Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accountability, Standards, and the Growing Achievement Gap: Lessons from the Past Half‐Century

The rise of accountability policies during the early 1990s coincided with an increase in the achievement gap between white and minority students, reversing decades of steady improvement in outcome equity. This article explores the policies that helped to reduce the achievement gap before 1990, the effects of the subsequent shift toward accountability, and what can be learned from past successes to guide the future development of accountability systems. An extensive review of research suggests that pre‐1990s reductions in the achievement gap occurred because minority students were exposed to greater resources and academic content. We find little evidence that most forms of accountability have placed any downward pressure on the achievement gap, suggesting that the upward trend in the gap during the 1990s may be more than a coincidence. The few forms of accountability that have apparently helped to improve equity, especially promotion‐graduation exams for students, have in common with past successful policies the effect of increasing student exposure to resources and/or content. This suggests that accountability can help to improve educational equity but that such a change must be based on some basic assumptions that are inconsistent with much of the current reform movement. Specifically, A Nation at Risk has important lessons for No Child Left Behind and state‐level accountability programs.
#Funeral and Instagram: death, social media, and platform vernacular

This paper presents findings from a study of Instagram use and funerary practices that analysed photographs shared on public profiles tagged with ‘#funeral’. We found that the majority of images uploaded with the hashtag #funeral often communicated a person's emotional circumstances and affective context, and allowed them to reposition their funeral experience amongst wider networks of acquaintances, friends, and family. We argue that photo-sharing through Instagram echoes broader shifts in commemorative and memorialization practices, moving away from formal and institutionalized rituals to informal and personalized, vernacular practices. Finally, we consider how Instagram's ‘platform vernacular’ unfolds in relation to traditions and contexts of death, mourning, and memorialization. This research contributes to a broader understanding of how platform vernaculars are shaped through the logics of architecture and use. This research also directly contributes to the understanding of death and digital media by examining how social media is being mobilized in relation to death, the differences that different media platforms make, and the ways social media are increasingly entwined with the places, events, and rituals of mourning.
Creativity, Intentionality and the Conscious/Unconscious Distinction: A Neural Theory

I begin with a simple question: how do the neural mechanisms of thinking empower us to have novel thoughts? I survey possible neural bases of ideas and investigate the possibility that new ideas form frequently but subconsciously, perhaps because of random occurrences in the brain. Only some of these ideas rise into consciousness, however. We become aware of the 'good' ideas because their neural foundations are more stable than those of poor or meaningless ideas. This view entails hypothesizing that the basis of conscious awareness is the temporal persistence or recurrence of patterns of activity in the brain. The theory fits well with recent thinking on the philosophical issues of intentionality (in that good ideas are the most meaningful) and qualia and is consistent with some recent neural theories of consciousness.
ZUR THEORIE SPRACHLICHEN WANDELS

Bezüglich einer Theorie des sprachlichen Wandels besteht in der sprachwissenschaftlichen Forschung eine bemerkenswerte Lücke. Obwohl Linguisten heutzutage meist eher zum Vorwurf gemacht wird, zu theorielastig zu sein, kann Coseriu gegen Ende seines Buches „Synchronie, Diachronie und Geschichte" die offenbar immer noch gültige lapidare Feststellung treffen „Niemand weiß genau, wie die Sprachen sich wandeln"; und das, nachdem Linguisten eines ganzen Jahrhunderts sich im wesentlichen Problemen gewidmet hatten, die um diese Frage kreisten. Dieses bis heute andauernde theoretische Defizit hängt mit den Fragen zusammen, die die Linguisten gestellt haben, und mit denen, die sie nicht gestellt haben. Denn "our questions fix the limits of our answers", und die Grenzen unserer Fragen sind abgesteckt durch den Sprachbegriff, der ihnen implizit oder explizit zugrunde liegt. Nun fielen die Antworten auf die Frage, was die Sprache denn für ein Ding sei, im Laufe der letzten anderthalb Jahrhunderte durchaus nicht einmütig aus; aber die meisten sind sich darin einig gewesen, daß sie ein „Ding" sei. Hermann Pauls Warnung, „durch Hypostasierung [. ] das wahre Wesen der Vorgänge [zu] verdecken", zeitigte keine nachhaltige Wirkung. Ich möchte in diesem Aufsatz dreierlei zeigen: (i) wie durch sprachtheoretische Hypostasierungen und wissenschaftstheoretische Dogmen das Stellen beantwortbarer Fragen und somit die
Paradoxic effects of metformin on endothelial cells and angiogenesis

The biguanide metformin is used in type 2 diabetes management and has gained significant attention as a potential cancer preventive agent. Angioprevention represents a mechanism of chemoprevention, yet conflicting data concerning the antiangiogenic action of metformin have emerged. Here, we clarify some of the contradictory effects of metformin on endothelial cells and angiogenesis, using in vitro and in vivo assays combined with transcriptomic and protein array approaches. Metformin inhibits formation of capillary-like networks by endothelial cells; this effect is partially dependent on the energy sensor adenosine-monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) as shown by small interfering RNA knockdown. Gene expression profiling of human umbilical vein endothelial cells revealed a paradoxical modulation of several angiogenesis-associated genes and proteins by metformin, with short-term induction of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), cyclooxygenase 2 and CXC chemokine receptor 4 at the messenger RNA level and downregulation of ADAMTS1. Antibody array analysis shows an essentially opposite regulation of numerous angiogenesis-associated proteins in endothelial and breast cancer cells including interleukin-8, angiogenin and TIMP-1, as well as selective regulation of angiopioetin-1, -2, endoglin and others. Endothelial cell production of the cytochrome P450 member CYP1B1 is upregulated by tumor cell supernatants in an AMPK-dependent manner, metformin blocks this effect. Metformin inhibits VEGF-dependent activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2, and the inhibition of AMPK activity abrogates this event. Metformin hinders angiogenesis in matrigel pellets in vivo, prevents the microvessel density increase observed in obese mice on a high-fat diet, downregulating the number of white adipose tissue endothelial precursor cells. Our data show that metformin has an antiangiogenic activity in vitro and in vivo associated with a contradictory short-term enhancement of pro-angiogenic mediators, as well as with a differential regulation in endothelial and breast cancer cells.
433 MHz implantable wireless stimulation of spinal nerves

This paper presents a implantable wireless microsystem concept for operation in the 433 MHz ISM band. The proposed microsystem is composed by two independent subsystems: the electrostimulation and the radio-frequency (RF) subsystems. The electrostimulation part is a silicon box with groves to pass the nerves to be stimulated. The cover of the silicon box contains electrodes for electrical contacting with the nerves. Wafer-level packaging (WLP) techniques will allow the joining of the RF and the electrostimulation subsystems. The target of this implantable microsystem is for RF reception at 433 MHz of user commands to activate the micturition function and the erection (on males) patients. The expected microsystem area will be of 5×5mm2.
The impact of learning opportunities and decision authority on occupational health

In an investigation of 418 employees in the Norwegian Postal Service, employees with high learning opportunities and high decision authority were found to be better off on psychological functioning, health and organizational outcome variables than employees with low scores on these variables. Decision authority and learning opportunities had specific and independent impact on subjective health, psychological functioning, coping style and organizational outcome variables. There were, however, also interaction effects between demands, learning opportunities, and decision authority on subjective health. Learning opportunities and decision authority were operationalized with a questionnaire, supplemented with questions on the opportunities to learn skills beyond the present job situation. It is suggested that this is a particularly important dimension for coping with the present day rapid changes in working life, where the objective for many workers will be to broaden their repertoire and competence to increa.
Estimation of time-to-collision maps from first order motion models and normal flows

Addresses the problem of estimating time-to-collision maps involving all the objects in relative motion with respect to the camera. The approach only takes into account normal flows. Moreover the authors prove that first-order visual motion models are sufficient to obtain time-to-collision. Experiments have been carried out on real images to validate the performance of the method. <<ETX>>
The Influence of Qualifications on Women's Work Histories, Employment Status and Earnings at Age 33

This paper examines the relationship between women's qualifications and their labour-market participation up to the age of 33 for a cohort of women born in Great Britain in one week of March 1958. The period of the life-cycle on which the analysis focuses is one during which many women are attempting to juggle the competing demands of young children and employment. In Britain, with very limited institutional support for retaining employment during family formation, we examine the role which occupationally specific qualifications exert in helping women to return to paid employment. The second part of the paper focuses on the occupational attainment of women at age 33, operationalized using log hourly earnings. The earnings equations are corrected for possible selectivity bias into employment. The paper makes an important theoretical distinction between occupationally specific and non-occupational qualifications. We argue that, for women, occupational qualifications are associated with greater attachment to the labour-market following the birth of children. By including work history variables in the earnings equation we are also able to examine the consequences for women's wages of having time out of the labour market
STATISTICAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE STEROID HYPERTENSIVE RESPONSE IN THE CLINICALLY NORMAL EYE. I. THE DEMONSTRATION OF THREE LEVELS OF RESPONSE.

A hypothesis has been proposed to explain on a genetic basis the difference in magnitude between the response of intraocular pressure and fluid dynamics in the normal eye and that in the eye with openangle glaucoma following the topical application of certain corticoids. " The hypothesis considers open-angle glaucoma to be a heritable trait and to represent the homozygous recessive state with a frequency of 4 per cent. The heterozygous state will then have a frequency of 32 per cent and the homozygous dominant 64 per
Behavioral / Systems / Cognitive Functional Significance of Nonspatial Information in Monkey Lateral Intraparietal Area

Although the parietal cortex is traditionally associated with spatial perception and motor planning, recent evidence shows that neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) carry both spatial and nonspatial signals. The functional significance of the nonspatial information in the parietal cortex is not understood. To address this question, we tested the effect of unilateral reversible inactivation of LIP on three behavioral tasks known to evoke nonspatial responses. Each task included a spatial component (target selection in the hemifield contralateral or ipsilateral to the inactivation) and a nonspatial component, namely limb motor planning, the estimation of elapsed time, and reward-based decisions. Although inactivation reliably impaired performance on all tasks, the deficits were spatially specific (restricted to contralateral target locations), and there were no effects on nonspatial aspects on performance. This suggests that modulatory nonspatial signals in LIP represent feedback about computations performed elsewhere rather than a primary role of LIP in these computations.
Characterization and modeling of hygroscopic swelling and its impact on failures of a flip chip package with no-flow underfill

Moisture plays an important role in the integrity and reliability of plastic electronic packaging. While the basic procedures for characterizing the hygroscopic swelling properties has been detailed in a number of papers, the characterization of packaging materials presents unique challenges that are not adequately addressed in these papers. One of those challenges is to investigate the impact of non-uniform moisture distribution across the specimen using currently available metrologies. In this paper, an analytical coefficient of hygroscopic swelling was derived based on three dimensional actual moisture distribution using diffusion law and the corresponding hygroscopic deformation. The mathematical formulation was then transformed to analyze the experimental data to obtain the accurate material property of hygroscopic swelling. The theoretical predication showed a remarkable agreement with the experiment results. Detailed discussions are given on the effect of test specimen aspect ratio, diffusivity, and time range in collecting the test data. A practical guideline is proposed in conducting the experiments. Based on the accurate coefficient of hygroscopic swelling, the second part of this paper assessed the reliability of a flip-chip ball grid array package with no-flow underfill under the pressure cooker test (PCT) conditions. Finite element modeling implementation was used to analyze the moisture distribution, hygroscopic swelling behavior, and thermomechanical stress. The magnitude of tensile hygroswelling stress acting on UBM is found to be greater than the compressive thermal stress, and may cause the UBM opening failure during the PCT. Finite element results give an insight of the failure mechanism associated with moisture absorption
The Civil Examination System in Late Imperial China, 1400–1900

Scholars often contend that civil examinations were what made imperial China a political meritocracy. They point to the examination system to show that the selection process served more as a common training program for literati than as a gate-keeper to keep non-elites out. Despite the symbiotic relations between the court and its literati, the emperor played the final card in the selection process. The asymmetrical relations between the throne and its elites nevertheless empowered elites to seek upward mobility as scholar-officials through the system. But true social mobility, peasants becoming officials, was never the goal of state policy in late imperial China; a modest level of social circulation was an unexpected consequence of the meritocratic civil service. Moreover, the merit-based bureaucracy never broke free of its dependence on an authoritarian imperial system. A modern political system might be more compatible with meritocracy, however. One of the unintended consequences of the civil examinations was creation of classically literate men (and women), who used their linguistic talents for a variety of non-official purposes, from literati physicians to local pettifoggers, from fiction-writers to examination essay teachers, from Buddhist and Daoist monks to mothers and daughters. If there was much social mobility, i.e., the opportunity for members of the lower classes to rise in the social hierarchy, it was likely here. Rather than “social mobility,” this phenomenon might be better described as a healthy “circulation” of lower and upper elites when compared to aristocratic Europe and Japan.
Disambiguating Complex Visual Information: Towards Communication of Personal Views of a Scene

Two experiments on the perception and eye-movement scanning of a set of six overtly ambiguous pictures are reported. In the first experiment it was shown that specific perceptual interpretations of an ambiguous picture usually correlate with parameters of the gaze-position distributions. In the second experiment these distributions were used for an image processing of initial pictures in such a way that in regions which attracted less fixations the brightness of all elements was lowered. The preprocessed pictures were then shown to a group of 150 naïve subjects for an identification. The results of this experiment demonstrated that in four out of six pictures it was possible to influence perception of other persons in the predicted way, ie to shift spontaneous reports of naïve subjects in the direction of interpretations that accompanied gaze-position data used for the preprocessing of initial pictures. Possible reasons for a failure of such a communication of personal views in two cases are also discussed.
A hardware implementation of a biological neural system for target localization

The optical axes in an array of photoreceptors in the eyes of mantis shrimps have a particular skewing pattern that provides the animal with a monocular distance evaluation. A hardware (HW) device for target recognition was built based on the mathematical model of the biological visual system. The pattern of inputs was simulated by an array of glass fibers connected to phototransistors. In the biological system inputs are picked up by an integrating nerve fiber, in the HW model by an RC network with compartmental threshold devices. The network state is read by a host PC through an array of threshold comparators. The output consists of pulse patterns that can be generated either by a simulation program or in the HW itself. The system can be used as a selective distance/motion detector and can be employed in several applications involving target detection or obstacle avoidance.
A Study of Image Segmentation and Edge Detection Techniques

—Image segmentation is the key behind image understanding. Image segmentation is one of the most important steps leading to the analysis of processed image data. It is the prime area of research in computer vision. A number of image segmentation techniques are available ,but there is no one single technique that is suitable to all the applications . Hence researches select the techniques as per the application or combine more than one techniques as per the requirement of the application. In this paper we have discussed about some image segmentation techniques like edge based, region based and integrated techniques and explains in brief the edge based techniques and their evaluation. This paper focuses on edge based techniques and their evaluation.
Maternal perspectives on postpartum return to the workplace.

OBJECTIVE To describe maternal perceptions about postpartum return to the workplace. DESIGN AND SETTING The research framework was McCubbin and McCubbin's Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation. Employed, postpartum women, who resided in six different states, were recruited from day care and primary care settings to participate in this descriptive study. PARTICIPANTS Seventy-four employed, married women, who returned to the workplace within one year after childbirth. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE As part of a larger study, perceptions about combining multiple roles after return to the workplace are the focus for this report. RESULTS Participants responded to open-ended questions about their return to the workplace during the first months after giving birth. Content analysis of those responses resulted in two major categories, Resiliency Challenges: Negative Aspects (role conflict/overload, family stress, family/child issues, finances, psychosocial issues) and Resiliency Building: Positive Aspects (social support, maternal role satisfaction, positive adaptation, career role satisfaction). CONCLUSIONS The data support the premise that employed women view returning to the workforce as having more challenges than they expected because the experience was viewed as being mostly negative. Preparing for return to the workplace is an important, but neglected, topic that needs to be addressed and defined more clearly in the literature. Therefore, future research is needed to identify resources and interventions that will help women experience fewer challenges associated with postpartum employment.
Management of the complications of BPH/BOO

Most men will develop histological BPH if they live long enough. Approximately, half will develop benign prostatic enlargement (BPE) and about half of these will get BOO with high bladder pressures and low flow, this in turn leads to detrusor wall hypertrophy. Many of these men will only have lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) but a significant number will also suffer the other complications of BPH. These include urinary retention (acute and chronic), haematuria, urinary tract infection, bladder stones, bladder wall damage, renal dysfunction, incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Recognition of the complications of BPH/BOO early allows more effective management of these complications. This is particularly important for the more serious urinary infections and also for high-pressure chronic retention (HPCR). Complications of LUTS/BPH are very rare in clinical trials because of their strict inclusion and exclusion criteria but are more common in real life practice.
The When, the How and the Why of Mathematical Expression in the History of Economic Analysis

In writings about the history of the use of mathematical expression in economics, there seems to be a conviction that the movement towards its current flowering was cumulative, inevitable, and indeed, natural. While, such notions are widely held among practicing economists, I want to argue that they are not historically valid. The deployment of mathematical expression in economic discourse enjoyed neither an inexorable nor unhindered progress, but rather was characterized by two primary ruptures in the history of economic thought, episodes marking the inflection points in the rise of mathematical discourse. The main reason for such a disjointed narrative is that, in the evolution of economic thought, most of the participants were not convinced that the subject matter intrinsically demanded mathematical expression, while those so enamored experienced great difficulty in creating a community which could agree upon a formalism which was thought to be well-suited to economic issues.
RFID at UHF Frequencies: The Passive Transponder Frontend Approach

In order to improve the operational reliability of passive backscattering RFID (radio frequency identification) transponders, the design of low-loss integrated circuits and the implementation of novel concepts for efficient energy scavenging are an emerging task. This article deals with general considerations regarding self-sustaining transponder devices using the RF power rectification approach and the backscatter modulation technique. We present important fundamentals and limitations of the passive integrated RF frontend architecture.