Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning

* Introduction Part One: The Rise * Heroes and History * Horace Mann and the Nation Builders * John Dewey and the Progressives * Martin Luther King Jr. and School Desegregation Part One: The Decline * The Rights Movement Diversifies * Albert Shanker and Collective Bargaining * Money and the Adequacy Lawsuit * William Bennett and the Demand for Accountability Part Three: Signs of Resurrection * James S. Coleman and Choice Theory * The Practice of Choice * Julie Young and the Promise of Technology * Part One: Abbreviations * Part One: Appendix: Figures * Part One: Notes * Part One: Index
Implementation of smart pump technology in a paediatric intensive care unit

Patient safety is a matter of major concern that involves every health professional. Nowadays, emerging technologies such as smart pumps can diminish medication errors as well as standardise and improve clinical practice with the subsequent benefits for patients. The aim of this paper was to describe the smart pump implementation process in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and to present the most relevant infusion-related programming errors that were prevented. This was a comparative study between CareFusion Alaris Guardrails® and Hospira MedNet® systems, as well as a prospective and intervention study with analytical components carried out in the PICU of Gregorio Marañón General and Teaching Hospital. All intravenous infusions programmed with a pump in the eleven beds of the unit were analyzed. A drug library was developed and subsequently loaded into CareFusion and Hospira pumps that were used during a three month period each. The most suitable system for implementation was selected according to their differences in features and users’ acceptance. Data stored in the pumps were analyzed to assess user compliance with the technology, health care setting and type of errors intercepted. The implementation process was carried out with CareFusion systems. Compliance with the technology was 92% and user acceptance was high. Vacation substitution and drug administration periods were significantly associated with a greater number of infusion-related programming errors. High risk drugs were involved in 48% of intercepted errors. Based on these results we can conclude that implementation of smart pumps proved effective in intercepting infusion-related programming errors from reaching patients. User awareness of the importance of programming infusions with the drug library is the key to succeed in the implementation process.
Indacaterol for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Inhaled bronchodilators are the first-line therapy for COPD. Indacaterol is a novel addition to existing long-acting bronchodilators. Objectives Systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCT) on efficacy and safety of indacaterol as compared: 1) with placebo at different dosages, 2) with existing bronchodilators; (3) as add-on treatment to tiotropium. Methods We searched 13 electronic databases, including MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL, and contacted the manufacturer for unpublished data. Primary outcome was mean FEV1 change at 12th week, secondary outcomes included changes in SGRQ, TDI and BODE index at 6 months, exacerbation at 1 year, and worsening of symptoms. Results Twelve eligible RCTs of moderate risk of bias included data from 10,977 patients. Compared to placebo, indacaterol improved FEV1 by a weighted mean difference (WMD) of 0.16 L (95%CI: 0.15, 0.18 L, p<0.001), homogeneously above the minimally important difference of 0.10 L. It offered clinically relevant improvement in all secondary outcomes except exacerbation. Magnitude of benefit did not differ significantly by dosage, but one treatment related death was reported at 300 ug. Efficacy of Indacaterol was similar to formoterol and salmeterol (FEV1 WMD = 0.04L, 95%CI: 0.01L, 0.07 L, p = 0.02); and tiotropium (FEV1 WMD = 0.01L, 95%CI: −0.01, 0.03L, p = 0.61). The use of indacaterol on top of tiotropium yielded additional improvement on FEV1 (WMD = 0.07 L, 95%CI: 0.05L, 0.10 L, p<0.001). Conclusion Indacaterol is safe and beneficial for patients with COPD at dosage ≤150 ug. It may serve as a good alternative to existing bronchodilators, or as an add-on to tiotropium for unresponsive patients. Use of higher dosage requires further justification.
Restoring the Residual Speaker Information in Total Variability Modeling for Speaker Verification

In this paper, we introduce the residual space into the Total Variability Modeling by assuming that the speaker super-vectors are not totally contained in a linear subspace of low dimension. Thus the feature reduction carried out by Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis(PPCA) leads to information loss including information of speaker as well as channel. We add the residual factor to restore the missing speaker information which is lost during the PPCA process. To utilize the recovered information effectively, we propose two fusion methods that combine the principal components with the residual factor. We compare the fusion results that are obtained with direct scoring and Support Vector Machines for classiﬁcation, respectively. The experiments on NIST SRE 2006 show that the performance can be improved consistently by involving the residual factor, e.g. the best result achieves 6% relative improvement on Equal Error Rate(EER) compared to the baseline system.
Effect of Amino Acid Availability on Vitamin B12 Production in Lactobacillus reuteri

ABSTRACT Recent functional genomics and genome-scale modeling approaches indicated that B12 production in Lactobacillus reuteri could be improved by optimization of the medium. Here we show that a series of systematic single-amino-acid omissions could significantly modulate the production of B12 from nearly undetectable levels (with omission of isoleucine) to levels 20-fold higher than the levels previously reported (with omission of cysteine). Using cDNA microarray experiments, we analyzed the transcriptional response of L. reuteri to medium lacking cysteine. The results supported the observed high level of B12 production and provided new avenues for future improvement of production of vitamin B12.
OmniDB: Towards Portable and Efficient Query Processing on Parallel CPU/GPU Architectures

Driven by the rapid hardware development of parallel CPU/GPU architectures, we have witnessed emerging relational query processing techniques and implementations on those parallel architectures. However, most of those implementations are not portable across different architectures, because they are usually developed from scratch and target at a specific architecture. This paper proposes a kernel-adapter based design (OmniDB), a portable yet efficient query processor on parallel CPU/GPU architectures. OmniDB attempts to develop an extensible query processing kernel (qKernel) based on an abstract model for parallel architectures, and to leverage an architecture-specific layer (adapter) to make qKernel be aware of the target architecture. The goal of OmniDB is to maximize the common functionality in qKernel so that the development and maintenance efforts for adapters are minimized across different architectures. In this demo, we demonstrate our initial efforts in implementing OmniDB, and present the preliminary results on the portability and efficiency.
Factors contributing to the integration of textural qualities: Evidence from virtual surfaces

Two experiments involving indirect touch were carried out to explore the relationships among perceptual dimensions of haptically examined surfaces. Subjects in both experiments used a stylus to evaluate the properties of virtual surfaces created by a force-feedback device; four surface properties (resistance to normal force, coefficient of friction, texture scale, and vibration amplitude) were manipulated in various combinations. In Experiment 1, the extent to which there was a one-to-one relationship between specific stimulus properties and perceptual qualities (“perceptual separability”) was evaluated. A substantial failure of separability was demonstrated, with friction tending to be more separable from the other properties than they were from one another. The pattern of results suggests that the amount of measured separability depends crucially on the way stimulus properties are defined (e.g., force versus displacement). In Experiment 2, surfaces with known perceptual properties were used to study the metric(s) of the relevant perceptual space. By specifying the perceptual, rather than the stimulus, coordinates of the surfaces, it was possible to bypass issues of perceptual separability. For surfaces of equal friction, a Euclidean metric captured the results (r2 = 0.75) more effectively than a city-block metric did; neither metric did well when differences in friction were involved. The fact that—unlike stickiness—hardness, roughness, and perceived vibration intensity are all increasing functions of surface-normal forces may facilitate their integration into a Euclidean space, in both direct (Hollins M, Bensmaïa S, Karlof K, Young F, . Individual differences in perceptual space for tactile textures: Evidence from multidimensional scaling. Percept Psychophys 62:1534–1544.) and indirect touch.
Expanding the conversation: Family-School Collaboration

The two powerful systems of the family and the school are too often isolated from each other when it comes to the welfare of the child experiencing difficulties. This paper proposes a means of closing that gap—a process whereby school counsellors can facilitate family-school meetings. The authors propose that not only are family school meetings a viable option in a constraining economic context, but they promise more enduring changes around declared problems because they facilitate the sharing of meanings among various levels of systems in the child's life. While this collaborative approach attends to systemic concerns, it shies away from directive interventions, favouring a view of counselling as therapeutic conversation where meanings are co-constructed among participants.
Factors in on-line loanword adaptation

This thesis investigates the factors influencing the adaptation of foreign words to English, beyond traditional phonological parameters such as sonority distance. The data examined were produced in an on-line adaptation task to study purely linguistic rather than orthographic or historical influences. The adapted words contain only lesser-studied phonotactic problems rather than segmental ill-formedness. The choice of Russian as a donor and English as a borrowing language allow the study of adaptations in a setting which allows a further strategy of alteration of ill-formed consonant clusters beyond vowel epenthesis and consonant deletion, namely the substitution of segments to change one cluster into another. In contrast to previous research, English production of Russian stimuli with initial consonant clusters showed that segment change is applied frequently, comparable to the amount of vowel epenthesis. Extensive variation was observed, both in ratio of successful production, and in the choice and distribution of adaptation strategy. The factors in adaptation investigated were the sonority distance of the foreign clusters, as well as concepts which have received much recent attention within phonology, namely gradient grammaticality, similarity and frequency: English native speaker judgments were collected about the perceived grammaticality of foreign clusters and the similarity between targets and adaptations, while the frequency of possible adaptations in English was calculated from a corpus of spoken English. Results show that sonority cannot explain the variation in adaptation. Furthermore, frequency has no influence on the choice of adaptation; however, higher perceived badness results in a higher percentage of adaptations, and perceived similarity is decisive for the choice of adaptations. A comparison of similarity judgments of English and Russian listeners suggested that, in keeping with Steriade (2001), there are some cross-linguistically corresponding rankings of similarity; however, differences between languages due to phonotactics and phonetic detail were also found. In summary, the experiment results suggest that the adaptation of loanwords occurs in both in perception and production; furthermore, it is determined both by L1 specifics and cross-linguistic tendencies, an thus neither a straightforward application of L1 phonology nor completely independent of language background.
A hierarchical rate splitting strategy for FDD massive MIMO under imperfect CSIT

In a multiuser MIMO broadcast channel, the rate performance is affected by the multiuser interference when the Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT) is imperfect. To tackle the interference problem, a Rate-Splitting (RS) approach has been proposed recently, which splits one user's message into a common and a private part, and superimposes the common message on top of the private messages. The common message is drawn from a public codebook and should be decoded by all users. In this paper, we propose a novel and general framework, denoted as Hierarchical Rate Splitting (HRS), that is particularly suited to FDD massive MIMO systems. HRS simultaneously transmits private messages intended to each user and two kinds of common messages that can be decoded by all users and by a subset of users, respectively. We analyse the asymptotic sum rate of HRS under imperfect CSIT. A closed-form power allocation is derived which provides insights into the effects of system parameters. Finally, simulation results validate the significant sum rate gain of HRS over various baselines1.
Diferenciação de produto e inovação na indústria agroalimentar: a inserção de alimentos funcionais no Brasil

O ingresso da tematica da inovacao na agenda da pesquisa e producao de diversos setores e reflexo de uma sociedade cada vez mais fundamentada no conhecimento. Nos ultimos anos, este ingresso se reproduz em segmentos do agronegocio, nos quais as acoes de diversos agentes tem sido pautadas por preocupacoes nao somente de ordem economica, mas tambem pela demanda de alimentos com propriedades beneficas a saude. A questao norteadora deste trabalho e seu objetivo consistem na realizacao de um estudo dessa conjuntura, caracterizando a industria agroalimentar no Brasil e analisando o processo de diferenciacao/insercao dos alimentos funcionais nesse ambiente. Metodologicamente, em um estudo exploratorio-descritivo, realizou-se: um estudo das teorias da inovacao, stakeholders , e estrategia de diferenciacao; e, uma revisao de publicacoes e levantamento de dados documentais e estatisticos, para caracterizacao das maiores industrias agroalimentares do Brasil, alem de suas acoes de inovacao com enfase em alimentos funcionais. Os resultados apontam para uma crescente concentracao de mercado, em que as 20 maiores empresas (com sede em apenas cinco Estados) possuem metade do faturamento do setor. Em relacao aos produtos funcionais, observa-se que se tornaram fenomeno de mercado, por meio de uma demanda induzida que esta sendo atendida apenas por empresas que detem condicoes economico-tecnologicas. No grupo das 20 maiores empresas da industria agroalimentar brasileira, identificou-se que 10 adotaram uma estrategia de diferenciacao, ingressando no segmento dos alimentos funcionais, o que demonstra uma tendencia na qual a inovacao ocorre por meio de acoes incrementais. Palavras-chave: Agronegocio. Inovacao. Stakeholders . Produtos funcionais. Estrategia competitiva.
Open-label topiramate as primary or adjunctive therapy in chronic civilian posttraumatic stress disorder: a preliminary report.

BACKGROUND The hypothesis that exposure to traumatic events may sensitize or kindle limbic nuclei has led to efforts to treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with anticonvulsants. Based on the kindling hypothesis of PTSD, this open-label study assesses clinical response to topiramate as a potential treatment for DSM-IV PTSD. METHOD A naturalistic data review was conducted of medical records of all adult outpatients (9 men. 26 women symptomatic for a mean +/- SD of 18 +/- 15 years with DSM-IV chronic civilian PTSD) treated with topiramate, 12.5 to 500 mg/day, as add-on (N = 28) or monotherapy (N = 7). The last 17 patients completed the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) before treatment and at week 4. Dosage titration started at 12.5 to 25 mg/day and increased in 25- to 50-mg increments every 3 to 4 days until a therapeutic response was achieved or the drug was no longer tolerated. The mean duration of treatment was 33 weeks (range, 1-119 weeks). RESULTS Topiramate decreased nightmares in 79% (19/24) and flashbacks in 86% (30/35) of patients, with full suppression of nightmares in 50% and of intrusions in 54% of patients with these symptoms. Nightmares or intrusions partially improved in a median of 4 days (mean = 11 +/- 13 days) and were fully absent in a median of 8 days (mean = 35 +/- 49 days). Response was seen in 95% of partial responders at a dosage of 75 mg/day or less, and in 91% of full responders at a dosage of 100 mg/day or less. Mean reductions in PCL-C score from baseline to week 4 were highly significant (baseline score = 60 vs. week 4 score = 39, p < .001), with similar reductions in reexperiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal criteria symptoms. Thirteen patients discontinued for various reasons during the > 2-year study period. Except for a single instance of acute secondary narrow-angle glaucoma, there were no serious side effects. CONCLUSION Topiramate appeared effective as add-on or monotherapy for chronic PTSD. It demonstrated a rapid onset of action and minimally serious, dose-related side effects without the development of tolerance. Double-blind studies are indicated.
GES long baseline navigation with unknown sound velocity and discrete-time range measurements

A common assumption in long baseline (LBL) underwater acoustic navigation is that the speed of sound is available. This quantity depends on the medium and it is usually measured or profiled prior to the experiments. This paper proposes a novel filtering solution that explicitly takes into account the estimation of the speed of propagation of the acoustic waves in the medium. Based on discrete-time range measurements, an augmented system is derived that can be regarded as linear for observability and observer design purposes. Its observability is discussed and a Kalman filter provides the estimation solution, with globally exponentially stable (GES) error dynamics. Simulation results are presented, considering noisy measurements, to evaluate the proposed solution, which evidence both fast convergence and good performance.
Efficient testing model based on Pareto distribution

Regression testing is a very important part of the program development cycle as it should be executed after feature is integrated or bugs are fixed each time. There are hundreds of test cases in the case library for a little complex product, it is impossible to perform all of the test cases in regression testing every time. Test engineers always select the regression cases by their experience only, most of the cases are executed for several times but cannot find any issues, and many of the defects are escaped from test engineers because of the existing cases have not been selected to run. Pareto distribution model is introduced to assist test engineers in selecting efficient regression cases those are expected to find most of the defects at the incipient stage of testing according to quantitative efficiency of the test cases. And this model helps test engineers to forecast the progress of fault finding also.
CONTRASTIVE EXPLANATIONS IN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY

Taxonomists in biology have traditionally been concerned to delimit and classify actual (or previously actual) biological forms or kinds. But not all useful classification schemes are of actualised forms. This paper focuses on the need to delimit and classify non-actual forms when offering contrastive explanations in evolutionary biology. Such a classification scheme sorts actual and non-actual forms according to their modal status. Such a sorting has been offered by theoretical morphologists, but these efforts have paid insufficient attention to the metaphysics of modality. Contemporary approaches to the metaphysics and epistemology of modality are also found wanting. The paper ends by arguing that the needed intellectual resources are to be found in the imaginative use of Aristotle.
Rapid Steiner Symmetrization of Most of a Convex Body and the Slicing Problem

For an arbitrary n-dimensional convex body, at least almost n Steiner symmetrizations are required in order to symmetrize the body into an isomorphic ellipsoid. We say that a body $T \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ is ‘quickly symmetrizable with function $c(\varepsilon)$’ if for any $\varepsilon > 0$ there exist only $\lfloor \varepsilon n \rfloor$ symmetrizations that transform T into a body which is $c(\varepsilon)$-isomorphic to an ellipsoid. In this note we ask, given a body $K \subset \mathbb{R}^n$, whether it is possible to remove a small portion of its volume and obtain a body $T \subset K$ which is quickly symmetrizable. We show that this question, for $c(\varepsilon)$ polynomially depending on $\frac{1}{\varepsilon}$, is equivalent to the slicing problem.
On the Interaction of Clostridium perfringens Enterotoxin with Claudins

Clostridium perfringens causes one of the most common foodborne illnesses, which is largely mediated by the Clostridium perfringens enterotoxin (CPE). The toxin consists of two functional domains. The N-terminal region mediates the cytotoxic effect through pore formation in the plasma membrane of the mammalian host cell. The C-terminal region (cCPE) binds to the second extracellular loop of a subset of claudins. Claudin-3 and claudin-4 have been shown to be receptors for CPE with very high affinity. The toxin binds with weak affinity to claudin-1 and -2 but contribution of these weak binding claudins to CPE-mediated disease is questionable. cCPE is not cytotoxic, however, it is a potent modulator of tight junctions. This review describes recent progress in the molecular characterization of the cCPE-claudin interaction using mutagenesis, in vitro binding assays and permeation studies. The results promote the development of recombinant cCPE-proteins and CPE-based peptidomimetics to modulate tight junctions for improved drug delivery or to treat tumors overexpressing claudins.
Opportunistic and Cooperative Spatial Multiplexing in MIMO Ad Hoc Networks

With the fast progress of multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology and its growing applications in networks, it is important to develop techniques to enable more efficient MIMO network communications. However, it is very challenging to coordinate node transmissions in a MIMO-based ad hoc network. In this work, we propose schemes that take advantage of the meshed topology of ad hoc networks to fully exploit the multiuser diversity and spatial diversity in order to maximize the data rate of the network while supporting different transmission priorities, reducing transmission delay, and ensuring fair transmissions among nodes. We formulate a concrete physical model and present cross-layer centralized and distributed scheduling algorithms that exploit physical-layer channel information to opportunistically schedule cooperative spatial multiplexed transmissions between nodes. We also propose a new MAC scheme to support our distributed algorithm. The performance of our algorithms are studied through extensive simulations, and the results demonstrate that our algorithms are very effective and can significantly increase the network throughput while reducing the transmission delay.