Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Class Size Debate and Educational Mechanisms: Editorial

There is much public concern about the allocation of resources to educational institutions. Politicians are eager to demonstrate that they provide adequate resources for the acquisition of knowledge, in particular at the primary and secondary school level. From the political point of view, an ideal measure of increasing resources should be both easy to implement and visible. The reduction of class sizes comes close to fulfilling both these objectives. It is easily the most popular policy for school improvements in the US, and it has seen an increasing popularity among UK academic educationalists and political advisors. Whether it is also effective is an issue of an ongoing debate in the academic profession. This controversy is far from being resolved, and it is sometimes difficult to separate out academic views based on empirical and well-researched evidence, and positions that are ideologically rather than evidence-based. This Feature aims to inform about research and views in the economics literature, and to shed light on the problems that arise when establishing the effect of class size measures on performance. It provides the background for the reader to form their own independent view on the issue. Two major problems of the empirical literature, which may be partly responsible for the inconclusive results on class size effects, relate to shortcomings of data sources, and the lack of a unified conceptual framework. The paper by Petra Todd and Kenneth Wolpin is at the heart of this issue. It discusses in detail the methodological problems surrounding this literature. Among economists, the most popular structure for analysis of school quality effects on achievements is the education production function approach. The paper carefully explains the different questions we may want to answer within this framework, and discusses in detail the possible estimation strategies under data limitations. It isolates the assumptions that underlie the interpretations of parameters as causal. The paper demonstrates the complexity as well as the fallacies of research on this subject. The next two papers are by two economists who are very influential in the public and political debate on education in the US. Alan Krueger and Eric Hanushek present their research and their views in this Feature issue. Although they do agree that improvements in the quality of education are important, they disagree about the measures to achieve this goal most efficiently. They debate in particular the effects of class size reductions on student performance. Their dispute illustrates the problems with drawing firm conclusions from the evidence on the effects of class size. The last paper (by Christian Dustmann, Najma Rajah, and Arthur van Soest) discusses one possible reason for contradictory findings of class size effects in micro-data studies that are based on non-experimental data. The paper argues that The Economic Journal, 113 (February), F1–F2. Royal Economic Society 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
[Effects of Radix Ophiopogonis decoction on embryo-fetal development in rats].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the potential developmental toxicity of Radix Ophiopogonis decoction in SD rats. METHOD Timed-pregnant SD rats were given Radix Ophiopogonis decoction (26.9 g x kg(-1)) or vehicle (distilled water) by gavage on gestation days 6-17. Maternal clinical sign, abortions, premature deliveries, and body weight were monitored throughout gestation. At termination (gestation days 20) pregnant females were evaluated for clinical status and gestational outcome; live fetuses were examined for gender, external, visceral and skeletal malformation and variations. RESULT No deaths, premature deliveries or dose-related clinical signs were attributed to Radix Ophiopogonis decoction. Maternal body weight and body weight gain were not affected. There were no effects on fetus weight and viability, incidences of fetal malformation and variation. CONCLUSION These results demonstrated that Radix Ophiopogonis decoction had no detectable adverse effects in either the treated F0 female rats or the fetuses.
Darren Glass : Description of Current Research Interests Spring

My research interests are generally in the areas of algebraic geometry, number theory, and Galois theory. My dissertation and some of the research at that time focussed on profinite Galois groups ([2]) and ε-constants associated to arithmetic schemes ([5], [6]), and I have continued this work with a more recent paper on the De Rham cohomology of elliptic curves ([9]). However, most of my recent projects have investigated the automorphism groups of algebraic curves defined over fields of characteristic p, and in particular the relationship between the automorphism group of a given curve and the number of rational points on such curves. Questions about these two invariants as well as the relationship between them have implications throughout arithmetic geometry, cryptography, and coding theory. This note is an attempt to summarize and explain some of the work I have done on these questions as well as to pose some questions which I hope to consider in the future. Determining what groups act as a group of automorphisms of an algebraic curve is an old problem of algebraic geometry and group theory. There is a vast literature on automorphism groups of algebraic curves, beginning in the 19th century with Schwartz, Klein, Hurwitz, Wiman and others. Determining the list of groups that occur as full automorphism groups of algebraic curves for a fixed genus g seems to be a difficult problem. In characteristic zero, Breuer determined methods to compute all possible signatures of a group acting on curves of a given genus if one has sufficient computing power. Magaard, Shaska, Shpectorov and Völklein used Breuer’s results to design an algorithm which determines the full automorphism groups of curves; see [16] for full references and details on this topic as well as the complete results for g ≤ 6. Their work fully solves the problem in characteristic zero. The case of algebraic curves defined over a field of positive characteristic is much different due to the presence of wild ramification. In particular, the Riemann existence theorem is no longer valid and the methods of [16] can not be used, leading to the following question.
An evolutionary approach for frequency assignment in cellular radio networks

This paper presents a study of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) for a real application: the frequency assignment problem (FAP) in cellular radio networks. This problem is of great importance both in practice and in theory. In practice, solving this problem efficiently will allow the telecommunications operator to manage larger and larger cellular networks. In theory, the simplification of FAP is reduced to the graph coloring problem which is NP-complete. In our work, we take a progressive approach: first, we study separately the different components of EAs in order to understand the interest of each of them for our application; then, we design hybrid EAs which integrate efficient techniques (local search, constraint programming, etc.) into evolutionary operators. Experiments using our approach on real-size FAP instances (up to 300 cells and 13000 constraints) give very encouraging results. Direct comparison of our approach with simulated annealing (SA), constraint programming (CP) and graph coloring algorithms on the same set of tests shows the strong interest of our hybrid evolutionary approach for this application.
Small Intestinal Chlamydia Infection in Piglets

Evidence of Chlamydia infection of small intestinal epithelial cells was found in 4 4-14-day-old nursing piglets and 2 22-30-day-old weaned piglets. Each nursing piglet was from a different South Dakota swine farm experiencing preweaning diarrhea. The first weaned piglet was 1 of 7 live piglets from a Minnesota swine farm that were having problems with postweaning weight loss and a mild cough; diarrhea had not been noted by the owner. The second weaned piglet was from an Iowa farm experiencing diarrhea beginning 5 days after weaning. Three piglets were submitted alive and necropsied at the diagnostic laboratory. Three piglets were necropsied by the herd veterinarians, who submitted fresh and formalinfixed samples to the laboratory. Increased fluidity of the colonic contents was the only macroscopic change in the intestinal tracts of 5 piglets. The submitting veterinarian reported that a pseudomembrane was adhered to the ileal mucosa of the sixth piglet. In 3 nursing piglets, the lymphatics in the cranial two-thirds of the small intestinal mesentery were filled with chyle, indicating absorption from the small intestine. Immunofluorescent antibody (IFA) staining detected porcine rotavirus antigen in small intestinal enterocytes of 1 nursing and 1 weaned piglet but not in sections ofintestine from the other 4 piglets. Transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGE) antigen was not found in IFA-stained frozen sections of small intestine from all piglets. Viral particles were not found by electron microscopic examination of negatively stained colonic contents. Bacterial culture procedures for enteric pathogens and IFA staining for K88, K99, and 987P pilus antigens of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli did not yield significant results. Microscopic examination revealed mild to moderate necrotizing enteritis in the distal jejunum and ileum of the 4 nursing piglets and 1 weaned piglet. Mild to moderate villous atrophy with attenuation, necrosis, and sloughing of the villous epithelium was present in affected areas of the small intestine (Figs. 1, 2). A variable amount of detritus and fibrin partially covered the mucosal surface, and abnormally high numbers of neutrophils were in the lamina propria of 3 piglets. Microscopic lesions in the small intestine from the rotavirus-positive weaned piglet consisted of moderate villous atrophy and attenuation of the villous epithelium; inflammation and epithelial necrosis were minimal. In hematoxylin and eosin (HE)-stained sections of distal jejunum and ileum from all piglets, the supranuclear region of many enterocytes contained large vacuoles. Basophilic round bodies < 1.0 μm in diameter were within these vacuoles (Fig. 2). Neither bacterial colonization of the brush border of enterocytes nor developmental stages of Isospora suis were found.
Specifying software architectures based on coloured petri nets

The quality of an architectural design of a software system has a great influence on achieving non-functional requirements to the system, so formal evaluation and validation techniques to designed architectures are necessary in the early phase of development processes. In this paper, we present a technique for describing software architectures formally based on Coloured Petri Nets (CPNs) and a technique for reusing architectural constituents. Architectural descriptions are essentially written with a CPN language, so that the evaluation and analysis on the architectural descriptions can be made in architectural design phrase. We extract reusable architectural parts from standard architecture styles and architectural patterns so that a designer can construct an architecture by only retrieving the parts and combine them. We also designed the language for describing the combination of the architectural parts. To show the effectiveness of our techniques, we illustrate how a blackboard architecture can be composed of reusable parts and be simulated on a CPN tool (Design/CPN). key words: software architecture, Coloured Petri Net, architecture style, architecture description language, architectural reuse
A CLINICAL INTERPRETATION OF ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED WITH CELEBRITY WORSHIP

The phenomenon of celebrity worship is currently conceptualized as an abnormal type of parasocial relationship, driven by absorption and addictive elements and which potentially has significant clinical sequelae. The authors hypothesize that the three increasingly extreme sets of attitudes and behaviors associated with celebrity worship also partly reflect the three domains of personality discussed in Eysenckian theory. Specifically, celebrity worship for entertainment-social reasons may reflect extraversion personality traits; intense-personal attitudes and behaviors toward celebrities may reflect neuroticism traits; and celebrity worship of a borderline-pathological nature may reflect psychoticism traits. To test this idea, the authors administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale and the Abbreviated Form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire to large convenience samples of students (N = 317) and community (N = 290) respondents. Results indicate that celebrity worship is not an uncommon phenomenon. Further, correlational analyses supported predictions and suggest that Eysenckian domains of personality may promote or hinder a person’s progression along the continuum of behaviors associated with celebrity worship.
Design to avoid the over-gate-driven effect on ESD protection circuits in deep-submicron CMOS processes

Although the gate-driven (or gate-coupled) technique was reported to improve ESD robustness of NMOS devices, the over-gate-driven effect has been found to degrade the ESD level. This effect makes the gate-driven technique difficult to be well optimized in deep-submicron CMOS ICs. In this work, a new design is proposed to overcome such over-gate-driven effect by circuit design and to achieve the maximum ESD capability of the devices. The experimental results have shown significant improvement on the machine-model (MM) ESD robustness of ESD protection circuits by this new proposed design. This new design is portable (process-migration) for applications in different CMOS processes without modifying the process step or mask layer.
NHS research authority links approval of trials to registration and publication of results

Campaigners for transparency of all clinical trial data have welcomed plans set out by the body that oversees research standards in the NHS for the registration of trials and the publication of their results. The new commitments from the NHS Health Research Authority follow a meeting of stakeholders held on 25 April.1 The proposals include granting ethics approval for clinical trials from September 2013 only to researchers who have agreed a timeframe to register their trial. The authority was set up in December 2011 to promote and protect the interests of patients in health research. It has said that it would …
A simple analysis on P2P streaming with peer playback lags

Nowadays, mesh-based live streaming on P2P network is becoming more and more popular because of its scalability, robustness and no additional infrastructure requirement (e.g. CoolStreaming, PPlive, PPstream, Gridmedia). How to design a high fluency and small delay system is a challenge task. In this paper we analyze the impact of playback lags between peers on the playback fluency via a simple stochastic model. For every position in arbitrary peer's buffer, we calculate its probability of containing the corresponding chunk, which can indicate the fluency of a peer's playback on the video. Through our analysis and simulation, we get insights into playback lags and some useful tips for designing a real P2P live streaming system more effective.
Statistical Service Bounds of Regulated Flows in a Network

Statistical service has been proposed for service differentiation networks to improve resource utilization. However, it has remained in a challenge to compute end-to-end statistical service bounds for aggregates of regulated flows in a network. In this paper, we develop a generalized statistical traffic envelope, global statistical envelope, which covers not only aggregated traffic of regulated flows, but also a large variety of traffic sources. Based on this characterization, we derive statistical bounds on delay and backlog in a service curve network. The general results are further applied to computing statistical delay bound of aggregated flows regulated by peak rate constrained leaky buckets in a network of rate-latency servers. The effectiveness of our theoretical results as verified by numerical evaluation in terms of providing significantly tight delay bounds.
Endothelins and pulmonary hypertension, what directions for the near future?

Among the various vasoactive molecules or growth factors that have been tentatively implicated in pulmonary hypertension (PH), endothelin (ET) is particularly important because the potential therapeutic efficacy of ET-receptor antagonists is being investigated in patients with PH 1. ET was discovered in 1988 and found to be the most potent vasoconstrictor ever known 2. The discovery that ET was abundantly expressed in the lung directed attention toward its potential role in the initiation or progression of PH. Beneficial effects of chronic treatment with specific ET-receptor antagonists in experimental PH were first reported in 1994–1995 3, 4. ET-receptor antagonists now hold considerable promise for the treatment of human PH 1, illustrating how fast basic research has moved to clinical use in this specific area. Experimental studies of the expression and effects of lung ET have contributed substantially to the current fund of knowledge about the pathophysiological role of ET in PH and are in good agreement with those obtained in human PH. The current understanding of the ET system in the pathogenesis of PH can be summarized as follows: 1) the ET system seems activated in all forms of human PH 5 and in all animal models of PH 6, 7; 2) ET may contribute to the development of PH through its potent vasoconstricting properties, or its promitogenic properties 8–10; 3) ET-receptor blockade protects against PH and, more convincingly, reverses established sustained experimental PH 3, 4, 11–14. Each of these effects has been documented by a large number of studies. However, several questions of crucial importance when considering ET as a therapeutic target remain unanswered. 1) Why is the lung ET system activated during PH? 2) Why is lung ET well tolerated in the normal lung …
Transient synaptic zinc‐positive thalamocortical terminals in the developing barrel cortex

In rat barrel cortex, layer 4 has a transiently high density of zinc‐positive terminations from postnatal day (P)9 to P12 [P.W. Land & L. Shamalla‐Hannah (2002)J. Comp. Neurol. , 447, 43–56]. These terminations have been proposed to originate from cortico‐cortical connections, but their exact origin is unknown. To determine their sources, we injected sodium selenite into the barrel cortex of two adult rats and 32 pups, from P5 to P28. As predicted, abundant zinc‐positive cortically projecting neurons were visible around the injection sites and in distant cortical areas. From P9 to P13, however, neurons retrogradely labeled by zinc selenite occurred in the thalamus, in topographically appropriate regions of the ventroposterior medial (VPM) and posterior nuclei (Po). Because there are no previous reports of zinc‐positive sensory thalamocortical connections, we sought corroboration of this unexpected finding by electron microscopy. This revealed a subset of boutons in layers 4 and 1, positive for both zinc and vesicular glutamate transporter 2, a protein used by thalamocortical terminations. Finally, in an additional nine rats, we carried out in situ hybridization for zinc transporter 3 mRNA. Moderate signal was detected in VPM and Po at P10, but this disappeared by P28. In contrast, a strong signal was apparent in the anterodorsal nucleus, which projects to limbic areas, and this persisted at P28. The timing of the transient zinc‐positive terminations in the sensory thalamus roughly coincides with the onset of exploratory and whisking behavior in the middle of the second postnatal week; and this suggests zinc is important for activity‐related refinement of circuitry.
Solving the Permutation and Circularity Problems of Frequency-Domain Blind Source Separation

Blind source separation (BSS) for convolutive mixtures can be performed efficiently in the frequency domain, where independent component analysis (ICA) is applied separately in each frequency bin. However, frequencydomain BSS involves two major problems that must be solved. The first is the permutation problem: the permutation ambiguity of ICA should be aligned so that a separated signal in the time-domain contains the frequency components of the same source signal. The second problem is the circularity problem: the frequency responses obtained separately by ICA should be constrained so that the corresponding time-domain filter does not rely on the circularity effect of discrete frequency representation. This paper discusses these two problems and presents our methods for solving them. The effectiveness of the BSS method is shown by experimental results for the separation of up to four sources in a reverberant environment.
Performance Analysis of Direct Power Controlled PWM Rectifier under Disturbed AC Line Voltage

Voltage and current source inverter are widely used in electrical motor drives. In this drives, DC voltage (or current) are usually provided from phase control or line commutation rectifiers. Because of disadvantage & limitation of this converter, some new topologies are presented in advanced drive such as PWM rectifier. Thanks to well known capabilities of PWM rectifier, classical converter’s problem can be overcome. There are several PWM rectifier control strategies. In this paper these control methods are introduced. At first, performance of the Direct Power Control (DPC) PWM rectifier is studied under balanced voltage condition. As line voltage disturbance are often considerable in industrial applications, rectifier performance under disturbed line voltage is investigated. For this purpose a DPC method is implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment. Based on simulation results, DPC-PWM rectifier performances under unbalance and voltage sag is discussed.
THE ENTERIC SURFACE COAT ON CAT INTESTINAL MICROVILLI

The enteric microvilli of the cat, bat, and man are coated with a conspicuous layer composed of fine filaments radiating from the outer dense leaflet of the plasma membrane. This surface coat is prominent on the absorptive cells but is not so thick on the goblet and undifferentiated crypt cells. In other species the surface coat is poorly developed or inconsistent, but all intestinal microvilli have traces of such a coating over the tips and sides of the microvilli. Tissues prepared by the ordinary sectioning techniques for electron microscopy usually reveal this component when stained with uranyl acetate followed by lead staining. The surface coat is intensely periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) positive and reacts with Alcian blue or Hale's colloidal iron stain for acid mucopolysaccharide. It is also stained by toluidine blue at low pH. Repeated washings or incubation with various chemical agents have failed to remove or markedly alter the appearance of the coating, but extruded cells undergoing autolysis lose their surface coats. The stability, consistent presence, and intimate association of the mucopolysaccharide coat suggest that it may be an integral part of the plasmalemma rather than an "extraneous coat. "
C-Clause Calculi and Refutation Search in First-Order Classical Logic

The paper describes an approach to the construction of a resolution-type technique basing on a certain generalization of the resolution notion of a clause. This generalization called a conjunctive clause (c-clause) leads to a possibility to introduce two different inference rules and determine two c-clause calculi oriented to refutation search in firstorder classical logic both with and without equality. Using the connection of these calculi with Robinson’s clash-resolution method, a simple way for the proving of their soundness and completeness is given. Analogs of some of the well-known resolution strategies for the calculi are suggested. Besides, the treatment of Maslov’s inverse method in the resolution terms is given. This research can be used in (e-)learning systems for the intelligent testing of knowledge of trainees learning a mathematical subject.