Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
E. Regression Discontinuity Design: An Effectiveness-Based Evaluation of Five State Pre-Kindergarten Programs

Since 1980, the number of state pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs has more than doubled, with 38 states enrolling more than one million children in 2006 alone. This study evaluates how five state pre-K programs affected children's receptive vocabulary, math, and print awareness skills. Taking advantage of states' strict enrollment policies determined by a child's date of birth, a regression-discontinuity design was used to estimate effects in Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia. For receptive vocabulary, only New Jersey and Oklahoma yielded significant standardized impacts, though two of the three other coefficients were in a direction indicating positive effects. For math, all the coefficients were positive but only Michigan and New Jersey yielded reliable results. The largest impacts were for print awareness, where all five coefficients were positive and four were reliable in Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and West Virginia. The five states were not randomly selected and, on average, have higher quality program standards than non-studied states, precluding formal extrapolation to the nation at large. However, our sample of states differed in many other ways, permitting the conclusion that state pre-K programs can have positive effects on children's cognitive skills, though the magnitude of these effects varies by state and outcome. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
SimPact: Impact Analysis for Simulink Models

With the increasing use of Simulink modeling in embedded system development, there comes a need for effective techniques and tools to support managing these models and their related artifacts. Because maintenance of models makes up such a large portion of the cost and effort of the system as a whole, it is increasingly important to ensure that the process of managing models is as simple, intuitive and efficient as possible. Part of model management comes in the form of impact analysis - the ability to determine the impact of a change to a model on related artifacts such as test cases and other models. This paper presents an approach to impact analysis for Simulink models, and a tool to implement it (SimPact). We validate our tool as an impact predictor against the maintenance history of a large set of industrial models and their tests. The results show a high level of both precision and recall in predicting actual impact of model changes on tests.
Characterization of electrospun nanocomposite scaffolds and biocompatibility with adipose-derived human mesenchymal stem cells

Electrospun nanocomposite scaffolds were fabricated by encapsulating multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) in poly (lactic acid) (PLA) nanofibers. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) confirmed the fabrication of nanofibers, and transmission electron microscopy identified the alignment and dispersion of MWNT along the axis of the fibers. Tensile testing showed an increase in the tensile modulus for a MWNT loading of 0.25 wt% compared with electrospun nanofibrous mats without MWNT reinforcement. Conductivity measurements indicated that the confined geometry of the fibrous system requires only minute doping to obtain significant enhancements at 0.32 wt%. Adipose-derived human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) were seeded on electrospun scaffolds containing 1 wt% MWNT and 0 wt% MWNT, to determine the efficacy of the scaffolds for cell growth, and the effect of MWNT on hMSC viability and proliferation over two weeks in culture. Staining for live and dead cells and DNA quantification indicated that the hMSCs were alive and proliferating through day 14. SEM images of hMSCs at 14 days showed morphological differences, with hMSCs on PLA well spread and hMSCs on PLA with 1% MWNT closely packed and longitudinally aligned.
Flexible Baseband Analog Circuits for Software-Defined Radio Front-Ends

This paper presents a novel approach to design a digitally programmable low pass filter (LPF) and variable gain amplifier (VGA) intended for a software-defined radio (SDR) front-end. These flexible analog circuits are driven by a network-on-chip (NoC) that is able to set performance parameters like cut-off frequency, selectivity, noise, and gain guaranteeing at any time a near-optimal power/performance trade-off. A design approach is proposed to tackle the challenges imposed by flexibility in analog design. A silicon prototype is realized in 0.13-mum CMOS technology with 1.2-V supply voltage to prove the validity of the proposed solution. The LPF provides a frequency tuning range between 0.35 MHz and 23.5 MHz with an adaptive integrated noise level between 85 muVrms and 163 muVrms whereby the power consumption conveniently varies from 0.72 mW to 21.6 mW according to the required performance. The VGA is made up of two cascaded gain stages and provides a gain range from about 0 dB to 39 dB with a reconfigurable power/bandwidth.
Usefulness of 4D-CTAin the Detection of Cerebral Dural Sinus Occlusion or Stenosis with Collateral Pathways

In time-resolved CT angiography (4D-CTA), it is of substantial merit to detect the veins and sinuses of the whole brain with the simultaneous demonstration of the natural drainage flow in order to find occlusion or stenosis of the dural sinuses with collateral pathways. As preoperative information for patients with brain tumors, it is important to detect feeding arteries, incidentally found aneurysms or other vascular lesions, and to detect patency of the dural sinuses and the important cortical veins, whether they are compressed by tumors or not. On the other hand, cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) may occur in patients due to various causes, which has not been unusual in recent years. For patients with acute symptomatic or chronic non-symptomatic CVT, identification of dural sinus occlusion (DSO) or dural sinus stenosis (DSS) and compensatory collateral pathways is necessary for suitable thrombolytic therapy or careful investigation to avoid further CVT. This study reviews our experiences in 116 cases of 4D-CTA for 90 patients with brain tumors and 26 other patients including 11 with arteriovenous malformation, and four with acute CVT and other conditions. 4D-CTA presented DSO/DSS with compensatory venous collateral pathways, which was helpful to detect the severity of the venous abnormality, and see whether it was compressed by brain tumors, or due to other causes in patients with symptomatic or non-symptomatic CVT. 4D-CTA is a useful non-invasive diagnostic tool to detect cerebral venous abnormalities as an alternative to DSA.
Survival of pathogenic bacteria in various freshwater sediments

Four human-associated bacteria, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella newport, Escherichia coli, and Klebsiella pneumoniae, were tested for survival in five freshwater sediments. Bacterial survival in continuous-flow chambers was monitored over 14-day periods on sediments ranging from organically rich high-clay fractions to organically poor sandy fractions. Bacterial die-off ranged from 1 to 5 orders of magnitude in sediments. E. coli survived as long as or longer than S. newport. P. aeruginosa and K. pneumoniae tended to survive longer than E. coli. Survival of E. coli and S. newport was greater in sediments containing at least 25% clay. Good reproducibility allowed the development of linear models to describe die-off rates.
Dipeptidyl peptidase-IV and related molecules: markers of malignancy?

BACKGROUND The dipeptidyl peptidase-IV (DPP-IV) family has outgrown its humble origins as a simple enzymatic activity cleaving dipeptides from peptides with an accessible N-terminal penultimate proline with no clear role in metabolism. It is now understood to play a critical role in regulating signaling capacity of chemokines, neuropeptides and other extracellular messengers in addition to playing direct roles by means of non-enzymatic interactions to regulate the local extracellular proliferative environment. Consequently, examination of DPP-IV family representation and activity in immune and oncogenic processes has become a major focus. OBJECTIVES To review the evidence for DPP-IV family members as markers of malignancy. METHODS Overview of published data. RESULTS/CONCLUSION The DPP-IV family, which is probably linked directly to the pathogenesis of cancer, holds significant promise for exploitation in the diagnostic arena.
Examining the Interrelatedness of Patient and Spousal Stress in Heart Failure: Conceptual Model and Pilot Data

Background and Research Objective:Recent research has highlighted the positive influence that spouses can have on patient outcomes. It is not clear whether patients and spouses influence each other’s well-being reciprocally or whether spousal well-being affects the success of patients’ disease management. Our goals were 2-fold: (a) to propose a conceptual framework to examine the reciprocity between patient and spouses’ well-being, especially as it relates to disease management, and (b) to begin to assess the validity of this model using pilot data. Subjects and Methods:Twenty-three veterans with heart failure (HF) and their spouses were recruited into a pilot cross-sectional observational study. Participants completed psychosocial surveys to assess depressive symptoms, caregiver burden, relationship satisfaction, and disease management. Descriptive analyses and bivariate correlations between these measures were calculated. Results:Using standard cutoffs, analyses suggested clinically significant depressive symptoms in patients (Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression score >16; mean, 21.8 [SD, 13]) and a high level of caregiver burden among spouses (Zarit Burden Interview score >15; mean, 22.4 [SD, 15.4]). Both patients and spouses reported high relationship satisfaction levels (Dyadic Adjustment Scale score >100; mean, 112.6 [SD, 26.5] and 115.9 [SD, 14.4], respectively). On average, patients reported poor disease management (Self-care of Heart Failure Index subscale <70 across all subscales: confidence = 53.3 [SD, 28.2]; maintenance = 59.7 [SD, 17.3]; management = 54.0 [SD, 19.4]). Patient depressive symptoms were positively correlated with spouse depressive symptoms (r = 0.53) and caregiver burden (r = 0.64; all P’s < .05). Spouses’ depressive symptoms were additionally correlated with lower levels of perceived social support among patients (r = −0.47), poor patient relationship satisfaction (r = −0.51), and worse patient confidence in HF management (r = −0.48). Greater caregiver burden was associated with more patient disease complaints (r = 0.49), poorer patients’ relationship satisfaction (r = −0.72), and poorer patients’ perceived social support (r = −0.73). Conclusions:These results provide preliminary support to the proposed conceptual model. Further research is necessary to determine which spousal factors appear to be most relevant to disease management. Disease management interventions may benefit from engaging spouses in a way that enhances their role without adding to their burden.
Expression of chemokines in the CSF and correlation with clinical disease activity in patients with multiple sclerosis

Objective: To define the chemokine profile in the CSF of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and compare it with three control groups; patients with benign headache (headache), non-inflammatory neurological diseases (NIND), and other inflammatory neurological diseases (IND). In addition, the correlations of CSF chemokine concentrations with chemokine receptor expression on CSF CD4+ T cells and with clinical disease activity were assessed. Methods: Forty three patients with MS, 24 with IND, 44 with NIND, and 12 with benign headache undergoing diagnostic or therapeutic lumbar puncture were included. Supernatant fluid from CSF was analysed for four β (CCL2, CCL3, CCL4, CCL5) and two α (CXCL9, CXCL10)chemokines by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Chemokine receptors CCR3, CCR5, and CXCR3 on CD4+ T cells from eight patients with MS were analysed using directly conjugated fluorescent labelled monoclonal antibodies and flow cytometry. Results: CXCL10, formerly interferon-γ inducible protein-10 (IP-10), was significantly increased and CCL2, formerly monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), was significantly reduced in the CSF of patients with MS and IND compared with those with benign headache and NIND. Concentrations of CXCL10 were significantly greater in patients with relapsing-remitting compared with secondary progressive MS and correlated significantly with CXCR3 expression on CSF CD4+ T cells from patients with MS. Concentrations of CXCL10 decreased and CCL2 concentrations increased as time from the last relapse increased in patients with MS. Conclusion: Increased CXCL10 and decreased CCL2 concentrations in the CSF are associated with relapses in MS. Although serial values from individual patients were not available, this study suggests that CXCL10 and CCL2 may return towards baseline concentrations after a relapse. Correlation of CXCL10 with CD4+ T cell expression of CXCR3 was consistent with its chemoattractant role for activated lymphocytes. Thus CXCL10 neutralising agents and CXCR3 receptor antagonists may be therapeutic targets in MS.
Individual accessibility and travel possibilities: A literature review on time geography

In the late 1960s, Torsten Hägerstrand introduced the conceptual framework of time geography which can be deemed an elegant tool for analysing individual movement in space and time. About a decade later, the auspicious time-geographic research has gradually lost favour, mainly due to the unavailability of robust geocomputational tools and the lack of georeferenced individual-level travel data. It was only from the early 1990s that new GISbased research gave evidence of resurgence in popularity of the field. From that time on, several researchers have steadily been publishing work at the intersection of time geography, disaggregate travel modeling, and GI-science. This paper reviews the most important timegeographic contributions. From this exercise, some prevailing research gaps are deduced and a way to deal with these gaps is presented. In particular, we focus on space-time accessibility measures, geovisualisation of activity patterns, human extensibility and fuzzy space-time prisms in relation to CAD.
Translating orality, recreating otherness

This article discusses the problem posed by linguistic variation for interlingual translation, in particular by the relation between language, context and identity in speech and orality, within the framework of descriptive translation studies. It starts by defining linguistic variation as a correlation of linguistic form, communicative meaning and sociocultural value. It examines the particular case of literary representation of varieties to suggest strategies and procedures for their translation. It ends with an analysis of selected examples of canonized British fiction and their translation into European Portuguese, and a discussion of causes and consequences of the patterning resulting from the translation of speech and orality in fiction.
Generation of a Mean Motion Model of the Lung Using 4D-CT Image Data

Modeling of respiratory motion gains in importance within the field of radiation therapy of lung cancer patients. Current modeling approaches are usually confined to intra-patient registration of 3D image data representing the individual patient's anatomy at different breathing phases. We propose an approach to generate a mean motion model of the lung based on thoracic 4D CT data of different patients to extend motion modeling capabilities. Our modeling process consists of two main parts: an intra - subject registration to generate subject - specific motion models and an inter - subject registration to combine these subject - specific motion models into a mean motion model. Further, we present methods to adapt the mean motion model to a patient-specific lung geometry. A first evaluation of the model was done by using the generated mean motion model to predict lung and tumor motion of individual patients and comparing the prediction quality to non - linear registration. Our results show that the average difference in prediction quality (measured by overlap coefficients) between non - linear registration and model - based prediction is approx. 10%. However, the patient - specific registration relies on individual 4D image data, whereas the model - based prediction was obtained without knowledge of the individual breathing dynamics. Results show that the model predicts motion patterns of individual patients generally well and we conclude from our results that such a model has the capability to provide valuable a-priori knowledge in many fields of applications.
Fault Diagnosis Engineering in Molecular Signaling Networks: An Overview and Applications in Target Discovery

Fault diagnosis engineering is a key component of modern industrial facilities and complex systems, and has gone through considerable developments in the past few decades. In this paper, the principles and concepts of molecular fault diagnosis engineering are reviewed. In this area, molecular intracellular networks are considered as complex systems that may fail to function, due to the presence of some faulty molecules. Dysfunction of the system due to the presence of a single or multiple molecules can ultimately lead to the transition from the normal state to the disease state. It is the goal of molecular fault diagnosis engineering to identify the critical components of molecular networks, i.e., those whose dysfunction can interrupt the function of the entire network. The results of the fault analysis of several signaling networks are discussed, and possible connections of the findings with some complex human diseases are examined. Implications of molecular fault diagnosis engineering for target discovery and drug development are outlined as well.
Shape from Focus through Laplacian Using 3D Window

One of the fundamental objectives of computer vision is to reconstruct a three-dimensional (3D) structure of objects from two-dimensional (2D) images. The basic idea of image focus is that objects at different distances from a lens are focused at different distances. Shape from Focus (SFF) is the problem of reconstructing the depth of the scene changing actively the optics of the camera until the point of interest is in focus. The point in focus gives information about its depth through the thin lens Gaussian law. An effective focus measure operator should be a high-pass filter. Usually, the variation of frequency components are not enough that focus measure could be computed pixel-wise, therefore, sum of pixels in small 2D windows are used for detecting the high frequency components. In this paper, we propose to use 3D windows instead of 2D windows for detecting the high frequency components in the images. The proposed algorithm using 3D window gives better depth map than the previous algorithms using 2D windows.
Police killings of unarmed Black people: Centering race and racism in human behavior and the social environment content

ABSTRACT The academic frames of diversity and, to a lesser extent, intersectionality mute the roles played by race and racism in the recent police killings of unarmed Black people in the United States. Most scholars agree that racism today is systemic, and the authors of this article assert that diversity content fails to prepare social workers to situate client issues in a social work practice that incorporates an understanding of the impact of racialization on Black people seeking social work services. Race and racism in the United States are creations of White supremacy and were initially crafted to justify the enslavement of Africans. The ideologies are a part of the founding principles of the U.S. democracy, and they are the genesis of White advantage in the United States achieved through law and social policy and still enacted daily in human interaction. In this article, the authors place police killings of unarmed Black people in a context that takes into consideration historical and contemporary evidence of the denigration of Black people in the United States. Then we specifically challenge the utility of diversity as a frame to prepare social work practitioners for practice with Blacks whose ancestral lineage traces back to people of African descent and whose lived experiences in the United States occurred during slavery and/or legally sanctioned apartheid (Jim Crow).
Mccowan Automated Collection of Cancer Stage Data Collection of Cancer Stage Data by Classifying Free-text Medical Reports Mccowan Automated Collection of Cancer Stage Data

Cancer staging provides a basis for planning clinical management, but also allows for meaningful analysis of cancer outcomes and evaluation of cancer care services. Despite this, stage data in cancer registries is often incomplete, inaccurate or simply not collected. This article describes a prototype software system (Cancer Stage Interpretation System, CSIS) which automatically extracts cancer staging information from medical reports. The system uses text classification techniques to train support vector machines (SVM) to extract elements of stage listed in cancer staging guidelines. When processing new reports, CSIS identifies sentences relevant to the staging decision, and subsequently assigns the most likely stage. The system was developed using a database of staging data and pathology reports for 710 lung cancer patients, then validated in an independent set of 179 patients against pathologic stage assigned by two independent pathologists. CSIS achieved overall accuracy of 74% for tumour (T) staging and 87% for node (N) staging, and errors were observed to mirror disagreements between human experts.
Replicated transfer matrix analysis of Ising spin models on 'small world' lattices

We calculate equilibrium solutions for Ising spin models on 'small world' lattices, which are constructed by superimposing random and sparse Poissonian graphs with finite average connectivity c onto a one-dimensional ring. The nearest neighbour bonds along the ring are ferromagnetic, whereas those corresponding to the Poissonian graph are allowed to be random. Our models thus generally contain quenched connectivity and bond disorder. Within the replica formalism, calculating the disorder-averaged free energy requires the diagonalization of replicated transfer matrices. In to addition developing the general replica symmetric theory, we derive phase diagrams and calculate effective field distributions for two specific cases: that of uniform sparse long-range bonds (i.e. 'small world' magnets), and that of ±J random sparse long-range bonds (i.e. 'small world' spin glasses).
Growing pains: Pre-entry experience and the challenge of transition to incumbency†

We examine how entrepreneurial entry by diversifying and de novo firms in new industries leads to different levels of performance. We propose that these types of firms differ in dynamic capabilities, which help them overcome growth impediments and transition to incumbency in the industry. Growth impediments arise at larger size, older tenure levels in industry, and after technological discontinuities. Because of their prior experience, diversifying firms are better equipped to handle the challenges of impediments to growth. Meanwhile, de novo firms, ostensibly tailor-made for the targeted industry, are more likely to stumble over these growth challenges, and eventually lag behind diversifying firms. We find support for our hypotheses using a near census of firms in the U.S. wireless telecommunications industry over the 1983–2004 period. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A 3.2 to 4 GHz, 0.25 /spl mu/m CMOS frequency synthesizer for IEEE 802.11a/b/g WLAN

A fully integrated 3.2 to 4 GHz frequency synthesizer, part of an IEEE 802.11a/b/g transceiver, is implemented in a 0.25 /spl mu/m standard CMOS technology. The phase noise is -105 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset, and the spurs are below -64 dBc when measured at the 5 GHz transmitter output. The settling time is less than 150 /spl mu/s.