Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Leadership behaviour and practices of a Head Teacher in an excellent school

The purpose of this study is to explore the behaviours and practices of a head teacher in an excellent school. This study also intends to find out the leadership behaviours and practices of the head teacher that contribute towards the excellent academic and co-curricular achievements and how the excellent results are consistently maintained year after year. Additionally, this study also hopes to explore the head teacher’s administrative style in the school. The qualitative research framework was adopted to gain an understanding of the head teacher’s leadership behaviour and practices. The research design was a single case study, where data was collected through interviews, observations and document analysis. The school under study scored more than ninety percent passes in the UPSR examination, sports and co-curricular champions at the zone and district level besides being free of any discipline problems. The subject in this study was the head teacher of the school while the key informants comprised five teachers, two support staff and two parents from the school. Transcriptions of the interviews and field notes were made immediately after each interview and observation. The findings of the study revealed that the vision of the head teacher was paramount for school excellence; teaching of the curriculum was top priority; programmes for individual pupils’ indifferences were implemented; collaborative leadership practiced in the administration and most major decisions regarding academic or non academic were made in consensus with the staff. The findings of the study also revealed various implications such as the importance of effective managerial skills used in executing instructional tasks as well as implementing effective academic, co-curricular and discipline programmes for school excellence. (Author's abstract)
Prevention and Treatment of Obesity, Insulin Resistance, and Diabetes by Bile Acid–Binding Resin

Bile acid–binding resins, such as cholestyramine and colestimide, have been clinically used as cholesterol-lowering agents. These agents bind bile acids in the intestine and reduce enterohepatic circulation of bile acids, leading to accelerated conversion of cholesterol to bile acids. A significant improvement in glycemic control was reported in patients with type 2 diabetes whose hyperlipidemia was treated with bile acid–binding resins. To confirm the effect of such drugs on glucose metabolism and to investigate the underlying mechanisms, an animal model of type 2 diabetes was given a high-fat diet with and without colestimide. Diet-induced obesity and fatty liver were markedly ameliorated by colestimide without decreasing the food intake. Hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, and insulin response to glucose, as well as dyslipidemia, were markedly and significantly ameliorated by the treatment. Gene expression of the liver indicated reduced expression of small heterodimer partner, a pleiotropic regulator of diverse metabolic pathways, as well as genes for both fatty acid synthesis and gluconeogenesis, by treatment with colestimide. This study provides a molecular basis for a link between bile acids and glucose metabolism and suggests the bile acid metabolism pathway as a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of obesity, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes.
Local Homogeneity of Cell Cycle Length in Developing Mouse Cortex

We have measured the amount of variation in the length of the cell cycle for cells in the pseudostratified ventricular epithelium (PVE) of the developing cortex of mice on embryonic day 14. Our measurements were made in three cortical regions (i.e., the neocortex, archicortex, and periarchicortex) using three different methods: the cumulative labeling method (CLM), the percent labeled mitoses (PLM) method, and a comparison of the time needed for the PLM to ascend from 0 to 100% with the time needed for the PLM to descend from 100 to 0%. These 3 different techniques provide different perspectives on the cytokinetic parameters. Theoretically, CLM gives an estimate for a maximum value of the total length of the cell cycle (TC), whereas PLM gives an estimate of a minimum value of TC. The difference between these two estimates indicates that the range for TCis ±1% of the mean TC for periarchicortex, ±7% for neocortex, and ±8% for archicortex. This was confirmed by a lengthening of the PLM descent time in comparison with its ascent time. The sharpness of the transitions and the flatness of the plateau of the PLM curves indicate that 99% of the proliferating cells are within this narrow estimated range for TC; hence, only ∼1% deviate outside of a relatively restricted range from the average TC of the population. In the context of the possible existence within the cortical PVE of two populations with markedly dissimilar cell cycle kinetics from the mean, one such population must comprise ∼99% of the total population, and the other, if it exists, is only ∼1% of the total. This seems to be true for all three cortical regions. The narrow range of TC indicates a homogeneity in the cell cycle length for proliferating cells in three different cortical regions, despite the fact that progenitor cells of different lineages may be present. It further predicts the existence of almost synchronous interkinetic nuclear movements of the proliferating cells in the ventricular zone during early development of the cerebral cortex.
Assessment of rfi measurements for lofar

In the North-Western part of Europe, ASTRON is building the world-largest largest low-frequency radio telescope. The telescope is based on phased array principles and is known as the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR). LOFAR is optimized for detecting astronomical signals in the 30-80 MHz and 120-240 MHz frequency windows. Since this part of the spectrum is in extensive use by others, special care must be taken in the selection of possible out-station sites for LOFAR. RFI measurements were made to be sure that the radio spectrum at the potential out-station locations is suitable for LOFAR operations. An assessment procedure is presented here and specific issues are discussed, such as the impact of Digital Video Broadcast, and wind turbines. The results of the RFI observations has generated a list of specifications for (international) LOFAR out-stations.
Automatic Text Summarization of Multiple Documents Thesis Proposal Thesis Committee

In this era, where electronic text information is exponentially growing and where time is a critical resource, it has become virtually impossible for any user to browse or read large numbers of individual documents. It is therefore important to explore methods of allowing users to locate and browse information quickly within collections of documents. Automatic text summarization of multiple documents fulllls such information seeking goals by providing a method for the user to quickly view highlights and/or relevant portions of document collections. As of yet, there has been little work with multi-document summarization, although single document summarization has been a subject of focus in the last few years. Multi-document summarization diiers from single in that the issues of compression, speed, redundancy and passage selection are critical in the formation of useful summaries. If multi-document summarization is to be useful across subject areas and languages, it must be relatively independent of natural language understanding. A statistical approach allows for both rapid passage selection and speed. The maximal marginal relevance (MMR) metric is used to provide \relevant" novelty in passage selection, i.e., selecting passages that meet the criteria of relevance to a query, while reducing redundancy and maximizing diversity among the individual passages. The approach builds on previous work in single-document summarization by using additional , available information about the document set as a whole, the relationships between the documents, as well as properties of individual documents. The underlying framework is modular , thus allowing easy parameterization to take into account diierent document genres or corpora characteristics, user requirements, as well as linguistic properties of languages that can enhance summarization results. The principal question being addressed is "Can multi-document summarization effectively indicate the textual content of document collections and assist users to rapidly nd their desired information? " I will explore this question by evaluating the system in the domains of newswire articles, web pages, and time permitting, computer science technical reports.
Entropy Vectors and Network Codes

We consider a network multicast example that relates the solvability of the multicast problem with the existence of an entropy function. As a result, we provide an alternative approach to the proving of the insufficiency of linear (and abelian) network codes and demonstrate the utility of non- Shannon inequalities to tighten outer bounds on network coding capacity regions.
Analysis of the Data Quality of Audio Features of Environmental Sounds

In this paper we perform statistical data analysis of a broad set of state-of-the-art audio features and low-level MPEG-7 audio descriptors. The investigation comprises data analysis to reveal redundancies between state-of-the-art audio features and MPEG-7 audio descriptors. We introduce a novel measure to evaluate the information content of a descriptor in terms of variance. Statistical data analysis reveals the amount of variance contained in a feature. It enables identification of independent and redundant features. This approach assists in efficient selection of orthogonal features for content-based retrieval. We believe that a good feature should provide descriptions with high variance for the underlying data. Combinations of features should consist of decorrelated features in order to increase expressiveness of the descriptions. Although MPEG-7 is a popular and widely used standard for multimedia description, only few investigations do exist that address analysis of the data quality of lowlevel MPEG-7 descriptions.
A novel improved hybrid particle swarm optimisation based genetic algorithm for the solution to layout problems

Layout problems belong to NP(non-deterministic polynomial)-Complete problems theoretically. They are paid more and more attention in recent years and arise in a variety of application fields such as the layout design of spacecraft modules, shipping, vehicle and robots, plant equipments, platforms of marine drilling well. The algorithms based on swarm intelligence are relatively effective to solve this kind of problems. But usually there still exist two main defects of them, i.e. premature convergence and slow convergence rate. To overcome them, a novel improved hybrid PSO-based genetic algorithm (HPSO-GA) is proposed on the basis of parallel genetic algorithms (PGA). In this algorithm, chaos initialization and multi-subpopulation evolution based on improved adaptive crossover and mutation are adopted. And more importantly, in accordance with characteristics of different classes of subpopulations, different modes of PSO update operator are introduced. It aims at making full use of the fast convergence property of particle swarm optimization (PSO). The proposed adjustable arithmetic-progression rank-based selection can prevent the algorithm from premature in the early stage and benefit accelerating convergence in the late stage as well. An example of layout problems shows that HPSO-GA is feasible and effective.
Variability in endotoxin exposure levels and consequences for exposure assessment.

OBJECTIVES Workers in many industries are exposed to endotoxins, which may cause adverse health effects. In exposure assessment, information about exposure variability is essential. However, variability in exposure has rarely been investigated for biological agents and more specifically for endotoxin. Therefore, variance components and determinants of exposure were studied in a large database with >2000 endotoxin measurements. METHODS Data from 10 individual studies were combined to create a database with 2010 personal inhalable dust and endotoxin measurements, of which 1650 were repeated measurements. Exposure groups were defined based on job codes. Between- and within-worker variance components were estimated for different grouping strategies, and determinants of exposure were studied using mixed effects models. RESULTS Inhalable dust and endotoxin exposure levels are summarized for 46 industries and 4 broadly defined sectors. The between-worker variability exceeded the within-worker variability overall and within sectors and subsectors, and variance components were larger for endotoxin than for dust. Between-worker variability also exceeded within-worker variability in nearly half of the exposure groups based upon industries or job code within industries for endotoxin exposure and in 10% of the groups for dust exposure. Among other things, dustiness of the process, contact with animals, bulk production, presence of plant material or a cyclic process appeared as determinants of exposure, which largely explained the between-worker variability. CONCLUSIONS Exposure groups were much less homogeneous for endotoxin exposure than for dust exposure. This is distinctly different than for chemical exposure. Large variability in measured exposure levels is inherent to endotoxin exposure, which is caused in part by determinants that influence growth of microorganisms. These findings have major consequences for the design of future occupational intervention and epidemiological studies. The measurement effort needs to be greater than exposure assessment for chemical agents which demonstrate lower exposure variability, especially when evaluating endotoxin exposure for compliance testing. The established determinants of exposure give direction for potential exposure control, although more information about determinants of day-to-day variability in exposure is still needed to be able to effectively control endotoxin exposure.
Current Approaches for Improving Intratumoral Accumulation and Distribution of Nanomedicines

The ability of nanoparticles and macromolecules to passively accumulate in solid tumors and enhance therapeutic effects in comparison with conventional anticancer agents has resulted in the development of various multifunctional nanomedicines including liposomes, polymeric micelles, and magnetic nanoparticles. Further modifications of these nanoparticles have improved their characteristics in terms of tumor selectivity, circulation time in blood, enhanced uptake by cancer cells, and sensitivity to tumor microenvironment. These “smart” systems have enabled highly effective delivery of drugs, genes, shRNA, radioisotopes, and other therapeutic molecules. However, the resulting therapeutically relevant local concentrations of anticancer agents are often insufficient to cause tumor regression and complete elimination. Poor perfusion of inner regions of solid tumors as well as vascular barrier, high interstitial fluid pressure, and dense intercellular matrix are the main intratumoral barriers that impair drug delivery and impede uniform distribution of nanomedicines throughout a tumor. Here we review existing methods and approaches for improving tumoral uptake and distribution of nano-scaled therapeutic particles and macromolecules (i.e. nanomedicines). Briefly, these strategies include tuning physicochemical characteristics of nanomedicines, modulating physiological state of tumors with physical impacts or physiologically active agents, and active delivery of nanomedicines using cellular hitchhiking.
Evolution of Coronary Flow in an Experimental Slow Flow Model in Swines: Angiographic and Pathological Insights

Objective. Pathomechanism of coronary slow flow phenomenon remains largely unclear now. Present study observed the pathological and angiographic evolution in a pig model of coronary slow flow. Methods. Coronary slow flow was induced by repeat coronary injection of small doses of 40 µm microspheres in 18 male domestic pigs and angiographic and pathological changes were determined at 3 hours, 7 days, and 28 days after microspheres injection. Results. Compared to control group treated with coronary saline injection (n = 6) and baseline level, coronary flow was significantly reduced at 3 hours and 7 days but completely recovered at 28 days after coronary microsphere injection in slow flow group. Despite normal coronary flow at 28 days after microsphere injection, enhanced myocardial cytokine expression, left ventricular dysfunction, adverse remodelling, and ischemia/microembolism related pathological changes still persisted or even progressed from 3 hours to 28 days after coronary microsphere injection. Conclusions. Our results show that this large animal slow flow model could partly reflect the chronic angiographic, hemodynamic, and pathological changes of coronary slow flow and could be used to test new therapy strategies against the slow flow phenomenon.
An assessment of whether there is a need for a placement test at the University of Namibia Language Centre

This paper is a literature review that assesses whether there could be a need to implement placement testing at the University of Namibia (UNAM) Language Centre (LC). At the moment, students are placed into different course levels based on their high school leaving scores of English. The paper highlighted the qualities of testing that make a test result reliable and valid for the intended decision. Therefore, both literature on the use of placement tests and high school leaving score were reviewed for a well-informed assessment results. Literature shows that although the placement testing seems to have yield good results in some settings, comparably, it also seems to be in favour of the use school leaving scores in language placements
Memory Efficient Decoders using Spatially Coupled Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes

In this paper we propose the construction of Spatially Coupled Low-Density Parity-Check (SC-LDPC) codes using a periodic time-variant Quasi-Cyclic (QC) algorithm. The QC based approach is optimized to obtain memory efficiency in storing the parity-check matrix in the decoders. A hardware model of the parity-check storage units has been designed for Xilinx FPGA to compare the logic and memory requirements for various approaches. It is shown that the proposed QC SC-LDPC code (with optimization) can be stored with reasonable logic resources and without the need of block memory in the FPGA. In addition, a significant improvement in the processing speed is also achieved.
Functionally Different Pads on the Same Foot Allow Control of Attachment: Stick Insects Have Load-Sensitive “Heel” Pads for Friction and Shear-Sensitive “Toe” Pads for Adhesion

Stick insects (Carausius morosus) have two distinct types of attachment pad per leg, tarsal “heel” pads (euplantulae) and a pre-tarsal “toe” pad (arolium). Here we show that these two pad types are specialised for fundamentally different functions. When standing upright, stick insects rested on their proximal euplantulae, while arolia were the only pads in surface contact when hanging upside down. Single-pad force measurements showed that the adhesion of euplantulae was extremely small, but friction forces strongly increased with normal load and coefficients of friction were 1. The pre-tarsal arolium, in contrast, generated adhesion that strongly increased with pulling forces, allowing adhesion to be activated and deactivated by shear forces, which can be produced actively, or passively as a result of the insects' sprawled posture. The shear-sensitivity of the arolium was present even when corrected for contact area, and was independent of normal preloads covering nearly an order of magnitude. Attachment of both heel and toe pads is thus activated partly by the forces that arise passively in the situations in which they are used by the insects, ensuring safe attachment. Our results suggest that stick insect euplantulae are specialised “friction pads” that produce traction when pressed against the substrate, while arolia are “true” adhesive pads that stick to the substrate when activated by pulling forces.
MTR: Fault tolerant routing in Clos data center network with miswiring links

The data center network (DCN) is a key component of cloud computing. With the rapid expansion of cloud computing, the scale of DCN grows bigger and bigger. However, lacking proper engineering management method, engineers may miswire some links while building DCN, which is called “miswiring problem”. And these miswiring links lead to differences between physical topology and design blueprint graph of DCN, resulting in communication error in DCN. The previous works (DAC [1] and ETAC [2]) only detect devices with miswiring links. DAC can not let the network work until engineers fix miswiring links manually, which is a time-consuming and error-prone task. And ETAC only utilize the devices without miswiring links, it excludes devices with miswiring links from working, which wastes link resource and drops down network throughput. In this paper, we focus on miswiring problem in Clos-based DCN network, and an effective algorithm is introduced to detect and correct miswiring links. Moreover, we propose a miswiring tolerant routing protocol (MTR) to embrace miswiring links, increasing the network throughput in the presence of miswiring links. The simulation results show that for a Fat-Tree network with 128,000 servers, our design can efficiently detect and correct miswiring links (at most 20% miswiring links) in less than 120 milliseconds. And in a 32-array Fat-Tree network, compared with ECMP, MTR can reduce the data transmission completion time by 2.5%, 5.43%, 8.74%, and 11.66% when the percentage of miswiring links is 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%, respectively.
Position-independent near optimal searching and on-line recognition in star polygons

We study the problem of on-line searching for a target inside a polygon. In particular we propose a strategy for finding a target of unknown location in a star polygon with a competitive ratio of 14.5, and we further refine it to 12.72. This makes star polygons the first non-trivial class of polygons known to admit constant competitive searches independent of the position of the target. We also provide a lower bound of 9 for the competitive ratio of searching in a star polygon-which is dose to the upper bound.
Channel allocation in multi-user MIMO wireless communications systems

The use of multi-user multiple input multiple output (MIMO) processing algorithms in wireless communication systems requires new channel allocation algorithms that can intelligently assign users to channels that can best take advantage of the spatial processing available at both transmitter and receiver. The availability of spatial processing at the receiver adds yet another variable to the classic channel allocation problem, making it very difficult to find the optimal solution for a particular set of users at a reasonable computational cost. We propose a two-step heuristic solution. The first step is the computation of a metric that quantifies the spatial compatibility of two users. The second step is to group the users into shared channels based on optimizing the sum of the compatibility metrics over all groups. we also propose a modified version of the algorithm in which the sub-channels (from different multipath components) of a single user are not required to share the same time-domain channel. In simulations, these algorithms come reasonably close to the optimal solution at a moderate computational cost.