Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Educational standards and the changing discourse on education: the reception and consequences of the PISA study in Germany

This paper examines the ways in which the results of the OECD Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) have influenced educational discourse in Germany. It argues that the results caused shockwaves in the educational landscape and led to a re‐evaluation of other international comparisons which had presented an unfavourable picture of education in Germany. The paper outlines three main areas affected by the reception of the PISA study in Germany: political discourse, curriculum development processes and academic discourse on education. Changes in the political discourse resulted in a wide‐ranging reform agenda, with the introduction of national educational standards being the most significant of a number of initiatives and programmes. In terms of curriculum development processes, the paper argues that PISA has led to the growing importance of principles such as outcome control, competence orientation and external assessment. The post‐PISA academic discourse in Germany can be characterised by the re‐orientation of educational studies towards a greater emphasis on the empirical research of pedagogic practice (empirische Unterrichtsforschung). All three areas of change are informed by more or less systematic comparisons with educational structures in other countries and, therefore, it is argued that PISA has contributed to a rediscovery of comparative education in the German discourse.
Switched Band-Notched UWB/Dual-Band WLAN Slot Antenna With Inverted S-Shaped Slots

A switched antenna that has a capability to operate in the dual-band WLAN frequency bands (2.4-2.485, 5.15-5.35, and 5.725-5.825 GHz) and the band-notched ultrawideband (UWB) frequency band (the stopband covers the frequency band ranging from 5.15 to 5.825 GHz) is presented. The proposed antenna is composed of a rectangular ring slot, four switches, a coplanar waveguide (CPW) feeding line, a T-shaped stub, and two inverted S-shaped slots. The function of the two inverted S-shaped slots can be changed by tuning status of the switches that make the operating bands of the proposed antenna various. To the authors' knowledge, a feature that the antenna is able to cover two complementary bands is unique to this letter.
TrapperKeeper : Using Virtualization to Add Type-Awareness to File Systems

TrapperKeeper is a system that enables the development of type-aware file system functionality. In contrast to existing plug-in-based architectures that requir e a software developer to write and maintain separate code modules for each new file type, TrapperKeeper requires no type-specific code . Instead, TrapperKeeper executes existing software applications that parse the desired file type inside virtual machines. It then uses accessibility APIs to control the application and extract desired information from the application’s graphical user interface. We have implemented metadata extraction and document preview features that use TrapperKeeper, and we have used TrapperKeeper to capture the type-specific cognizance of over 20 applications that collectively parse more than 100 distinct file types. Our experimental results show that TrapperKeeper can execute these two features on hundreds of files per hour, a pace that far exceeds the rate that files are modified or created on the average desktop.
Analysis of a first-order adaptive recursive predictor

Adaptive all-pole predictors have recently found renewed interest in the area of digital data transmission due to their ability to perform blind magnitude equalization of the communication channel. The pseudolinear regression (PLR) algorithm constitutes an appealing candidate for the predictor update, since it is computationally simpler than its forerunners. We analyze the behavior of a first-order complex-valued PLR-updated predictor to show that the stationary point is unique even in general undermodelled settings, and that the predictor pole will not escape the unit circle for sufficiently slow adaptation. With no undermodelling, global convergence is also established. Additional properties of PLR solutions in undermodelled scenarios are also given, such as expressions for their prediction gain.
Optically detected librons and phonons in crystalline C60.

Well-defined intermolecular modes of crystalline C 60 were studied by means of Fourier-transform Raman and far-infrared spectroscopy. The librational modes are seen to gradually soften and broaden in energy as the temperature is raised from 10 to ∼260 K at which point the libron intensity abruptly vanishes, consistent with the order-disorder phase transition. The librational modes, which are in general agreement with the less well-resolved neutron-scattering results, are found to be remarkably sharp at low temperature
Protein Disulfide Isomerase : Cellular Enzymology of the CXXC Motif

25. K. Rupp, U. Birnbach, 1. Lundstrom P. N. Van, and H. D. Soling. Effects of CaBP2, the rat analog of ERp72, and of CaBP1 on the refolding of denatured reduced proteins, 1. Bioi. Chern. 269:2501-2507 (1994). 26. M. J. Smith and G. L. E. Koch, Isolation and identification of partial cDNA clones for endoplasmin, the major glycoprotein of mammalian endoplasmic reticulum, J. Mol. BioI. 194:345-347 (1987). 27. J. Fullekrug, B. Sonnichsen, U. Wunsch, K. Arseven, P. N. Van, H. D. Soling. and G. Mieskes, CaBPl, a calcium binding protein of the thioredoxin family, is a resident KDEL protein of the ER and not of the intennediate compartment, 1. Cell Sci. 107:2719-2727 (1994). 28. M. Michalak, R. E. Milner, K. Burns, and M. Opas, Calreticulin, J. Biochem. 285: 681-692 (1992). 29. R. H. Kretsinger, Structure and evolution of calcium-modulated proteins, CRC Crit. Rev. Biochem. 8:74-119 (1980). 30. T. Pozzan, R. Rizzuto, P. Volpe, and J. Meldolesi, Molecular and cellular physiology of intracellular calcium stores, Physiol. Rev. 74:595-630 (1994). 31. A. P. SomIyo, M. Bond, and A. V. Somlyo, Calcium content of mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum in liver frozen rapidly in vivo, Nature 314:622-625 (1985). 32. S. B. Andrews, R. D. Leapman, D. M. Landis, and T. S. Reese, Activity-dependent accumulation of calcium in Purkinje cell dendritic spines, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 85:1682-1685 (1988). 33. H. F. Lodish and N. Kong, Perturbation of cellular calcium"blocks exit of secretory proteins from the rough endoplasmic reticulum, J. BioI. Chem. 265: 1089310899 (1990). 34. H. F. Lodish, N. Kong, and L. Wikstrom, Calcium is required for folding of newly made subunits of the asialoglycoprotein receptor within the endoplasmic reticulum, J. Bioi. Chern. 267:12753-12760 (1992). 35. J. F. Sambrook, The involvement of calcium in transport of secretory proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum, Ce1161:197-199 (1990). 36. C. K. Suzuki, 1. S. Bonifacino, A. Y. Lin, M. M. Davis, and R. D. Klausner, Regulating the retention of T-cell receptor a. chain variants within the endoplasmic reticulum: Ca2+-dependent association with BiP, 1. Cell. Bioi. 114:189-205 (1991). 37. M. J. Gething and 1. Sambrook, Protein folding in the cell, Nature 355:33-45 (1992). 38. H. Cai, C. C. Wang, and C. L. Tsou, Chaperone-like activity of protein disulfide isomerase in the refolding of a protein with no disulfide bonds. J. Bioi. Chern. 269:24550-24552 (1994). 39. A. Puig and H. F. Gilbert, Protein disulfide isomerase exhibits chaperone and antichaperone activity in the oxidative refolding of lysozyme, 1. Bioi. Chern. 269: 7764-7771 (1994). 40. S. K. Nigam, A. L. Goldberg, S. Ho, M. F. Rohde, K. T. Bush, and M. Y. Shernlan, A set of endoplasmic reticulum proteins possessing properties of molecular chaperones includes Ca2+-binding proteins and members of the tbioredoxin superfamily, 1. Bioi. Chern. 269:1744-1749 (1994). 21
Regulatory Effects of Cu, Zn, and Ca on Fe Absorption: The Intricate Play between Nutrient Transporters

Iron is an essential nutrient for almost every living organism because it is required in a number of biological processes that serve to maintain life. In humans, recycling of senescent erythrocytes provides most of the daily requirement of iron. In addition, we need to absorb another 1–2 mg Fe from the diet each day to compensate for losses due to epithelial sloughing, perspiration, and bleeding. Iron absorption in the intestine is mainly regulated on the enterocyte level by effectors in the diet and systemic regulators accessing the enterocyte through the basal lamina. Recently, a complex meshwork of interactions between several trace metals and regulatory proteins was revealed. This review focuses on advances in our understanding of Cu, Zn, and Ca in the regulation of iron absorption. Ascorbate as an important player is also considered.
Low-voltage lateral-contact microrelays for RF applications

This paper reports the design and fabrication of a low-voltage lateral-contact microrelay for RF applications. The silicon surface micromachined relay utilizes electrothermal actuators and low-stress silicon nitride as a structural connection as well as electrical and thermal isolation. The sidewall contact is sputtered gold. The driving voltage is measured to be as low as 8V. RF testing shows that the microrelay has an off-state isolation of 20 dB at 12 GHz. The simplicity of this four-mask fabrication process enables the possible integration with other RF MEMS components.
On the analysis of sequence data: testing for disease susceptibility loci using patterns of linkage disequilibrium

Despite the numerous and successful applications of genome‐wide association studies (GWASs), there has been a lot of difficulty in discovering disease susceptibility loci (DSLs). This is due to the fact that the GWAS approach is an indirect mapping technique, often identifying markers. For the identification of DSLs, which is required for the understanding of the genetic pathways for complex diseases, sequencing data that examines every genetic locus directly is necessary. Yet, there is currently a lack of methodology targeted at the identification of the DSLs in sequencing data: existing methods localize the causal variant to a region but not to a single variant, and therefore do not allow one to identify unique loci that cause the phenotype association. Here, we have developed such a method to determine if there is evidence that an individual loci affects case/control status with sequencing data. This methodology differs from other rare variant approaches: rather than testing an entire region comprised of many loci for association with the phenotype, we can identify the individual genetic locus that causes the association between the phenotype and the genetic region. For each variant, the test determines if the pattern of linkage disequilibrium (LD) across the other variants coincides with the pattern expected if that variant were a DSL. Power simulations show that the method successfully detects the causal variant, distinguishing it from other nearby variants (in high LD with the causal variant), and outperforms the standard tests. The efficiency of the method is especially apparent with small samples, which are currently realistic for studies due to sequencing data costs. The practical relevance of the approach is illustrated by an application to a sequencing dataset for nonsyndromic cleft lip with or without cleft palate. The proposed method implicated one variant (P = 0.002, 0.062 after Bonferroni correction), which was not found by standard analyses. Code for implementation is available. Genet. Epidemiol. 35:880–886, 2011. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Robot Facilitation as Dynamic Support for Collaborative Learning

Automated as well as remotely controlled robots have high potential to expand our research and practice in collaborative learning environments. The area of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is one in which advanced technologies have been used effectively to automatically monitor and dynamically structure group discussions for learning. Traditional desktop environments for collaborative learning have included interactions between groups and computer agents with conversational abilities. Robots can take the collaboration out of the computer and into the three dimensional, real world environments of students. This symposium raises the important question of how advanced technologies, such as robotics, may enable us to take the same insights from the area of scripted collaboration and use them to support groups of learners in these environments. Other topic areas include design choices in robotic features that may influence scripted interactions, social behavior, meaningful engagement, and conditions that dynamically support situational factors and generate collaborative learning among students.
Attention Aware Systems

Attention-aware systems (AAS) are systems capable of adapting to, and supporting, human attentional processes especially in situations of multi-tasking, frequent interactions with other users, and highly dynamic environments. In this paper we discuss the rationale for AASs and their role within current HCI research, we review current research and applications of AASs, and we highlight the issues that will need to be addressed in the future for their design.
The mushroom body defect Gene Product Is an Essential Component of the Meiosis II Spindle Apparatus in Drosophila Oocytes

In addition to their well-known effects on the development of the mushroom body, mud mutants are also female sterile. Here we show that, although the early steps of ovary development are grossly normal, a defect becomes apparent in meiosis II when the two component spindles fail to cohere and align properly. The products of meiosis are consequently mispositioned within the egg and, with or without fertilization, soon undergo asynchronous and spatially disorganized replication. In wild-type eggs, Mud is found associated with the central spindle pole body that lies between the two spindles of meiosis II. The mutant defect thus implies that Mud should be added to the short list of components that are required for the formation and/or stability of this structure. Mud protein is also normally found in association with other structures during egg development: at the spindle poles of meiosis I, at the spindle poles of early cleavage and syncytial embryos, in the rosettes formed from the unfertilized products of meiosis, with the fusomes and spectrosomes that anchor the spindles of dividing cystoblasts, and at the nuclear rim of the developing oocyte. In contrast to its important role at the central spindle pole body, in none of these cases is it clear that Mud plays an essential role. But the commonalities in its location suggest potential roles for the protein in development of other tissues.
Background learning for robust face recognition

In this paper, we propose a robust face recognition technique based on the principle of eigenfaces. The traditional eigenface recognition (EFR) method works quite well when the input test patterns are cropped faces. However, when confronted with recognizing faces embedded in arbitrary backgrounds, the EFR method fails to discriminate effectively between faces and background patterns, giving rise to many false alarms. In order to improve robustness in the presence of background, we argue in favor of learning the distribution of background patterns. A background space is constructed from the background patterns and this space together with the face space is used for recognizing faces. The proposed method outperforms the traditional EFR technique and gives very good results even on complicated scenes.
Institutional Barriers to Organizational Learning in School Systems: The Power of Silence

The study reported in this article examined the relationship between members of a restructuring network and the members'formal district systems. Using the lens of new institutional theory, the article explores the unintended consequences of changing individual schools outside the context of the district to which each network member belonged. The findings revealed the institutional scripts that disrupted or constrained organizational learning within district systems despite the successful restructuring efforts in individual schools.
Simvastatin Up‐Regulates Annexin A10 That Can Inhibit the Proliferation, Migration, and Invasion in Androgen‐Independent Human Prostate Cancer Cells

Statins have recently been studied for their proapoptotic and antimetastatic effects. However, the exact mechanisms of their anticancer actions remain unclear. Using microarrays, we discovered up‐regulation of annexin A10 (ANXA10) in PC‐3 cells after simvastatin treatment. ANXA10 reportedly has antitumor effects. In this study, we evaluated the effects of simvastatin on ANXA10 signaling in androgen‐independent prostate cancer cells.
A theoretical exploration and model of consumer expectations, post‐purchase affective states and affective behaviour

Through a detailed review of the service quality and (dis)satisfaction literatures, this paper presents a theoretical model exploring the interrelationship between expectations, affective post-purchase states and affective behaviour. Drawing together a comprehensive hierarchy of expectations culled from the service quality literature, the authors seek to apply levels of expectation to specific post-purchase affective states and affective behaviour. The authors argue that consumers have two types of expectation that influence post-purchase affective states: the core or predictive ‘will be’ expectation; and peripheral expectations—that can range from the ideal standard to the minimum tolerable level. By applying the levels-of-expectation approach to the expectation-disconfirmation paradigm, the authors argue that there are four types of post-purchase affective states: delight, satisfaction (or positive indifference), acceptance (or negative indifference) and dissatisfaction. These four states may lead onto affective action—ie varying degrees of complaining or complimenting behaviour. The paper presents 11 propositions relating to expectations and their interrelationship with post-purchase affective states and subsequent consumer behaviour, with the aim of stimulating further scholarly enquiry. The managerial implications of the analysis are also considered. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.
Invasion and Persistence of Infectious Agents in Fragmented Host Populations

One of the important questions in understanding infectious diseases and their prevention and control is how infectious agents can invade and become endemic in a host population. A ubiquitous feature of natural populations is that they are spatially fragmented, resulting in relatively homogeneous local populations inhabiting patches connected by the migration of hosts. Such fragmented population structures are studied extensively with metapopulation models. Being able to define and calculate an indicator for the success of invasion and persistence of an infectious agent is essential for obtaining general qualitative insights into infection dynamics, for the comparison of prevention and control scenarios, and for quantitative insights into specific systems. For homogeneous populations, the basic reproduction ratio plays this role. For metapopulations, defining such an ‘invasion indicator’ is not straightforward. Some indicators have been defined for specific situations, e.g., the household reproduction number . However, these existing indicators often fail to account for host demography and especially host migration. Here we show how to calculate a more broadly applicable indicator for the invasion and persistence of infectious agents in a host metapopulation of equally connected patches, for a wide range of possible epidemiological models. A strong feature of our method is that it explicitly accounts for host demography and host migration. Using a simple compartmental system as an example, we illustrate how can be calculated and expressed in terms of the key determinants of epidemiological dynamics.
Regulatory cell subsets in the control of autoantibody production related to systemic autoimmunity

Dysregulated autoantibody production is responsible for the severe organ damage that occurs in systemic autoimmune diseases. Immune complexes play important roles in the pathogenesis of these diseases as they initiate and maintain the inflammatory cascade, which leads to tissue destruction. Conventional therapy for autoimmune diseases suppresses immunological accelerator in the absence of knowledge of the immunological brake. Application of a physiological regulatory system could be a rational strategy to treat autoimmune diseases. Accumulating evidence has suggested that specialised subsets of B cells and T cells could control autoantibody production. A significant decrease and impaired function of regulatory B cells (Breg) was recently reported in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and a mice model of lupus. In T cells, follicular regulatory T cells and Qa-1 restricted CD8 regulatory T cells (Treg) were identified as the populations that control follicular T helper cell-mediated antibody production. Moreover, other Treg populations might also be involved in the control of autoantibody production. Elucidating the roles of Breg and Treg in the control of antibody production might lead to the development of a new therapeutic approach to antibody-mediated autoimmune disease.
The effect of changes in published secondary school admissions on pupil composition

Data from three school admissions surveys and the National Pupil Database are combined to investigate whether changes to the School Admissions Code appear to have altered the published admissions policies and the social composition of particular schools. We show that the 2003 and 2007 School Admissions Codes appear to have been at least in part responsible for changes in the social composition of pupils at schools with criteria and arrangements that were subsequently deemed inadmissible. Although the average impact is relatively small, the direction of the impact is consistent with the observation that school segregation across England has declined a little at the same time that regulations were tightening. Our regression analysis of changes in individual school compositions is able to show this relationship holds even when changes in neighbourhood composition are accounted for. These measured associations that we identify suggest that, if the differentiation of school intakes is a concern, then regulating admission arrangements does appear to have an impact.
Investigating Diversity and Equality: Methods, Challenges and Implications

This paper sets out the background and key findings from a number of research projects about diversity and equality at a UK university. The works were commissioned as a result of changes in legislation as well as a genuine concern to investigate the issues of inequity and institutional racism within the university. The paper explores the approaches and challenges experienced by an institutional researcher, the key findings and some of the implications for universities who wish to support and foster equitable and diverse institutions.