Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The public reception of the Research Assessment Exercise 1996

This paper reviews the public reception of the Research Assessment Exercise 1996 (RAE) from its announcement in December 1996 to the decline of discussion at end May 1997. A model for diffusion of the RAE is established which distinguishes extra‐communal (or exoteric) from intra‐communal (or esoteric) media. The different characteristics of each medium and the changing nature of the discussion over time are considered. Different themes are distinguished in the public reception of the RAE: the spatial distribution of research; the organisation of universities; disciplinary differences in understanding; a perceived conflict between research and teaching; the development of a culture of accountability; and analogies with the organisation of professional football. In conclusion, it is suggested that the RAE and its effects can be more fully considered from the perspective of scholarly communication and understandings of the development of knowledge than it has been by previous contributions in information science, which have concentrated on the possibility of more efficient implementation of existing processes. A fundamental responsibility for funding councils is also identified: to promote the overall health of university education and research, while establishing meaningful differentiations between units.
Manipulation of Intestinal Flora as a Way to Treat Crohn's Disease: The Role of Probiotics, Prebiotics and Antibiotics

Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder which, together with ulcerative colitis, is known as Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). CD is characterized by transmural inflammation of the entire gastrointestinal tract, from oral cavity to anus. The most common symptoms are chronic diarrhea and abdominal pain, which are often accompanied by anorexia, malaise, weight loss, fever and extra-intestinal manifestations. The latter can involve almost every organ system (Macfarlane et al., 2009). CD can cause the formation of strictures, abscesses or fistulas. For that reason, surgical resection in CD patients is very common. Regardless of the vast amount of data gathered on the etiology and the course of CD, the actual cause is still unknown. The interplay of various factors is blamed for the disease outbreak. These factors include genetic predisposition, environmental influences (e.g. smoking), imbalance in immune response and changes in intestinal flora. Given the complexity of the disease, some factors may be the consequence of others. Genetic predisposition has received the most research attention in recent years. Family studies have shown that more than 50% concordance of CD can be expected in monozygotic twins. These findings indicate that the pathogenesis of CD is not based only on one gene but on a polygenic risk profile (Vavricka & Rogler, 2009). In 2001, two independent groups of researchers discovered one of the most important susceptibility genes for CD, a gene for NOD2/CARD15 (Hugot et al., 2001; Ogura et al., 2001). Its mutation is present in about one third of all CD patients. Patients with mutated NOD2/CARD15 variants could have a deficient response to bacterial LPS which could lead to the development of CD (Ogura et al., 2001). Several other genes that can contribute to susceptibility to CD have been identified. These include IBD5, IL23R, ATG16L1, Chr5p13.1, Chr5q33.1 and Chr10q21.1 (Xavier & Podolsky, 2007). They are involved in the maintenance of barrier function and regulation of innate and adaptive immunity. There are several environmental factors that have been predicted to be involved in the development of CD. The single most important environmental risk factor for the development of CD is tobacco smoking. Further environmental risk factors are related to living in urban areas of developed western countries with stressful lifestyle. There is also some evidence that diet could influence the risk for CD. Uptake of fatty acids and sugar,
onlinear model predictive control of a pH neutralization process based on iener – Laguerre model

In this paper, Laguerre filters and simple polynomials are used respectively as linear and nonlinear parts of a Wiener structure. The obtained model structure is the so-called Wiener–Laguerre model. This model is used to evaluate identification of a pH neutralization process. Then the model is used in a nonlinear model predictive control framework based on the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm. Various orders of Laguerre filters and nonlinear polynomials are tested, and the results are compared for the validation of these models. Validation results for various orders suggest that in order to have a good trade-off between simplicity of the model and its corresponding fitness, a second order nonlinear polynomial along with two Laguerre filters may be selected. The fitness of this model according to variance account for (VAF) criterion is 92.32%, which is completely acceptable for nonlinear model predictive control applications. Then the identified Wiener–Laguerre model is used for nonlinear model predictive control and the results are compared with model predictive control in which just Wiener model was used for identification. It is shown that the use of the Wiener–Laguerre structure improves the quality of modeling together with the rate of convergence of SQP in a reasonable time. Furthermore, these results are also compared with the performance of a linear model predictive controller based on Laguerre model on be
The Effect of TAK-778 on Gene Expression of Osteoblastic Cells Is Mediated Through Estrogen Receptor

This study evaluated the effect of TAK-778 [(2R, 4S)-(−)-N-(4-diethoxyphosphorylmethylphenyl)-1,2,4,5-tetrahydro-4-methyl-7,8-methylenedioxy-5-oxo-3-benzothiepin-2-carboxamide)] on in vitro osteogenic events and on gene expression of osteoblastic cells derived from human alveolar bone and the participation of estrogen receptors (ERs) on such effect. Osteoblastic cells were subcultured, with or without TAK-778 (10−5 M), to evaluate cell growth and viability, total protein content, and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity at 7, 14, and 21 days; bone-like formation at 21 days; and gene expression, using cDNA microarray, at 7 days. Also, osteoblastic cells were exposed to TAK-778 (10−5 M) combined to ICI182,780, a nonspecific ER antagonist (10−6 M), and gene expression was evaluated by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) at 7 days. TAK-778 induced a reduction in culture growth and an increase in cell synthesis, ALP activity, and bone-like formation. The cDNA microarray showed genes associated with cell adhesion and differentiation, skeletal development, ossification, and transforming growth factor-β receptor signaling pathway, with a tendency to be higher expressed in cells exposed to TAK-778. The gene expression of ALP, osteocalcin, Msh homeobox 2, receptor activator of NF-kappa B ligand, and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 was increased by TAK-778 as demonstrated by real-time PCR, and this effect was antagonized by ICI182,780. The present results demonstrated that TAK-778 acts at a transcriptional level to enhance the in vitro osteogenic process and that its effect on gene expression of osteoblastic cells is mediated, at least partially, through ERs. Based on these findings, TAK-778 could be considered in the treatment of bone metabolic disorders.
Ameliorative Effects of Syzygium aromaticum Essential Oil on Fertility in Male Rats Exposed to Manganese

Introduction: Several substances were likely to cause the decline in male fertility which could go up to the complete sterility. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of Syzygium aromaticum essential oil on fertility in male rats exposed to manganese. Materials and Methods: Twenty four male rats, 6 months old, were divided into 2 groups; 12 rats in one group received, by oral route, a water containing manganese chloride tetrahydrate (MnCl2·4H2O) is at the dose of 4.79 mg·ml－1 for 12 weeks. The group of control male rats received a distilled water in the same conditions. After a period of experimentation, each group was divided into two subgroups of 6 rats which received daily, by intraperitoneal way, a 0.1 mg/kg body weight, of Syzygium aromaticum essential oil. Results: After a chronic exposure, microscopic examination of the testes showed degeneration of the seminiferous tubules and the gremlin cell. Seminal parameters indicated a decrease in the sperm levels (21.3 × 106 cells/ml) and a rise of morphological abnormalities (66.1%). However, intraperitoneal administration of essential oil extracted from the flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, during 3 weeks, to the rats previously intoxicated with Mn, showed a significant rising of sperm concentration (61.2 × 106 cells/ml) and a reduction of morphological abnormalities (10.8%). These changes were associated with a significant regeneration of seminiferous tubules and interstitial cells. Conclusion: This study revealed an ameliorative effect of essential oil Syzygium aromaticum in testicular tissue and the sperm quality.
The Meaning of God for Children and Adolescents ‐ a Phenomenographic Study of Drawings

The purpose of the study was to investigate the qualitative differences in children's God concept, as reflected in their drawings. A total of 425 children in four age groups (9, 12, 15 and 18 years) and of both sexes participated in the study. The children were asked to draw their impressions of the word ‘God’ and to give a verbal commentary on what they had drawn. The drawings were analysed according to a phenomenographic method and assigned to one of the two superordinate and eight subordinate qualitative categories respectively. The categories were found to be both age‐ and gender‐related. The anthropomorphic concepts of God diminished with increasing age without disappearing entirely, while the frequency of symbolic composition in drawings increased with age. Approximately 8% of the children (of varying ages) had no concept of God whatsoever. More girls than boys regarded God as a mystery. More boys than girls saw God as a common male figure or were inclined to make light of the discussion and dismiss.
Making room for the modeler in data mining

I would like to use this perspective to advocate further research in data mining toward methods that allow and formalize greater input from the modeler. By ‘modeler’, I mean the domain expert, scientist, business analyst, or researcher who has questions to answer using data. Soliciting input from such users is atypical of most data mining algorithms (e.g., see the introductory discussion in ref. [1]). Although excluding pesky users enables one to enforce protections against, say, overfitting, those same users may come to resent the exclusion. Many fields remain deeply suspicious of black-box models that generate predictions without asking for help or supplying explanations. Handpicked regression models remain the model of choice in the social sciences, for instance, because these allow the user to pick the features and specify the relationships. Regression allows the model to express a theory about how the world works, and the success of the model depends on this specification. To this community, the fact that we can automate the process of selecting features or supply black-box predictions that are more accurate than those of regression is secondary to the absence of interpretative hooks. Allowing the user to customize a statistical model introduces any number of problems. With practice and a bit of collinearity in the data, one can mold a regression model to support a variety of theories by iteratively adding and removing variables. We know how to keep an automated search for features from overfitting; the challenge is to involve users in this process. Modelers who invest years gathering data are not eager to lay down their favorite tools unless we provide them with alternatives that respect their knowledge of the context and their desire to influence the analysis. A modeler who has a better theory and understanding of the data should be able to get a better model than one who lacks these insights. Black-box models remove the competitive advantage: both modelers pour the data into the model and pop out the same predictions. The methodologies that I want to encourage reward the modeler who has useful insights. I have a couple of illustrative examples in mind. First, consider the grouped LASSO [2] in the classical regression setting: for a sample of n observations, we observe a response y and k explanatory features in the vector x. The goal is a precise estimate of E y = x ′β. The original LASSO provides a method for identifying useful features. Rather than relying on stepwise or heuristic searches, LASSO selects the coefficient vector β̂ that solves
Athletic performance and the evolution of vertebrate locomotion capacity

Because of its likely relevance for survival and reproductive success, locomotor performance has become a key variable in ecomorphological analyses of animal populations. In a growing number of studies, the proximate (biochemical, physiological, morphological, kinematic) origins of performance variation among individual animals are being explored. Some trade-offs have been identified that may constrain the evolution of locomotor capacity. Whether the variation in locomotor performance and in the related design characters has a genetic basis, has only been investigated in a small number of animal species. Even less is known about the fitness consequences of the observed variation in locomotor performance. Hence, the ultimate reasons for interindividual and interpopulational variation in locomotor performance remain very obscure. In this chapter, we explore whether sports and exercise science could contribute to our understanding of the evolution of locomotor capacity. Not unexpectedly, the performance gradient (the relationship between individual 'design' and performance variation) is much better understood in humans than in animals. We review part of the extensive literature on this matter. One possibly important message is that many aspects of design and performance in humans are highly trainable; phenotypic plasticity of performance capacity in animals has received relatively little attention. The genetics of human performance capacity and its morphological, physiological and biochemical correlates have been investigated with quantitative genetical techniques and with genetic markers. We present examples of both types of study. The role of trade-offs in the evolution of vertebrate locomotor capacity has recently been investigated with data from world-class decathlon athletes. This example demonstrates how the wealth of performance data available from sports databases can be used to explore evolutionary questions. Because differences among populations represent the smallest amount of evolution that we can observe, we also review evidence for interpopulational variation in locomotor performance. Human groups differ considerably in locomotor performance. The proximate origins of this variation have been investigated to some extent, but the ultimate (evolutionary) reasons remain strangely unexplored. Similarly, the fitness gradient (the relationship between individual performance and fitness) in humans appears largely unstudied. We speculate how sexual selection, besides natural selection (s.s.) may have played a role in the evolution of locomotor capacity. We conclude that while the proximate origins and genetics of variation in locomotor performance have been studied much more extensively, and are better understood, in humans than in most other animals, the evolutionary causes of performance variation have received remarkably little attention. We believe that interactions between animal ecomorphologists and sports scientists could produce interesting new insights in our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate locomotor capacity.
Is the Four-Day School Week Detrimental to Student Success?.

School districts across the United States are implementing four-day school weeks. This study looks at the relationship between student achievement in the four-day school week compared to student achievement in the five-day school week. This analysis focused on a common criteria referenced test given to all students over a period of seven years in a single western state. The study provided conclusive evidence that students in the four-day week did not performed as well, over time, when compared to students in the traditional five-day week settings.
Trichoderma SPP : a biocontrol agent for sustainable management of plant diseases

Trichoderma spp. are mainly asexual fungi that are present in all types of agricultural soils and also in decaying wood. The antagonistic activity of Trichoderma species showed that it is parasitic on many soil-borne and foliage pathogens. The fungus is also a decomposer of cellulosic waste materials. Recent discoveries show that the fungi not only act as biocontrol agents, but also stimulate plant resistance, and plant growth and development resulting in an increase in crop production. The biocontrol activity involving mycoparasitism, antibiotics and competition for nutrients, also induces defence responses or systemic resistance responses in plants. These responses are an important part of Trichoderma in biocontrol program. Currently, Trichoderma spp. , is being used to control plant diseases in sustainable diseases management systems. This paper reviews the published information on Trichoderma spp. , and its biocontrol activity in sustainable disease management programs.
Signal-to-noise ratio, contrast-to-noise ratio and their trade-offs with resolution in axial-shear strain elastography

In axial-shear strain elastography, the local axial-shear strain resulting from the application of quasi-static axial compression to an inhomogeneous material is imaged. In this paper, we investigated the image quality of the axial-shear strain estimates in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNRasse) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNRasse) using simulations and experiments. Specifically, we investigated the influence of the system parameters (beamwidth, transducer element pitch and bandwidth), signal processing parameters (correlation window length and axial window shift) and mechanical parameters (Young's modulus contrast, applied axial strain) on the SNRasse and CNRasse. The results of the study show that the CNRasse (SNRasse) is maximum for axial-shear strain values in the range of 0.005–0.03. For the inclusion/background modulus contrast range considered in this study (<10), the CNRasse (SNRasse) is maximum for applied axial compressive strain values in the range of 0.005%–0.03%. This suggests that the RF data acquired during axial elastography can be used to obtain axial-shear strain elastograms, since this range is typically used in axial elastography as well. The CNRasse (SNRasse) remains almost constant with an increase in the beamwidth while it increases as the pitch increases. As expected, the axial shift had only a weak influence on the CNRasse (SNRasse) of the axial-shear strain estimates. We observed that the differential estimates of the axial-shear strain involve a trade-off between the CNRasse (SNRasse) and the spatial resolution only with respect to pitch and not with respect to signal processing parameters. Simulation studies were performed to confirm such an observation. The results demonstrate a trade-off between CNRasse and the resolution with respect to pitch.
Creating Asymmetric Cell Divisions by Skewing Endocytosis

How can one cell divide to form two cells, which are genetically identical to the mother cell, with different cell fates? That is the question discussed by Shen and Temple. Specifically, they address how Notch signaling is attenuated in one daughter cell through the asymmetric inheritance of the protein Numb, which may be responsible for mediating the endocytosis of the receptor Notch in the Numb-enriched cell.
The Effect of Androstanes on Granulopoiesis in Vitro and in Vivo

Summary. Bone marrow culture in a patient with aplastic anaemia responding to anabolic steroid (methandienone) therapy, showed an unusually high degree of growth in unstimulated cultures. Growth in unstimulated cultures is due to factors with colony stimulating activity (CSA) released by monocyte macrophages in the bone marrow sample. These cells, which can be identified by staining for non‐specific esterase activity, were not increased in this patient's marrow, implying either increased production of colony stimulating factors or increased sensitivity to these factors. Addition of methandienone or testosterone to feeder‐layers containing normal peripheral blood leucocytes increased their stimulatory activity. Addition of these drugs to feeder‐layers of CSF‐containing conditioned medium did not have this effect, implying that androstanes cause increased production of colony stimulating factors rather than increased sensitivity to them. Lack of response to androstane therapy may be related to lack of response by bone marrow monocyte macrophages or to the inability of granulopoietic cells to respond to the increased CSF production induced by androstane therapy. A means of predicting lack of response is proposed.
A novel DC chopper drive for a single-phase induction motor

The paper presents a new drive for single-phase induction motors. This drive employs a DC chopper circuit with a diode bridge rectifier connected with the stator in a nonconventional fashion. The speed of the single-phase induction motor is controlled by controlling the chopping frequency of the chopper switch. The attractive feature of the drive is that it effects both frequency and phase-angle control simultaneously. The drive performance has received both theoretical and experimental investigation. >
Mitigating Uplink interference in femtocell networks with Physical Layer Network coding

The challenge of mitigating the Uplink (UL) interference in a two-tier heterogeneous network could be significantly improved by employing Physical-Layer Network coding (PNC) at a Home NodeB (HNB). This paper makes a case for a macrocell femtocell overlay network that utilizes PNC to mitigate the UL interference at the HNB. In closed subscriber group (CSG) UL information exchange, a Macrocell User Equipment (MUE), especially situated at coverage area's edge of a macrocell nodeB (MNB), creates interference that could make the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratios (SINR) of the neighboring HNB to fall below the acceptable threshold. In a bid to ensure that the Service Quality (QoS) of femtocell and macrocell users are guaranteed, we propose to use PNC at the HNB by taking advantage of both the signals from the MUE and the Home User Equipment (HUE), rather than considering the signal from the MUE as interference. The paper develops the analytical expression of outage probability in closed-form, or equivalently the cummulative distribution function (CDF) for the received SINR of the proposed system is provided. Our results show that PNC is suitable for interference mitigation in femtocell network and it provides significant gain over the traditional scheme.