Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FORMATIVE USE OF ASSESSMENT INFORMATION: IT'S A PROCESS, SO LET'S SAY WHAT WE MEAN

The term formative assessment is often used to describe a type of assessment. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the use of this phrase given that formative assessment as a noun phrase ignores the well-established understanding that it is a process more than an object. A model that combines content, context, and strategies is presented as one way to view the process nature of assessing formatively. The alternate phrase formative use of assessment information is suggested as a more appropriate way to describe how content, context, and strategies can be used together in order to close the gap between where a student is performing currently and the intended learning goal. Let’s start with an elementary grammar review: adjectives modify nouns; adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Applied to recent assessment literature, the term formative assessment would therefore contain the adjective formative modifying the noun assessment, creating a noun phrase representing a thing or object. Indeed, formative assessment as a noun phrase is regularly juxtaposed to summative assessment in both purpose and timing. Formative assessment is commonly understood to occur during instruction with the intent to identify relative strengths and weaknesses and guide instruction, while summative assessment occurs after a unit of instruction with the intent of measuring performance levels of the skills and content related to the unit of instruction (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2006). Distinguishing formative and summative assessments in this manner may have served an important introductory purpose, however using formative as a descriptor of a type of assessment has had ramifi cations that merit critical consideration. Given that formative assessment has received considerable attention in the literature over the last 20 or so years, this article contends that it is time to move beyond the well-established broad distinctions between formative and summative assessments and consider the subtle – yet important – distinction between the term formative assessment as an object and the intended meaning. The focus here is to suggest that if we want to realize the true potential of formative practices in our classrooms, then we need to start saying what we mean.
Journal of Microbiology, Immunology and Infection Clinical Features and Outcomes of Spinal Tuberculosis in Southern Taiwan

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: The early diagnosis and appropriate management of spinal tuberculosis (TB) is challenging for clinicians. This study aimed to characterize the clinical features and factors affecting treatment outcomes. METHODS: A retrospective study of patients with spinal TB over a 7-year period at a medical center in southern Taiwan was conducted. Clinical features, underlying diseases, laboratory results, imaging findings, therapy, treatment duration and outcomes were analyzed. RESULTS: Forty-eight patients (24 men and 24 women) were diagnosed with spinal TB. Their mean age was 64.3 years. The most common presenting symptoms were backache, neurological deficits, and fever.
Timing Analysis of Cyclic Time Petri Net Using Relaxed Unfolding and Global Time Technique

Time Petri nets are a powerful formalism for representing real-time systems. State Class Graph is a useful tool for timing analysis of time Petri nets. However, this tool is inaccurate when performing timing analysis of sequences of transitions firings. This paper proposes to overcome this limitation, taking advantage of two techniques: global time and relaxed unfolding. Global time technique can perform timing analysis in safe time Petri nets with more accuracy, but only on acyclic nets. This limitation can be overcome by using the unfolding technique to generate an acyclic occurrence net containing all reachable markings of the original safe Petri net. Although the unfolding process enumerates all reachable markings, it does not enumerate all possible transition firings sequences. For this reason, we propose a relaxed process that unfolds further than the original, by redefining cut-off events to identify existing temporal classes instead of existing markings. The process transforms a cyclic net in an acyclic net, with all classes and paths preserved, in which accurate timing analysis is feasible.
Deterministic Bounds for Restricted Isometry of Compressed Sensing Matrices

Compressed Sensing (CS) is an emerging field that enables reconstruction of a sparse signal $x \in {\mathbb R} ^n$ that has only $k \ll n$ non-zero coefficients from a small number $m \ll n$ of linear projections. The projections are obtained by multiplying $x$ by a matrix $\Phi \in {\mathbb R}^{m \times n}$ --- called a CS matrix --- where $k < m \ll n$. In this work, we ask the following question: given the triplet $\{k, m, n \}$ that defines the CS problem size, what are the deterministic limits on the performance of the best CS matrix in ${\mathbb R}^{m \times n}$? We select Restricted Isometry as the performance metric. We derive two deterministic converse bounds and one deterministic achievable bound on the Restricted Isometry for matrices in ${\mathbb R}^{m \times n}$ in terms of $n$, $m$ and $k$. The first converse bound (structural bound) is derived by exploiting the intricate relationships between the singular values of sub-matrices and the complete matrix. The second converse bound (packing bound) and the achievable bound (covering bound) are derived by recognizing the equivalence of CS matrices to codes on Grassmannian spaces. Simulations reveal that random Gaussian $\Phi$ provide far from optimal performance. The derivation of the three bounds offers several new geometric insights that relate optimal CS matrices to equi-angular tight frames, the Welch bound, codes on Grassmannian spaces, and the Generalized Pythagorean Theorem (GPT).
ERK5 Activation by Gq-Coupled Muscarinic Receptors Is Independent of Receptor Internalization and β-Arrestin Recruitment

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are known to activate both G protein- and β-arrestin-dependent signalling cascades. The initiation of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways is a key downstream event in the control of cellular functions including proliferation, differentiation, migration and apoptosis. Both G proteins and β-arrestins have been reported to mediate context-specific activation of ERK1/2, p38 and JNK MAPKs. Recently, the activation of ERK5 MAPK by Gq-coupled receptors has been described to involve a direct interaction between Gαq and two novel effectors, PKCζ and MEK5. However, the possible contribution of β-arrestin towards this pathway has not yet been addressed. In the present work we sought to investigate the role of receptor internalization processes and β-arrestin recruitment in the activation of ERK5 by Gq-coupled GPCRs. Our results show that ERK5 activation is independent of M1 or M3 muscarinic receptor internalization. Furthermore, we demonstrate that phosphorylation-deficient muscarinic M1 and M3 receptors are still able to fully activate the ERK5 pathway, despite their reported inability to recruit β-arrestins. Indeed, the overexpression of Gαq, but not that of β-arrestin1 or β-arrestin2, was found to potently enhance ERK5 activation by GPCRs, whereas silencing of β-arrestin2 expression did not affect the activation of this pathway. Finally, we show that a β-arrestin-biased mutant form of angiotensin II (SII; Sar1-Ile4-Ile8 AngII) failed to promote ERK5 phosphorylation in primary cardiac fibroblasts, as compared to the natural ligand. Overall, this study shows that the activation of ERK5 MAPK by model Gq-coupled GPCRs does not depend on receptor internalization, β-arrestin recruitment or receptor phosphorylation but rather is dependent on Gαq-signalling.
Radio properties of the Shapley Concentration — IV.The A3528 cluster complex

We report and discuss the results of a 22-cm radio survey carried out with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) covering the A3528 complex, a chain formed by the merging ACO clusters A3528–A3530–A3532, located in the central region of the Shapley Concentration. Simultaneous 13-cm observations are also presented. Our final catalogue includes a total of 106 radio sources above the flux density limit of 0.8 mJy. By cross-correlation with optical and spectroscopic catalogues we found 32 optical counterparts, nine of them belonging to the A3528 complex. We explored the effects of cluster mergers on the radio emission properties of radio galaxies by means of the radio luminosity function (RLF) and radio source counts. We found that the radio source counts are consistent with the background counts, as already found for the A3558 complex. The RLF for this complex is consistent, in both shape and normalization, with the general cluster luminosity function for early-type galaxies derived by Ledlow & Owen. This result is different from the one we obtained for the A3558 merging complex, the RLF of which is significantly lower than that derived by Ledlow & Owen. We propose that the different stage of the merger is responsible for the different RLFs in the two cluster complexes in the core of the Shapley Concentration. The early stage of merger for the A3528 complex, proposed by many authors, may not yet have affected the radio properties of cluster galaxies, while in the more much advanced merger in the A3558 region we actually see the effects of this process on the radio emission.
Fast Multilevel Transduction on Graphs

The recent years have witnessed a surge of interest in graphbased semi-supervised learning methods. The common denominator of these methods is that the data are represented by the nodes of a graph, the edges of which encode the pairwise similarities of the data. Despite the theoretical and empirical success, these methods have one major bottleneck which is the high computational complexity (since they usually require the computation of matrix inverse). In this paper, we propose a multilevel scheme for speeding up the traditional graph based semi-supervised learning methods. Unlike other accelerating approaches based on pure mathematical derivations, our method has explicit physical meanings with some graph intuitions. We also analyze the relationship of our method with multigrid methods, and provide a theoretical guarantee of the performance of our method. Finally the experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of our method.
The Mitochondrial Alcohol Dehydrogenase Adh3p Is Involved in a Redox Shuttle in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT NDI1 is the unique gene encoding the internal mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The enzyme catalyzes the transfer of electrons from intramitochondrial NADH to ubiquinone. Surprisingly, NDI1is not essential for respiratory growth. Here we demonstrate that this is due to in vivo activity of an ethanol-acetaldehyde redox shuttle, which transfers the redox equivalents from the mitochondria to the cytosol. Cytosolic NADH can be oxidized by the external NADH dehydrogenases. Deletion of ADH3, encoding mitochondrial alcohol dehydrogenase, did not affect respiratory growth in aerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures. Also, an ndi1Δ mutant was capable of respiratory growth under these conditions. However, when both ADH3 and NDI1 were deleted, metabolism became respirofermentative, indicating that the ethanol-acetaldehyde shuttle is essential for respiratory growth of the ndi1Δ mutant. In anaerobic batch cultures, the maximum specific growth rate of the adh3Δ mutant (0.22 h−1) was substantially reduced compared to that of the wild-type strain (0.33 h−1). This is consistent with the hypothesis that the ethanol-acetaldehyde shuttle is also involved in maintenance of the mitochondrial redox balance under anaerobic conditions. Finally, it is shown that another mitochondrial alcohol dehydrogenase is active in theadh3Δ ndi1Δ mutant, contributing to residual redox-shuttle activity in this strain.
OX40 costimulation by a chimeric antigen receptor abrogates CD28 and IL-2 induced IL-10 secretion by redirected CD4+ T cells

Adoptive therapy with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) redirected T cells recently showed remarkable anti-tumor efficacy in early phase clinical trials; self-repression of the immune response by T-cell secreted cytokines, however, is still an issue raising interest to abrogate the secretion of repressive cytokines while preserving the panel of CAR induced pro-inflammatory cytokines. We here revealed that T-cell activation by a CD28-ζ signaling CAR induced IL-10 secretion, which compromises T cell based immunity, along with the release of pro-inflammatory IFN-γ and IL-2. T cells stimulated by a ζ CAR without costimulation did not secrete IL-2 or IL-10; the latter, however, could be induced by supplementation with IL-2. Abrogation of CD28-ζ CAR induced IL-2 release by CD28 mutation did not reduce IL-10 secretion indicating that IL-10 can be induced by both a CD28 and an IL-2 mediated pathway. In contrast to the CD28-ζ CAR, a CAR with OX40 (CD134) costimulation did not induce IL-10. OX40 cosignaling by a 3rd generation CD28-ζ-OX40 CAR repressed CD28 induced IL-10 secretion but did not affect the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, T-cell amplification or T-cell mediated cytolysis. IL-2 induced IL-10 was also repressed by OX40 co-signaling. OX40 moreover repressed IL-10 secretion by regulatory T cells which are strong IL-10 producers upon activation. Taken together OX40 cosignaling in CAR redirected T cell activation effectively represses IL-10 secretion which contributes to counteract self-repression and provides a rationale to explore OX40 co-signaling CARs in order to prolong a redirected T cell response.
Trade‐offs in evolutionary immunology: just what is the cost of immunity?

It has become increasingly clear that life-history patterns among the vertebrates have been shaped by the plethora and variety of immunological risks associated with parasitic faunas in their environments. Immunological competence could very well be the most important determinant of life-time reproductive success and fitness for many species. It is generally assumed by evolutionary ecologists that providing immunological defences to minimise such risks to the host is costly in terms of necessitating trade-offs with other nutrient-demanding processes such as growth, reproduction, and thermoregulation. Studies devoted to providing assessments of such costs and how they may force evolutionary trade-offs among life-history characters are few, especially for wild vertebrate species, and their results are widely scattered throughout the literature. In this paper we attempt to review this literature to obtain a better understanding of energetic and nutritional costs for maintaining a normal immune system and examine how costly it might be for a host who is forced to up-regulate its immunological defence mechanisms. The significance of these various costs to ecology and life history trade-offs among the vertebrates is explored. It is concluded that sufficient evidence exists to support the primary assumption that immunological defences are costly to the vertebrate host.
Visual grouping and prosodic grouping: effects of spatial information on prosodic boundary strength

We report two psycholinguistic experiments investigating whether grouping information presented in the visuo-spatial modality influences language production – in particular, whether different visual groupings influence the prosodic groupings that speakers produce. We used a picture-description task where three objects were grouped in different ways, and investigated whether spoken descriptions of objects that are spatially closer to each other are separated by weaker prosodic boundaries than descriptions of objects that are further apart. Our results suggest that prosodic boundary strength is influenced by the distance between objects, and that visual input influences linguistic production at the level of prosodic boundaries
G. H. Hardy (1908) and Hardy–Weinberg Equilibrium

More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track. FISHER 1959, pp. 16-17 On closer examination, however, the hope of finding a "first" comes to grief because of the historically dynamic character of ideas. If we describe a result with sufficient vagueness, there seems to be an endless sequence of those who had something within the vague specifications. Even plagiarists usually introduce innovations! If we specify the idea or result precisely, it turns out that exact duplications seldom occur, so that every mathematical event is a "first", and the priority question becomes trivial.
Technology as a strategic variable : the perspective of export-oriented firms in Chile

This thesis explores the relationship between the mechanisms of technology acquisition used by small firms in Chile and the success of the firms' export activity. A small sample from the Chilean wood-product industry was taken and direct interviews were conducted with the founder (or general manager) of each firm. In addition, a fairly extensive literature review of the field of technological innovation and business strategy was conducted. The experience of the sampled firms in both exporting and acquiring technology permitted the author to suggest eight patterns of technology incorporation. These patterns have implications for the firm's competitive strategy, for most of them portray "conditions for success" in exporting and incorporating technology. They also indicate the direct relationship that exists between importing technology (basically process technology) and exporting the firm's product. The data shows that small-firm exporting activity is a technology-driven phenomenon. The reduced size of the sample implies that the thesis' findings ought to be considered with caution. However, some interesting recommendations for technology policy making at the national level can be drawn from the study. These recommendations, together with a list of questions left unanswered, are outlined in the last part of this thesis.
Monitoring of therapy in congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

BACKGROUND Congenital adrenal hyperplasia is a group of disorders caused by defects in the adrenal steroidogenic pathways. In its most common form, 21-hydroxylase deficiency, patients develop varying degrees of glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid deficiency as well as androgen excess. Therapy is guided by monitoring clinical parameters as well as adrenal hormone and metabolite concentrations. CONTENT We review the evidence for clinical and biochemical parameters used in monitoring therapy for congenital adrenal hyperplasia. We discuss the utility of 24-h urine collections for pregnanetriol and 17-ketosteroids as well as serum measurements of 17-hydroxyprogesterone, androstenedione, and testosterone. In addition, we examine the added value of daily hormonal profiles obtained from salivary or blood-spot samples and discuss the limitations of the various assays. SUMMARY Clinical parameters such as growth velocity and bone age remain the gold standard for monitoring the adequacy of therapy in congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The use of 24-h urine collections for pregnanetriol and 17-ketosteroid may offer an integrated view of adrenal hormone production but target concentrations must be better defined. Random serum hormone measurements are of little value and fluctuate with time of day and timing relative to glucocorticoid administration. Assays of daily hormonal profiles from saliva or blood spots offer a more detailed assessment of therapeutic control, although salivary assays have variable quality.
On the Storage Capabilities of Radial Basis Function Neural Networks

Pattern classification and function approximation have been found in many applications. The radial basis function network (RBFN) has shown a great promise in this sort of problems because of its faster learning capacity. Though RBFNs have storage properties similar to that ofHopfield networks, these properties have not been well explored so far. In this paper, an approach for analyzing the storage capacity of the RBFN is presented. An upper bound on cost function is found and the error over weighted input vectors is minimized by increasing the number of hidden units. The storage capacity is defined and the proposed method can be used to estimate the capacity in terms of the total probability density function by adding the partial information content associated with each class.
Scale-dependent price fluctuations for the Indian stock market

Classic studies of the probability density of price fluctuations g for stocks and foreign exchanges of several highly developed economies have been interpreted using a power law probability density function P(g) ∼ g−(α + 1) with exponent values α > 2. To test the ubiquity of this relationship we analyze daily returns for the period November 1994–June 2002 for the 49 largest stocks of the National Stock Exchange which has the highest trade volume in India. We find the surprising result that P(g) decays as an exponential function P(g) ∼ exp [ − βg] with a characteristic decay scale β = 1.51 ± 0.05 for the negative tail and β = 1.34 ± 0.04 for the positive tail. The exponential function is significantly different from the power law function observed for highly developed economies. Thus, we conclude that the stock market of the less highly developed economy of India belongs to a different class from that of highly developed countries.
Provenance in Dynamic Data Systems

Most digital data sets are subject to modifications. For example, scientific data may be updated according to the new experimental results, and sales data updated periodically according to new sales made. We often have data derived from these digital data sets. Our concern in this paper is the provenance of such derived data. Can we explain what a particular derived datum depends on, even if a value used in its derivation has since been modified. Can we determine if a particular derived value is still valid without performing full view maintenance. Questions of this sort are likely to arise when we derive results from modifiable data. We present in this paper an overview of problems that arise in this context, with regard to fine-grain data provenance, and outline solutions to some of these problems.
Contract Number : IST-2000-28088 Project Title : Models and Simulations for Network Planning and Control of UMTS Project Acronym : MOMENTUM

This document summarises MOMENTUM’s approach on automatic planning of the UMTS RF network configuration of large-scale networks. The approach covers all major aspects of automatic planning including an adaptive propagation model applicable for all relevant deployment scenarios, sophisticated heuristics to reduce calculation times, and mathematical optimisation methods. First results generated by these methods are presented, showing encouraging results. Key word list: UMTS, radio interface, planning, adaptive propagation model, mathematical model, mathematical optimisation, heuristics, optimisation results , IST, Key Action IV, Action Line IV.4. 1 Key action: IV, Essential Technologies and Infrastructures Action Line: IV.4. 1, Simulation & Visualisation Confidentiality: MOMENTUM public