Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mobile Sociologies of Education

This special issue of the European Educational Research Journal collects articles from the sessions organised by the newly launched sociologies of education network (network 28) of the European Education Research Association (EERA) at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) held in 2012. Scholars who contributed to the sessions as presenters or commenters from the audience argued that there is a need to reconsider the methodologies, missions and the traditional themes of the sociology of education in an era when the institutions of education and learning practices are being profoundly re-shaped by the processes of globalisation. A core part of this reflection is to expand sociological imagination and to think beyond fixed and nation-state bound categories in which sociology of education had traditionally understood education, policy and society. This issue collects articles that have, to lesser or greater extent, gained inspiration from the Latourian version of actor-network theory (ANT) and experiment with socio-material understanding of educational processes because they all argue that many newly emergent education policy and practice phenomena can be better grasped as a genuinely fluid, networked and mobile process. While the articles all engage with the idea of developing a mobile sociology of education, they altogether do not attempt to offer a homogeneous programme but rather invite the readers for discussion about renewing the sociological vocabulary and for reflection on the potentials of a new perspective sensitive of mobilities and assemblages.
Indoor Water-Dispensing Robot with Two-Stage Localization

With improvement in the quality of people's life and the change of their lifestyle, the demand for intelligent water dispensers is increased. This study, therefore, proposes to de-sign a service robot that can not only move autonomously but also serve people intelligently. In this paper, a solution to de-sign an intelligent water-dispensing service robot is proposed. A new integrated system architecture is introduced, and a two-stage localization, a novel method of indoor robot localization, is described to solve the localization problem of the robot. Ow-ing to the detailed description of the implementation, it is clearly indicated that the proposed solution is reasonable and feasible. Besides, comparisons of various indoor localization methods and indoor robot applications demonstrate that the water-dispensing service robot has advantages over the existing designs and application.
Apoptosis Regulates the Number of Schwann Cells at the Premyelinating Stage

Abstract: At the premyelinating stage, the Schwann cells of peripheral nerves are able to recognize the axon, to arrange themselves along it in a nonoverlapping manner, and finally to establish a one‐to‐one cell‐axon relationship. The mechanism that regulates these processes is not known in detail. We found the existence of a significant Schwann cell apoptosis in vivo of rat postnatal sciatic nerve, peaking around postnatal day 3. More than 50% of the neonatal Schwann cells cultured in axon‐free medium undergo a rapid apoptosis. The apoptosis can be suppressed by addition of survival factors such as Neu differentiation factors or by increasing the adhesion of Schwann cells to substratum. We suggest that in neonatal nerves in vivo, Schwann cells are highly susceptible to apoptosis, but they are saved from death by contact with axons. The dramatic increase in number of Schwann cells between postnatal day 0 and 3 overcomes the number of axons available for them. Consequently the Schwann cells that fail to contact an axon undergo apoptosis. In conclusion, the number of Schwann cells in the developing nerves is regulated by the apoptosis and clearly depends on the survival signals from axons.
Assessment of vascular function: flow-mediated constriction complements the information of flow-mediated dilatation

Objective: To determine whether vascular function assessed by low-flow-mediated constriction (L-FMC), a novel non-invasive method, complements the information obtained with “traditional” flow-mediated dilatation (FMD). Design and patients: In protocol 1, 12 healthy young volunteers underwent FMD and L-FMC measurements at rest and immediately after isometric exercise of the same hand. In protocol 2, 24 patients with coronary artery disease, 24 with congestive heart failure, 24 hypertensive patients and 64 healthy volunteers were enrolled to undergo L-FMC and FMD measurements. Results: In protocol 1, exercise was associated with mean (SD) increases in radial artery blood flow, diameter and L-FMC (from −5.1 (1.5)% to −7.8 (3.4)%, p<0.05), while FMD was significantly blunted (from 6.0 (2.4)% to 3.0 (3.2)%, p<0.05). In protocol 2, both FMD and L-FMC were blunted in the patient groups. Receiver operating curve analysis showed that, as compared with FMD alone, the combination of L-FMC and FMD significantly improved the sensitivity and specificity in detecting patients diagnosed with cardiovascular disease (p<0.05). Conclusion: In the first protocol, FMD and L-FMC were shown to be reciprocally regulated. A blunted FMD may, in certain cases, be an expression of increased resting vascular activation and not only of impaired endothelial function. In the second protocol, a statistical approach showed that implementation of L-FMC provides a better characterisation than FMD of vascular function in cardiovascular disease. Vascular (endothelial) function is a complex phenomenon which requires a multifaceted approach; it is suggested that a combination of L-FMC and FMD will provide additive and complementary information to “traditional” FMD measurements.
Parameter Finding Methods for Oscillators with a Specified Oscillation Frequency

This paper presents a generalized formulation of the periodic steady-state analysis for oscillators. The new formulation finds the value of a circuit parameter that results in a desired oscillation frequency for the circuit. Numerical methods based on the time-domain finite difference and shooting methods, and the frequency-domain harmonic balance method are described. Comparisons with search-based methods demonstrate the efficacy of the new approach.
Next Generation Sequencing of Ancient DNA: Requirements, Strategies and Perspectives

The invention of next-generation-sequencing has revolutionized almost all fields of genetics, but few have profited from it as much as the field of ancient DNA research. From its beginnings as an interesting but rather marginal discipline, ancient DNA research is now on its way into the centre of evolutionary biology. In less than a year from its invention next-generation-sequencing had increased the amount of DNA sequence data available from extinct organisms by several orders of magnitude. Ancient DNA research is now not only adding a temporal aspect to evolutionary studies and allowing for the observation of evolution in real time, it also provides important data to help understand the origins of our own species. Here we review progress that has been made in next-generation-sequencing of ancient DNA over the past five years and evaluate sequencing strategies and future directions.
Cytosolic Entry Controls CD8+-T-Cell Potency during Bacterial Infection

ABSTRACT Interaction with host immunoreceptors during microbial infection directly impacts the magnitude of the ensuing innate immune response. How these signals affect the quality of the adaptive T-cell response remains poorly understood. Utilizing an engineered strain of the intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes that infects cells but fails to escape from the phagosome, we demonstrate the induction of long-lived memory T cells that are capable of secondary expansion and effector function but are incapable of providing protective immunity. We demonstrate that microbial invasion of the cytosol is required for dendritic cell activation and integration of CD40 signaling, ultimately determining the ability of the elicited CD8+-T-cell pool to protect against lethal wild-type L. monocytogenes challenge. These results reveal a crucial role for phagosomal escape, not for delivery of antigen to the class I major histocompatibility complex pathway but for establishing the appropriate cellular context during CD8+-T-cell priming.
Adaptive Power Allocation for Limited Feedback Multi-Antenna Transmissions

This paper addresses the problem of optimizing the adaptive power allocation for data transmission over wireless communication fading channels using multiple transmit antennas with band-limited feedback channel. The objective of the optimization is to minimize the bit error rate (BER) subject to constraint on the average transmitted power. The chosen multi-antenna transmission scheme is the transmit antenna selection, which requires limited number of feedback bits. The adaptive power allocation is chosen to have finite levels of allocated power so that the system will still require limited number of feedback bits when the proposed adaptive power allocation scheme is combined. The allocated power of each level will be optimally determined. This has to be done with regarding to the employment of antenna selection. In order to achieve this goal, the formula of the BER of the system using transmit antenna selection scheme as a function of allocated power level is first derived. Then, the obtained formula is solved for optimal allocated power of each level. The obtained results shows that the advantageous features of two different techniques, namely antenna selection and the adaptive power allocation, can be combined effectively to combat fading using limited feedback information. Numerical results of the systems with 2-transmit and 3-transmit antenna are used here to demonstrate that substantial BER performance improvement can be achieved by using even only a few power adaptation levels.
Comparison of Amos II with other Data Integration Projects

This working document gives an overview of some research projects whose aims are similar to the Amos II project. Amos II is related to research in the areas of OO views, data integration, distributed databases and general query processing. We have surveyed the literature on a number of multi-database integration and OO view projects and compared their approaches to Amos II . 1 Multi-database integration The main purpose of Amos II project is development of a system for integration of data in multiple data sources. This section compares the architecture and implementation techniques used in Amos II with other multi-database integration projects [6, 22, 4, 20, 7, 45, 34, 25, 4, 28, 16]. In summary, the unique features of Amos II are: To aid the comparison, we rst summarize some major features of the Amos II data integration capabilities: A distributed mediator architecture where query plans are generated using a distributed compilation in several communicating mediator and wrapper servers. Data integration by reconciled OO views spanning over multiple mediators and speci ed through declarative OO queries. These views are capacity augmenting views, i.e. locally stored attributes can be associated with them. Processing and optimization of queries to the reconciled views using OO concepts such as overloading, late binding, and type aware query rewrites.
A New CMOS Topology for Low-Voltage Null Convention Logic Gates Design

This paper proposes a new transistor topology to design gates required by Null Convention Logic for low voltage operation. The new topology enables implementing all functionalities required by this design style. Extensive simulation results conducted in a 65 nm CMOS technology allow comparing the new topology to popular static and semi-static ones and indicate that the former presents better speed, energy and leakage trade-offs for different voltage levels, demonstrating the suitability of the new topology for low voltage applications. Drawbacks are an area of 4 minimum size transistors and reduced robustness against soft errors, when operating at non-minimum voltages.
The light-addressable potentiometric sensor: principles and biological applications.

PRINCIPLES OF THE LIGHT-ADDRESSABLE POTENTIOMETRIC SENSOR 88 Measurement of pH 89 The Photoeffect 90 Light Addressability 93 Measurement of Other Chemical Species 93 THE LAPS AS A SENSOR IN AN ANALYTICAL SYSTEM 94 Electrical Measurement of Phospholipid Membranes 94 Discrete Sensor Arrays 94 LAPS as an Imaging Sensor 94 Microvolume Systems 95 The Sensor as a Structural Element of Analytical Systems 96 Data Analysis in LAPS Systems 96 APPLICATIONS FOR BIOCHEMICAL ASSAYS 98 Measurement of Enzyme Substrates and lnhibitors 98 Enzyme-Linked lmmunoassays 98 APPLICATIONS FOR CELL-BASED BIOASSAYS: THE MICROPHYSIOMETER 102 Biological Basis 102 Instrumental Characteristics 102 Applications of Microphysiometry 105 Prospects 108 CONCLUDING PERSPECTIVE 109
Gastroparesis in children

Historically, gastroparesis is characterized by delayed gastric emptying of fluids and/or solids without evidence of a mechanical gastric outlet obstruction. To provide a thorough, evidence-based overview of the diagnosis, treatment, outcome and future advances for gastroparesis in children, a web search (PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, EMBASE, Clinical Evidence) was performed. Original articles and reviews were identified, examined and included as appropriate. The prevalence of gastroparesis is vague in adults and unknown in children. It is suspected on the presence of symptoms indicating gastric dysmotility (nausea, vomiting, early satiety, postprandial fullness, failure to thrive, weight loss) and is confirmed on the demonstration of delayed gastric emptying. It can be assessed with various methods from which gastric emptying scintigraphy of a radiolabeled solid meal is considered as the golden standard. Therapeutic approaches include: dietary modifications, medical treatment (prokinetics, antiemetics, intrapyloric injection of botulinum toxin, enteral feeds via jejunostomy, total parenteral nutrition) and surgical interventions (laparoscopic placement of gastric pacemaker) aiming at alleviating symptoms and maintaining optimal nutritional status. Gastroparesis in children can be challenging to diagnose and treat. Specific protocols for the evaluation of gastric emptying and for a stepwise management are required to optimise future outcomes.
Falls and Fractures in the Elderly with Sinus Node Disease: The Impact of Pacemaker Implantation

Background. Falls and fractures in the elderly are among the leading causes of disability. We investigated whether pacemaker implantation prevents falls in patients with SND in a large cohort of patients. Methods. Patient demographics and medical history were collected prospectively. Fall history was retrospectively reconstituted from available medical records. The 10-year probability for major osteoporotic fractures was calculated retrospectively from available medical records using the Swiss fracture risk assessment tool FRAX-Switzerland. Results. During a mean observation period of 2.3 years after implantation, the rates of fallers and injured fallers with fracture were reduced to 15% and 6%, respectively. This corresponds to a relative reduction in the number of fallers of 75% (P < 0.001) and of injured fallers of 63% (P = 0.014) after pacemaker implantation. Similarly, the number of falls was reduced from 60 (48%) before pacemaker implantation to 22 (18%) thereafter (relative reduction 63%, P = 0.035) and the number of falls with injury from 22 (18%) to 7 (6%), which corresponds to a relative reduction of 67%, P = 0.013. Conclusion. In patients with SND, pacemaker implantation significantly reduces the number of patients experiencing falls, the total number of falls, and the risk for osteoporotic fractures.
The Value of Multiproxy Reconstruction of Past Climate

Understanding the dynamics of climate change in its full richness requires the knowledge of long temperature time series. Although long-term, widely distributed temperature observations are not available, there are other forms of data, known as climate proxies, that can have a statistical relationship with temperatures and have been used to infer temperatures in the past before direct measurements. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical model to reconstruct past temperatures that integrates information from different sources, such as proxies with different temporal resolution and forcings acting as the external drivers of large scale temperature evolution. Additionally, this method allows us to quantify the uncertainty of the reconstruction in a rigorous manner. The reconstruction method is assessed, using a global climate model as the true climate system and with synthetic proxy data derived from the simulation. The target is to reconstruct Northern Hemisphere temperature from proxies that mimic the sampling and errors from tree ring measurements, pollen indices, and borehole temperatures. The forcing series used as covariates are solar irradiance, volcanic aerosols, and greenhouse gas concentrations. The Bayesian model was successful in integrating these different sources of information in creating a coherent reconstruction. Within the context of this numerical testbed, a statistical process model that includes the external forcings can improve the quality of a hemispheric reconstruction when long time scale proxy information is not available. This article has supplementary material online.
Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity

A central challenge for sustainability is how to preserve forest ecosystems and the services that they provide us while enhancing food production. This challenge for developing countries confronts the force of economic globalization, which seeks cropland that is shrinking in availability and triggers deforestation. Four mechanisms—the displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance effects—that are amplified by economic globalization accelerate land conversion. A few developing countries have managed a land use transition over the recent decades that simultaneously increased their forest cover and agricultural production. These countries have relied on various mixes of agricultural intensification, land use zoning, forest protection, increased reliance on imported food and wood products, the creation of off-farm jobs, foreign capital investments, and remittances. Sound policies and innovations can therefore reconcile forest preservation with food production. Globalization can be harnessed to increase land use efficiency rather than leading to uncontrolled land use expansion. To do so, land systems should be understood and modeled as open systems with large flows of goods, people, and capital that connect local land use with global-scale factors.
Secretomic Analysis Identifies Alpha-1 Antitrypsin (A1AT) as a Required Protein in Cancer Cell Migration, Invasion, and Pericellular Fibronectin Assembly for Facilitating Lung Colonization of Lung Adenocarcinoma Cells*

Metastasis is a major obstacle that must be overcome for the successful treatment of lung cancer. Proteins secreted by cancer cells may facilitate the progression of metastasis, particularly within the phases of migration and invasion. To discover metastasis-promoting secretory proteins within cancer cells, we used the label-free quantitative proteomics approach and compared the secretomes from the lung adenocarcinoma cell lines CL1-0 and CL1-5, which exhibit low and high metastatic properties, respectively. By employing quantitative analyses, we identified 660 proteins, 68 of which were considered to be expressed at different levels between the two cell lines. High levels of A1AT were secreted by CL1-5, and the roles of A1AT in the influence of lung adenocarcinoma metastasis were investigated. Molecular and pathological confirmation demonstrated that altered expression of A1AT correlates with the metastatic potential of lung adenocarcinoma. The migration and invasion properties of CL1-5 cells were significantly diminished by reducing the expression and secretion of their A1AT proteins. Conversely, the migration and invasion properties of CL1-0 cells were significantly increased through the overexpression and secretion of A1AT proteins. Furthermore, the assembly levels of the metastasis-promoting pericellular fibronectin (FN1), which facilitates colonization of lung capillary endothelia by adhering to the cell surface receptor dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP IV), were higher on the surfaces of suspended CL1-5 cells than on those of the CL1-0 cells. This discovery reflects previous findings in breast cancer. In line with this finding, FN1 assembly and the lung colonization of suspended CL1-5 cells were inhibited when endogenous A1AT protein was knocked down using siRNA. The major thrust of this study is to demonstrate the effects of coupling the label-free proteomics strategy with the secretomes of cancer cells that differentially exhibit invasive and metastatic properties. This provides a new opportunity for the effective identification of metastasis-associated proteins that are secreted by cancer cells and promote experimental metastasis.
Research evaluation and the assessment of public value

Funding organisations are increasingly asking academics to show evidence of the economic and social value generated by their research. These requests have often been associated with the emergence of a so-called ‘new social contract for research’ and are related to the implementation of new research evaluation systems. Although the research evaluation rhetoric is similar across countries and organisations, in practice evaluation can fulfil very different purposes. Additionally, the assessment of the public value of research poses different challenges depending on the academic field under analysis. This paper distinguishes three main research evaluation goals: to inform the distribution of public resources among competing objectives or performers, to help improve the implementation of policies and programmes, and to control the use of public funds. It then argues that assessing the value of research in the arts and humanities calls for a research methodology capable of providing a fine-grained understanding of the variety of, often diffuse, ways in which arts and humanities research can generate value. The methods that we need to do this are better suited to fulfil the improvement goal of evaluation, and require a ‘formative’ approach to evaluation supporting the social engagement of academic researchers.
A NOVEL COMBINING RECEIVER FOR A DUAL-DIVERSITY WIRELESS RELAY NETWORK

We present a simple combining receiver for a dual-diversity wireless relay network. The main concern of the paper is to face the trade-off between performance and complexity. The receiver focuses on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) monitoring and selects dynamically between selection combining (SC) and equal gain combining (EGC) depending on the SNR ratio of the two received branches. It is shown that SC suffers no SNR degradation compared to a single branch communications system if the two receive branches are unbalanced, wheres EGC suffers a loss of 3 dB. Error performance with respect to branch unbalance is considered as well and limiting values for a high degree of branch unbalance are derived.