Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide

In this text, Diane Ravitch reviews the history of standards and assessments in American education; reviews evidence about student achievement in the United States; and state-level activities; and analyses the prospects for a national assessment system. During the last two decades, as evidence of declining student performance has mounted, public dissatisfaction with the quality of American schools has reached an all-time high. Many elected officials, educators, and policymakers have concluded that the solution lies in establishing standards to clarify educational objectives and a testing system to determine if progress is being made. Both Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton endorsed this idea and each proposed legislation to promote its development. But while this effort has enjoyed wide support, it has also attracted bitter opposition from both political extremes, largely because of concerns about a national curriculum and federal control of education. Ravitch contends that raising standards is not only about raising the achievement of the best students, but also about raising the achievement of all students. In order to implement systematic reform that achieves this goal, she suggests that deciding what children should learn is the first step. However, national standards should not discredit unorthodox educational programs or dictate instructional methods. She makes recommendations regarding the role of states in setting standards for schools and districts, the role of institutions of higher learning and business in promoting standards, and the role of assessments in maintaining standards. Ravitch concludes that a system of standards and assessments, no matter how reliable, will not solve all the problems of American education, but it will help to get the learning part of the educational system right. Ultimately, the improvement of American education depends on widespread cultural support for educational achievement.
Atrial Fibrillation on Intensive Care Unit Admission Independently Increases the Risk of Weaning Failure in Nonheart Failure Mechanically Ventilated Patients in a Medical Intensive Care Unit

Abstract Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most frequent arrhythmias in clinical practice. Previous studies have reported the influence of AF on patients with heart failure (HF). The effect of AF on the non-HF critically ill patients in a medical intensive care unit (ICU) remains largely unclear. The study aimed to investigate the impact of AF presenting on ICU admission on the weaning outcome of non-HF mechanically ventilated patients in a medical ICU. A retrospective observational case–control study was conducted over a 1-year period in a medical ICU at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, a tertiary medical center in north Taiwan. Non-HF mechanically ventilated patients who were successful in their spontaneous breathing trial and underwent ventilator discontinuation were enrolled. The primary outcome measure was the ventilator status after the first episode of ventilator discontinuation. A total of 285 non-HF patients enrolled were divided into AF (n = 62) and non-AF (n = 223) groups. Compared with the non-AF patients, the AF patients were significantly associated with old age (P = 0.002), a higher rate of acute respiratory distress syndrome causing respiratory failure (P = 0.015), a higher percentage of sepsis before liberation from mechanical ventilation (MV) (P = 0.004), and a higher serum level of blood urea nitrogen on the day of liberation from MV (P = 0.003). Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that AF independently increased the risk of weaning failure [adjusted odds ratio (AOR), 3.268; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.254–8.517; P = 0.015]. Furthermore, the AF patients were found to be independently associated with a high rate of ventilator dependence (log rank test, P = 0.026), prolonged total ventilator use (AOR, 1.979; 95% CI, 1.032–3.794; P = 0.040), increased length of ICU stay (AOR, 2.256; 95% CI, 1.049–4.849; P = 0.037), increased length of hospital stay (AOR, 2.921; 95% CI, 1.363–6.260; P = 0.006), and increased ICU mortality (AOR, 4.143; 95% CI, 1.381–12.424; P = 0.011). AF on ICU admission is an independent risk factor for weaning failure and significantly associated with poor hospital outcome in non-HF mechanically ventilated patients in a medical ICU.
Who speaks for whom? Towards analyzing opinions in news editorials

The paper discusses on the ongoing work of editorial analysis and synthesis construction, basically text annotation and the linguistic criteria for distinguishing between facts and opinions. Further we also talk on the factors playing a crucial role in determining the strengths of opinions. We also discuss on the process of argumentation structure outlining, a major part of our work that directs the analysis of opinions in the discourse level.
Whose education counts? The added impact of adult-child education on physical functioning of older taiwanese.

OBJECTIVES Research has implicated education as an important predictor of physical functioning in old age. Older adults in Taiwan tend to experience tight familial integration and high rates of adult-child coresidency-much more so than is typical in Western cultures-which might imply additional influences stemming from the education of children. This could arise in a number of ways; for instance, through the sharing of health-related information between child and parent, the quality of caregiving efforts, monetary assistance for medical and other services, or other psychosocial avenues. Despite this probable association, such hypotheses have rarely been tested. In this study, a nationally representative survey of older Taiwanese was used to examine these concurrent effects. METHODS Outcome variables include the existence of any functional limitations (dichotomously measured) and the severity of functional disorders (ordinally measured). Dichotomous and ordinal logistic models were used. RESULTS Results suggest that, after adjusting for age, sex, and other factors, both child and respondent education associate with the existence of limitations, but the child's education is more important than the parent's when predicting severity of limitations. DISCUSSION This implies that models ignoring social network characteristics in determining health outcomes of older adults may be misspecified, at least in some non-Western societies, and calls for further testing in other societies as well.
A novel t-test for low-SNR fMRI brain mapping

Detecting signal in fMRI studies relies on the classical testing framework developed for Gaussian signals. Unfortunately, fMRI signals are amplitude measurements such that the signal follows a Rice distribution. The classical t-test used for detection performs reasonably well for signals with a high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). To accurately detect the voxels at the border of the brain region of interest, we need to deal with small SNRs such that dealing with the Rice distribution is a necessity. Most techniques dealing with the Rice distribution require amplitude estimates based on the Maximum Likelihood Estimate (MLE) requiring an iterative approach and may still lead to a false local solution. The analytical alternative to the MLE is by applying the Method-of-Moment (MoM) estimator which performs better for low SNR conditions than the Gaussian framework. In this paper, we propose a novel t-test based on the MoM-estimates for signal and noise power to assess voxel activity and to generate the according brain map.
Activity Analysis for Video Security Systems

Video security systems are required to extract semantic information on the ongoing activities in a given environment, in order to detect suspicious or potentially dangerous behaviours. To achieve this goal we proposed a real-time trajectory clustering algorithm able to detect common patterns of activity; the output of this algorithm can be used to facilitate high level behaviour analysis and situation assessment. In this paper we extend our previous work using the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence framework. This allows an explicit handling of evidence accrual and fusion that gives more meaningful data for high-level activity analysis modules.
The behavioural self-regulation strategies of Indian South African university students: An exploratory study

This study explored the race-related self-regulation strategies of eight Indian South African university students (females: n = 4) attending a historically white university. Interactive qualitative analysis of their race-related experiences revealed that the students felt that they had been judged as being different, which resulted in overwhelming unwanted emotions, primarily anger and sadness. Moreover, the students reported the use a range of self-regulation strategies (such as introspection, engaging with trusted others, managing the situation, tolerating the experience of being judged, and making friends with people from other races) in a specific sequence to enhance their social acceptance on the campus. The findings suggest that adaptive self-regulation may enhance the social outcomes of historically disadvantaged, racial minority students.
A parallel adaptive mesh refinement algorithm for predicting turbulent non-premixed combusting flows

A parallel adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm is proposed for predicting turbulent non-premixed combusting flows characteristic of gas turbine engine combustors. The Favre-averaged Navier–Stokes equations governing mixture and species transport for a reactive mixture of thermally perfect gases in two dimensions, the two transport equations of the k–ω turbulence model, and the time-averaged species transport equations, are all solved using a fully coupled finite-volume formulation. A flexible block-based hierarchical data structure is used to maintain the connectivity of the solution blocks in the multi-block mesh and facilitate automatic solution-directed mesh adaptation according to physics-based refinement criteria. This AMR approach allows for anisotropic mesh refinement and the block-based data structure readily permits efficient and scalable implementations of the algorithm on multi-processor architectures. Numerical results for turbulent non-premixed diffusion flames for a bluff-body burner are described and compared to available experimental data. The numerical results demonstrate the validity and potential of the parallel AMR approach for predicting complex non-premixed turbulent combusting flows.
ShadowPix: Multiple Images from Self Shadowing

ShadowPixare white surfaces that display several prescribed images formed by the self‐shadowing of the surface when lit from certain directions. The effect is surprising and not commonly seen in the real world. We present algorithms for constructing ShadowPixthat allow up to four images to be embedded in a single surface. ShadowPixcan produce a variety of unusual effects depending on the embedded images: moving the light can animate or relight the object in the image, or three colored lights may be used to produce a single colored image. ShadowPixare easy to manufacture using a 3D printer and we present photographs, videos, and renderings demonstrating these effects.
Learning in Survey Expectations of Inflation

A theoretical result in the theory of adaptive learning is that the optimal tracking parameter is larger if the underlying environment is more unstable. In other words when the underlying environment is subject to changes agents pay more attention to recent data and discount more past data when forming their expectations. In this paper we test this result using survey data on inflation expectations for 25 countries. We find that, in accordance with theory, the tracking parameter that best describes expectation formation is larger in countries that are more unstable. This result is robust to various measures of instability.
Scalable Symmetric Key Cryptography Using Asynchronous Data Exchange in Enterprise Grid

Symmetric key cryptography is one of the most critical computing problems that need high performance computing power resources. The use of large key sizes and complex encryption/decryption algorithms to achieve unbreakable state has led to an increased time computational complexity. Traditionally, this problem is solved in the grid environment by partitioning data streams into several blocks of a predefined size. This is done while sequentially reading the data from the raw data file. The grid manager node then takes the responsibility of passing these blocks to the executer nodes where different blocks are processed separately and simultaneously. Although this technique allows parallel processing to speed up the encryption/decryption process, creating blocks by sequentially reading the data file and distributing these blocks on executers synchronously by the central manager node is a poor technique and a source of delay. In this paper, we present a novel approach that tackles this problem by allowing executers to access data file at random and asynchronously exchange the blocks among them, thereby, delay is significantly reduced and data size can be scaled up. In order to show the merit of our approach experiments have been conducted through a system-level middleware for grid computing called Alchemi. The results show a remarkable performance enhancement in our approach over traditional approaches in terms of speed.
Controls over carbon storage and turnover in high‐latitude soils

Despite the importance of Arctic and boreal regions in the present carbon cycle, estimates of annual high‐latitude carbon fluxes vary in sign and magnitude. Without accurate estimates of current carbon fluxes from Arctic and boreal ecosystems, predicting the response of these systems to global change is daunting. A number of factors control carbon turnover in high‐latitude soils, but because they are unique to northern systems, they are mostly ignored by biogeochemical models used to predict the response of these systems to global change. Here, we review those factors. First, many northern systems are dominated by mosses, whose extremely slow decomposition is not predicted by commonly used indices of litter quality. Second, cold temperature, permafrost, waterlogging, and substrate quality interact to stabilize soil organic matter, but the relative importance of these factors, and how they respond to climate change, is unknown. Third, recent evidence suggests that biological activity occurring over winter can contribute significantly to annual soil carbon fluxes. However, the controls over this winter activity remain poorly understood. Finally, processes at the landscape scale, such as fire, permafrost dynamics, and drainage, control regional carbon fluxes, complicating the extrapolation of site‐level measurements to regional scales.
DAMPAK REFORMASI PAJAK TAHUN 2000 PADA STRUKTUR BIAYA,PENGEWARAN MODAL DAN PROFITABILITAS PERUSAHAAN(Studi pada perusahaan manufaktur di Bursa Efek Jakarta)

This research is done for analyzing the effect of the 2000 tax reformation as on business communities as measured using firm's financial data. Posner's theory of economic regulation is used to develop the research hypoteses that specifically is used •test whether 2000 Tax Reform benefits the business communities or simply increases government tax revenues. The variabel investigates are cost structure,capital expenditures and company profitability. The sample is taken by using the purposive sampling from some companies manufacture which listed in Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) . The data is gathered by documentation method, and this data is a secondary data since 1999 up to 2002. The analiysize method which used for testing the hypothesis is paired matching t-test and regression model. Result of of the study show that the 2000 tax reform does not signifikan change capital expenditures (Hypothesis 1), Cost Structure (Hypothesis 2 ),relationship between capital expenditure and cost structure (Hypothesis 3), firm profitability (Hypothesis 4), and the 2000 tax reform does not significantly increases government tax revenue (Hypothesis 5). Thus, government claim that the 2000 Tax Reform would benefit business communities and increases government tax revenue are not supported. However, The 2000 Tax Reform might have some other desirable effecth on business comunities that are not detected by variables investigated in this study. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk menganalisis dampak reformasi pajak tahun 2000 pada komunitas bisnis seperti yang diukur dengan menggunakan data keuangan perusahaan. Teori Posner tentang iegulasi ekonomi digunakan untuk mengembangkan hipotesis penelitian yang secara khusus digunakan untuk menguji apakah Reformasi Pajak 2000 menguntungkan komunitas bisnis atau hanya menambah pendapatan pajak pemerintah saja. Variabel yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah strulctur biaya,pengeluaran modal dan profitabilitas perusahaan. Pengambilan sample dilakukan dengan purposive sampling dari perusahaan manufaktur yang listing di Bursa Efek Jakarta. Pengumpulan data melalui dokumentasi berupa data sekunder selama kurun waktu periode 1999 sampai dengan 2002. Metode analisis yang digunakan adalah uji beda t dua sample dan model regresi. Hasil-hasil dari penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Reformasi Pajak 2000 tidak secara signifikan mengubah pengeluaran modal (Hipotesis 1), struktur biaya (Hipotesis 2), dampak pengeluaran modal dan jumlah struktur biaya produksi (Hipotesis 3),dan profitabilitas perusahaan (Hipotesis 4), demikian pula reformasi pajak tidak signifikan dapat meningkatkan pendapatan pajak pemerintah (Hipotesis 5). Sehingga pemerintah yang mengklaim bahwa Reformasi Pajak akan menguntungkan komunitas bisnis dan dapat meningkatkan pendapatan pemerintah secara signifikan tidak didukung. Namun demikian, Refonnasi Pajak 2000 mungkin mempunyai pengaruh baik fainnya terhadap komunitas bisnis yang tidak terdeteksi oleh variabel-variabel yang diteliti dalam penelitian mi.
Labor Market Effects of Unemployment Insurance Design

With the emergence of the Great Recession unemployment insurance (UI) is once again at the heart of the policy debate. In this paper, we review the recent theoretical and empirical evidence on the labor market effects of UI design. We also discuss policy issues related to UI design, including the structure of benefits, the role of liquidity constraints and the pros and cons of a UI system in which the generosity of UI benefits is varying over the business cycle. Finally, we identify potential areas of future research.
The application of Genetic-tabu Algorithm To Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window

It is well-known that the genetic algorithm has the disadvantage of “premature convergence”. In this paper we design a hybrid algorithm based on genetic algorithm and Tabu search to solve the vehicle routing problem with time windows. Our design makes use of the genetic algorithm based the Tabu search crossover operator and Tabu search mutation operator. We test our hybrid algorithm in the practical vehicle routing problem ,which shows good empirial agreements.
A lightweight approach to technical risk estimation via probabilistic impact analysis

An evolutionary development approach is increasingly commonplace in industry but presents increased difficulties in risk management, for both technical and organizational reasons. In this context, technical risk is the product of the probability of a technical event and the cost of that event. This paper presents a technique for more objectively assessing and communicating technical risk in an evolutionary development setting that (1) operates atop weakly-estimated knowledge of the changes to be made, (2) analyzes the past change history and current structure of a system to estimate the probability of change propagation, and (3) can be discussed vertically within an organization both with development staff and high-level management. A tool realizing this technique has been developed for the Eclipse IDE.
Regulatory Elements Associated with Paternally-Expressed Genes in the Imprinted Murine Angelman/Prader-Willi Syndrome Domain

The Angelman/Prader-Willi syndrome (AS/PWS) domain contains at least 8 imprinted genes regulated by a bipartite imprinting center (IC) associated with the SNRPN gene. One component of the IC, the PWS-IC, governs the paternal epigenotype and expression of paternal genes. The mechanisms by which imprinting and expression of paternal genes within the AS/PWS domain – such as MKRN3 and NDN – are regulated by the PWS-IC are unclear. The syntenic region in the mouse is organized and imprinted similarly to the human domain with the murine PWS-IC defined by a 6 kb interval within the Snrpn locus that includes the promoter. To identify regulatory elements that may mediate PWS-IC function, we mapped the location and allele-specificity of DNase I hypersensitive (DH) sites within the PWS-IC in brain cells, then identified transcription factor binding sites within a subset of these DH sites. Six major paternal-specific DH sites were detected in the Snrpn gene, five of which map within the 6 kb PWS-IC. We postulate these five DH sites represent functional components of the murine PWS-IC. Analysis of transcription factor binding within multiple DH sites detected nuclear respiratory factors (NRF's) and YY1 specifically on the paternal allele. NRF's and YY1 were also detected in the paternal promoter region of the murine Mrkn3 and Ndn genes. These results suggest that NRF's and YY1 may facilitate PWS-IC function and coordinately regulate expression of paternal genes. The presence of NRF's also suggests a link between transcriptional regulation within the AS/PWS domain and regulation of respiration. 3C analyses indicated Mkrn3 lies in close proximity to the PWS-IC on the paternal chromosome, evidence that the PWS-IC functions by allele-specific interaction with its distal target genes. This could occur by allele-specific co-localization of the PWS-IC and its target genes to transcription factories containing NRF's and YY1.
Development of a magnetic resonance-compatible tactile orientation delivery system

Working memory are closely related to everyday cognition (such as remembering the conversation and characters). Studies with hearing, vision stimulation have always been carried out, but studies using tactile stimulation are very little. However, tactile working memory is the ability to reproduce the functionality of the somatosensory system. It is very relevant to elucidation of the somatosensory system and intellectual impairment of tactile. Moreover, Visual and Auditory task have possibilities affect education and living environment, such as number, language and so on. On the other hand, tactile stimulation task can research human cognition without the problem. However, tactile stimulation is presented by hand, so study of tactile working memory does not consider pressure information and influence result. Moreover, Active region of brain is changed from time to time in working memory, it must be considered too. Memory in order to investigate the tactile working memory, device for considering the pressure information and to present the tactile stimulation on constant conditions is indispensable. In this Study, we developed and evaluated a device for tactile spatial research in high magnetic field environment. Consideration to advanced research on fMRI environment in the future, we developed device in High magnetic field environment.
AOWP: Web-Specific AOP Framework for PHP

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a technique for modularizing crosscutting concerns (CCCs). A variety of CCCs can be found in typical Web applications. Most CCCs are scattered over Web-specific events such as page requests. AOWP, a PHP-based AOP framework, provides Web-specific aspect instantiations for dealing with session management and pointcut & advice mechanisms for capturing Web-specific events. CCCs in Web applications can be clearly modularized by introducing AOWP.