria – pathogen system

The aim of this study was to determine the role of the bacteria associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in the interactions between AM fungi, plant hosts and pathogens. Mycorrhizal traits were studied in a potato host using field rhizosphere soils of 12 different plant species as inoculum. High colonisation was found with soil of Festuca ovina and Leucanthemum vulgare, which contained two dominant AMF species (Glomus mosseae and G. intraradices). Bacteria associated with spores of AM fungi (AMB) were isolated from these two AM fungal species with either of the two plant species as hosts. Identification based on fatty acid methyl esters profile analysis revealed high diversity and specific occurrence of certain taxa with either of the two AMF. Some AMB were strongly antagonistic against Rhizoctonia solani in in vitro studies and most of them were spore type-dependent and originated from G. intraradices spores. Occurrence of AMB taxa was also plant host-dependent but antagonism was not. The specificity of AMB to AMF could be due to production of specific exudates, since the results showed that exudates collected from either G. intraradices or AMB stimulated growth of the other organism in a two-compartment plate system, and that concentrations of certain compounds changed several-fold. Certain AMB (Pseudomonas sp. and Stenotrophomonas sp.) showed strong multifunctional effects, i.e. stimulated AMF colonisation of potato roots in outdoor and greenhouse studies, stimulated potato growth in vitro and demonstrated antagonism against several fungal and bacterial plant pathogens. Three AMB from these two genera grown in the presence of exudates of G. intraradices resulted in enhanced antagonistic effects. Production of extracellular enzymes and bioactive compounds varied among the AMB species, suggesting different mechanisms for their multifunctional effects. By using F. ovina inoculated with G. intraradices as a cover crop, it should be possible to enhance the occurrence of strongly pathogen-antagonistic AMB. The association of multifunctional AMB with AMF spores provides evidence that bacteria are involved in the beneficial effects of AM fungi on plants.
The relationship between exchange rates and international trade: a literature review

Abstract This paper surveys a wide body of economic literature on the relationship between exchange rates and trade. Specifically, two main issues are investigated: the impact of exchange rate volatility and of currency misalignments on international trade flows. On average, exchange rate volatility has a negative (even if not large) impact on trade. The extent of this effect depends on a number of factors, including the existence of hedging instruments, the structure of production (e.g. the prevalence of small firms), and the degree of economic integration across countries. The second issue involves exchange rate misalignments, which are predicted to have short-run effects in models with price rigidities. However, the exact impact depends on a number of features, such as the pricing strategy of firms engaging in international trade and the importance of global production networks. Trade effects of currency misalignments are predicted to disappear in the long-run, unless an economy is characterized by other relevant distortions. Empirical results broadly confirm these theoretical predictions.
Fagner Leal Pantoja Generating Knowledge Networks from Phenotypic Descriptions

Several computing systems rely on information about living beings, such as identification keys – artifacts created by biologists to identify specimens following a flow of questions about their observable characters (phenotype). These questions are described in a freetext format, e.g., “big and black eye”. Free-texts hamper the automatic information interpretation by machines, limiting their ability to perform search and comparison of terms, as well as integration tasks. This thesis proposes a method to extract phenotypic information from natural language texts from biology legacy information systems, transforming them in an Entity-Quality formalism – a format to represent each phenotype character (Entity) and its state (Quality). Our approach aligns automatically recognized Entities and Qualities with domain concepts described in ontologies. It adopts existing Natural Language Processing techniques, adding an extra original step, which exploits intrinsic characteristics of phenotypic descriptions and of the organizational structure of identification keys. The approach was validated over the FishBase data. We conducted extensive experiments based on a manually annotated Gold Standard set to assess the precision and applicability of the proposed extraction method. The obtained results reveal the feasibility of our technique, its benefits and possibilities of scientific studies using the extracted knowledge network.
AGRICULTURE, RURAL INDUSTRIES, AND PEASANT INCOME IN CHINA

Agricultural reform and liberalization since 1978 paved the way for the unprecedented rapid growth of a dynamic nonagricultural sector in rural China, spearheaded by township and village enterprises (TVEs). Playing an increasingly important role in rural and national economy, TVE development has rapidly improved peasant income and reversed a centuries-long pattern of involutionary growth of output at diminishing marginal labor productivity in the Chinese countryside. Using 1991 county-level data (N=1,883), this paper shows that the nonagricultural sector, pushed by shortage of farmland and fueled by urban economic spillovers, raised peasant income and the spatial inequality of income through enhancing returns to mass education and rural labor supply. It also finds a positive relationship between lagged agricultural output and nonagricultural growth, whereas lagged agricultural output had a weak but significant effect on agricultural growth.
Acupuncture for residual insomnia associated with major depressive disorder: a placebo- and sham-controlled, subject- and assessor-blind, randomized trial.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture for residual insomnia and other residual symptoms associated with major depressive disorder (MDD). METHOD 150 participants having significant insomnia for more than 3 months and a history of MDD (both based on DSM-IV-TR criteria) were recruited from 4 psychiatric outpatient clinics in Hong Kong from May 2011 to August 2013 to receive 9 sessions of treatment over 3 weeks. They were randomized to receive acupuncture, minimal acupuncture, or placebo acupuncture. Primary outcome was sleep diary-derived sleep efficiency. Secondary outcomes included other sleep diary parameters, actigraphy, anxiety and depressive symptoms, daytime functioning, and adverse events. RESULTS The mean difference in sleep diary-derived sleep efficiency at 1-week posttreatment was -1.40 (95% CI, -7.08 to 4.28) between the acupuncture and minimal acupuncture groups and was 3.10 (95% CI, -3.64 to 9.84) between the acupuncture and placebo acupuncture groups. A χ(2) test showed that acupuncture produced a significantly higher proportion of participants achieving sleep-onset latency ≤ 30 minutes than did minimal acupuncture at 1-week posttreatment (P = .04). However, there was no significant between-group difference in most of the other outcomes. Treatment blinding was successful, as a majority of participants did not know which treatment they had received. CONCLUSIONS Acupuncture was well tolerated, but the efficacy was only mild and similar to that of minimal acupuncture and placebo acupuncture. A high proportion of patients remained clinically significantly affected by insomnia after treatment. The finding raises certain doubts about the value of acupuncture and underscores the difficulties in the treatment of residual insomnia in MDD. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01707706.
Employment branding at Google: a challenge to attract and/or build talent

Many organisations are realising that it is better to develop the leaders of tomorrow from within the organisation and that development is a critical strategic objective. Development helps to retain talent and ensure leaders are prepared to succeed strategically, operationally and culturally. This paper looks at the topic of recruitment and talent selection through the eyes of Google. Google has extraordinary appeal, which helps attracting not only the top talents in computer science and information technology but also throughout various industries from all levels of employment. This paper attempts to fi ne-tune their recruitment approach to optimise the scanning and selection of these applicants as this will be fundamental in ensuring good organisational and job fi t, timely processing and minimising discrimination and biases. Effective talent management is crucial in today’s tight labour market and skill and balancing a buy and build talent policy will position Google well for its future.
Risks and Benefits of Signaling Information System Characteristics to Strategic Attackers

The paper uses a game-theoretic setting to examine the interaction between strategic attackers who try to gain unauthorized access to information systems, or "targets," and defenders of those targets. Our analysis of the attacker-defender interaction shows that well-protected targets can use signals of their superior level of protection as a deterrence tool. This is due to the fact that, all other things being equal, rational attackers motivated by potential financial gains tend to direct their effort toward less-protected targets. We analyze several scenarios differing in the scope of publicly available information about target parameters and discuss conditions under which greater defenders' ability to signal their security characteristics may improve their welfare. Our results may assist security researchers in devising better defense strategies through the use of deterrence and provide new insight about the efficacy of specific security practices in complex information security environments.
An automatic method for revising ill-formed sentences based on n-grams

A good indicator of whether a person really knows the context of language is the ability to use in correct order the appropriate words in a sentence. The “scrambled” words cause a meaningless and ill formed sentences. Since the language model, is extracted from a large text corpus, it encodes the local dependencies of words. The word order errors usually violated the syntactic rules locally and therefore the N-grams can be used in order to fix ill-formed sentences. This paper presents an approach for repairing word order errors in text by reordering words in a sentence and choosing the version that maximizes the number of trigram hits according to a language model. The novelty of this method concerns the use of an efficient confusion matrix technique for reordering the words. The comparative advantage of this method is that works with a large set of words, and avoids the laborious and costly process of collecting word order errors for creating error patterns.
Restructuring the Personnel Function: the Case of Nhs Trusts1

Stephen Bach, who is Lecturer in Industrial Relations at the Warwick Business School and an Associate Fellow of its Industrial Relations Research Unit, examines the impact of the internal market in the NHS on the role, organisation and influence of the personnel function. He argues that personnel specialists have not been able to fulfil expectations of them and occupy a peripheral role within NHS trusts. This has occurred because of their limited involvement in corporate decision making, the difficulties of decentralising personnel practice and the absence of a strategic direction for the management of human resources at national level. In this context, he argues that the prospects for the personnel function and the potential for an integrated, long-term approach to the management of staff in the NHS remain at best uncertain.