Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Measurement of Educational Inequality: Achievement and Opportunity

Two related measures of educational inequality are proposed: one for educational achievement and another for educational opportunity. The former is the simple variance (or standard deviation) of test scores. Its selection is informed by consideration of two measurement issues that have typically been overlooked in the literature: the implications of the standardization of test scores for inequality indices, and the possible sample selection biases arising from the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) sampling frame. The measure of inequality of educational opportunity is given by the share of the variance in test scores that is explained by pre-determined circumstances. Both measures are computed for the 57 countries in which PISA surveys were conducted in 2006. Inequality of opportunity accounts for up to 35 percent of all disparities in educational achievement. It is greater in (most of) continental Europe and Latin America than in Asia, Scandinavia, and North America. It is uncorrelated with average educational achievement and only weakly negatively correlated with per capita gross domestic product. It correlates negatively with the share of spending in primary schooling, and positively with tracking in secondary schools.
Internet of Things Services for Small Towns

Different from big cities, small towns call for culture preservation in addition to revitalization. IOT could potentially serve this need. In this paper, we propose an IOT architecture, and discuss IOT enabling technologies and IoT services towards this goal. We also shed light on the opportunities and challenges of applying IOT to culture preservation and revitalization of smart towns.
Using the Causal Graph to Enhance Translations to Solve Contingent Planning Problems

Planning with partial observation, an area called contingent planning, is a complex and challenging problem since it requires to keep track of belief states to search for a contingent plan of actions. Recent approaches considers the agent's knowledge about the world to compile a contingent planning problem into a full observable planning problem, described in an epistemic logic language, and then use an efficcient full observable planner to solve the translated problem. In this paper we use the concept of relevance and causality to propose a new translation based in a structure called Causal Graph that can improve the belief tracking task of contingent Planning problems described in a more general planning language, in particular problems envolving actions with uncertainty on its conditional effects.
Olfactory sensory neurons expressing class I odorant receptors converge their axons on an antero‐dorsal domain of the olfactory bulb in the mouse

Vertebrate odorant receptor (OR) genes are divided phylogenetically into two distinct classes: the fish‐like class I and the terrestrial‐specific class II. In the present study, we systematically analysed mouse class I OR genes (42 subfamilies) to elucidate the expression profiles in the olfactory epithelium (OE) and the projection sites of their olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) in the olfactory bulb (OB). In situ hybridization (ISH) revealed that most class I OR genes (36 subfamilies) were expressed in the dorso‐medial zone (zone 1) of the OE. Furthermore, there appeared to be no significant differences in the distributions of OSNs expressing class I genes within zone 1. These results indicate that there is a clear boundary between zone 1 and non‐zone 1 areas in the OE. Some class I ORs are known to possess ligand specificity for aliphatic acids, aldehydes and alcohols. Our ISH analysis has revealed that OSNs expressing the class I ORs in zone 1 tend to converge their axons on a cluster of glomeruli in an antero‐dorsal domain that is assumed to be involved in responses to the aliphatic compounds on the OB.
Impact of Crowdsourced Data Quality on Travel Pattern Estimation

Mobile crowdsensing can provide mobility researchers with fine grained spatio-temporal location data. But crowdsourcing impacts data quality both due to device and OS heterogeneity, and to annotation errors. Additionally, it is often necessary to deal with multimodality, i.e. participants using different travel modes often in the same trip. In this paper, we address how to draw value from a crowdsensed dataset for characterising mobility demand through origin-destination (OD) matrices, highlighting challenges and providing some solutions. First, we identify typical errors in heterogeneous location data, propose and compare methods to automatically improve data quality. Then, we devise a method to detect among 5 transport modes (walk, car, bus, metro, bike) offline a posteriori. We segment trips on stopped periods and propose a random forest model to detect transportation mode per segment using only location data. Our results show that with adequate pre-processing and robust features, an RF classifier is able to achieve accuracy and precision of 85% in trip segments. This is similar to the literature, but our work uses a very heterogeneous crowdsourced trajectory dataset when compared to the others. Finally, we quantify the impact of the model on mulit-modal OD matrices and whole trip characterisation. We can correctly identify used transportation modes accurately, but the precision is impaired by the high likelihood of at least one false positive in the whole trip.
Psychosocial and behavioural interventions in dementia

Purpose of review The purpose of this review is to describe studies concentrating on psychosocial and behavioural interventions for patients with dementia, particularly those published between spring 2003 and spring 2004 and specifically excluding those primarily involving medication. They consist of a variety of nonpharmacological approaches such as interventions for carers and behavioural approaches to the management of symptoms of dementia. In addition, the broader context of the importance of these interventions will be considered. Recent findings Most studies confirm previous observations regarding the negative effects of caregiving on the physical and mental health of carers. Recent findings have also shown that effective interventions for caregivers should be targeted to individual needs and can effectively involve patients themselves in the process. Specific carer interventions to reduce depression and anxiety are of benefit and the effects last longer than just the duration of the intervention. Generally, the quality of research on interventions is improving. Summary There are now a myriad of opportunities to intervene using nonpharmacological approaches, to manage a number of symptoms of dementia and to alleviate the stress on carers. Combining pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions seems an appropriate aspiration for anyone involved in the care of people with dementia.
Research and training environment for digital design and test

An environment directed to e-learning is presented for teaching test generation and fault diagnosis in digital circuits. The environment consists of a set of Java applets for learning basics of test preliminary and of a set of low-cost tools for research oriented training in more advanced topics of test. The tools support university courses on digital electronics, computer hardware, testing and design for testability. They help to learn by hands-on exercises bow to generate tests, how to build self-testing systems, how to analyze the quality of tests or testing hardware and how to localize faults in hardware. The tasks chosen for hands-on training represent simultaneously real research problems, which allow to foster in students critical thinking, problem solving skills and creativity.
Construction of supercharges for the one-dimensional supersymmetric nonlinear sigma model

This paper addresses an issue essential to the study of hidden supersymmetries (meaning here ones that do not close on the Hamiltonian) for one-dimensional non-linear supersymmetric sigma models. The issue relates to ambiguities, due to partial integrations in superspace, both in the actual definition of these supersymmetries and in the Noether definition of the associated supercharges. The unique consistent forms of both these definitions have to be determined simultaneously by a process that adjusts the former definitions so that the associated supercharges do indeed correctly generate them with the aid of the canonical formalism. The paper explains and illustrates these matters and gives some new results.
Long-term use of a left ventricular assist device for end-stage heart failure.

BACKGROUND Implantable left ventricular assist devices have benefited patients with end-stage heart failure as a bridge to cardiac transplantation, but their long-term use for the purpose of enhancing survival and the quality of life has not been evaluated. METHODS We randomly assigned 129 patients with end-stage heart failure who were ineligible for cardiac transplantation to receive a left ventricular assist device (68 patients) or optimal medical management (61). All patients had symptoms of New York Heart Association class IV heart failure. RESULTS Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed a reduction of 48 percent in the risk of death from any cause in the group that received left ventricular assist devices as compared with the medical-therapy group (relative risk, 0.52; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.34 to 0.78; P=0.001). The rates of survival at one year were 52 percent in the device group and 25 percent in the medical-therapy group (P=0.002), and the rates at two years were 23 percent and 8 percent (P=0.09), respectively. The frequency of serious adverse events in the device group was 2.35 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.86 to 2.95) times that in the medical-therapy group, with a predominance of infection, bleeding, and malfunction of the device. The quality of life was significantly improved at one year in the device group. CONCLUSIONS The use of a left ventricular assist device in patients with advanced heart failure resulted in a clinically meaningful survival benefit and an improved quality of life. A left ventricular assist device is an acceptable alternative therapy in selected patients who are not candidates for cardiac transplantation.
[Patient-controlled analgesia in the treatment of postoperative pain in children and adolescents].

OBJECTIVE We aimed to evaluate the efficacy, morphine requirements and side effects in patients managed with patient-controlled analgesia postoperatively. METHODS Eighty-seven patients, 7 to 22 (median 14) years of age, after orthopedic, abdominal or thoracic surgery, were studied retrospectively. All patients had a preset standard continuous morphine infusion of 10 micrograms/kg/h, 20 micrograms/kg bolus dose, 8 min lock-out time and 100 micrograms/kg/h maximal dose. All patients were additionally treated with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Respiratory rate, pain intensity, morphine requirements and nausea/vomiting were evaluated every 3 hours. Pain was assessed using 6-point scale (1-no pain, 6-the worst pain). RESULTS Median time for pain management was 51 h. Median (range) used dose of morphine was 19.9 (4.9-75.2) micrograms/kg/h. Sixty-one percent of the patients had a mean pain score of 1 or 2, 26%--3, 13%--4 or 5. Nausea/vomiting occurred in 78% of cases. Respiratory rate less than 10 breaths per min was observed in 5.7% of patients. No patient required opioid antagonist to treat respiratory depression. CONCLUSIONS In the majority of patients patient-controlled analgesia was effective and used doses of morphine were low. Though nausea/vomiting was the most common side effect, decreased respiratory rate was observed in some patients. Regular patient evaluation for vital signs and side effects is recommended.
Boltzmann Machine for Population-Based Incremental Learning

We propose to apply the Boltzmann machine (BM) to population-based incremental learning (PBIL). We will replace the statistical model used in PBIL, which assumes that the binary variables of the optimisation problem are independent, with that of a BM. From the logarithm of the expectation of the function to maximise, we derive specific learning rules for the BM. These learning rules involve expectations with respect to the distribution of the BM and also to its selected version, in the spirit of PBIL or genetic algorithms. New populations are sampled from the BM using traditional Gibbs sampling. The proposed BM-PBIL algorithm alternates Gibbs sampling, selection, and update of the parameters. We evaluate BM-PBIL with different classes of functions, compare it to the original PBIL, and identify classes for which it is superior to PBIL, in particular functions with jumps and quadratic functions.
A method for the automatic reconstruction of fetal cardiac signals from magnetocardiographic recordings

Fetal magnetocardiography (fMCG) allows monitoring the fetal heart function through algorithms able to retrieve the fetal cardiac signal, but no standardized automatic model has become available so far. In this paper, we describe an automatic method that restores the fetal cardiac trace from fMCG recordings by means of a weighted summation of fetal components separated with independent component analysis (ICA) and identified through dedicated algorithms that analyse the frequency content and temporal structure of each source signal. Multichannel fMCG datasets of 66 healthy and 4 arrhythmic fetuses were used to validate the automatic method with respect to a classical procedure requiring the manual classification of fetal components by an expert investigator. ICA was run with input clusters of different dimensions to simulate various MCG systems. Detection rates, true negative and false positive component categorization, QRS amplitude, standard deviation and signal-to-noise ratio of reconstructed fetal signals, and real and per cent QRS differences between paired fetal traces retrieved automatically and manually were calculated to quantify the performances of the automatic method. Its robustness and reliability, particularly evident with the use of large input clusters, might increase the diagnostic role of fMCG during the prenatal period.
Resection margins in modern rectal cancer surgery

At present, the preferred treatment for rectal cancer is low anterior resection with total mesorectal excision and sphincter preservation. Complete removal of the tumor's lymphatic and vascular pad with free resection margins has led to a reduction in rates of local recurrence and improved disease‐specific survival. In addition to the distal and proximal margins from the tumor edge, for an optimal outcome, it is essential to consider distal mesorectal spread and the circumferential mesorectal margin. J. Surg. Oncol. 2008;98:611–615. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Fixation identification for low-sample-rate mobile eye trackers

This paper presents a novel method of fixation identification for mobile eye trackers. The most significant benefit of our method over the state-of-the-art is that it achieves high accuracy for low-sample-rate devices worn during locomotion. This in turn delivers higher quality datasets for further use in human behaviour research, robotics and the development of guidance aids for the visually impaired. The proposed method employs temporal characteristics of the eye positions combined with statistical visual features extracted using a deep convolutional neural network, inspired by models of the primate visual system, through the fovea and peripheral areas around the eye positions. The results show that the proposed method outperforms existing methods by up to 16 % in terms of classification accuracy.
Tools and techniques for teaching objects first in a Java course

Object-oriented languages have been taught for some time at universities. The most common approach has been to teach those constructs required for imperative programming fmt and to introduce the notion of classes and objects somewhat later in the course. More recently, many educators have been promoting the notion of teaching about classes and objects first. This helps students to adopt the object-oriented paradigm at an early stage and encourages them to focus on the application structure before beginning coding. Most new textbooks have followed such an approach.
Characterization of the Rhesus Monkey CYP3A64 Enzyme: Species Comparisons of CYP3A Substrate Specificity and Kinetics Using Baculovirus-Expressed Recombinant Enzymes

The rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) is a primate species used extensively as a preclinical safety species in drug development. In this report, we describe the cloning, expression, and characterization of CYP3A64 (AY334551), a CYP3A4 homolog expressed in rhesus liver. The deduced amino acid sequence was found to be 93% similar to human CYP3A4, 83% similar to human CYP3A5, and identical to the previously reported cynomolgus monkey CYP3A8 (Komori et al., 1992). The substrate specificity of CYP3A64 for testosterone (0–250 μM), midazolam (0–200 μM), nifedipine (0–200 μM), and 7-benzoxy-4-trifluoromethylcoumarin (0–200 μM) were compared with recombinant enzymes from rat (CYP3A1, CYP3A2), dog (CYP3A12, CYP3A26), rabbit (CYP3A6), and human (CYP3A4, CYP3A5). Immunoinhibition and chemical inhibition of CYP3A64 was demonstrated using the inhibitory monoclonal antibody (MAb) 10-1-1 (anti-3A4) and ketoconazole (0–10 μM). The utility of CYP3A64 to be used as a standard in monkey induction assays was shown and the concentration of CYP3A64 protein in rhesus liver microsomes was estimated to be 72 pmol/mg protein. In summary, these results support the utilization of rhesus monkey CYP3A64 for in vitro drug metabolism studies and provide a more complete understanding of CYP3A substrate specificities and species differences in metabolic capabilities.
Human action recognition based on Pyramid Histogram of Oriented Gradients

Human action recognition has been attracted lots of interest from computer vision researchers due to its various promising applications. In this paper, we employ Pyramid Histogram of Orientation Gradient (PHOG) to characterize human figures for action recognition. Comparing to silhouette-based features, the PHOG descriptor does not require extraction of human silhouettes or contours. Two state-space models, i.e., Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and Conditional Random Field (CRF), are adopted to model the dynamic human movement. The proposed PHOG descriptor and the state-space models with respect to different parameters are tested using a standard dataset. We also testify the robustness of the method with respect to various unconstrained conditions and viewpoints. Promising experimental result demonstrates the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed method.
Within-Site Variation in Feather Stable Hydrogen Isotope (δ2Hf) Values of Boreal Songbirds: Implications for Assignment to Molt Origin

Understanding bird migration and dispersal is important to inform full life-cycle conservation planning. Stable hydrogen isotope ratios from feathers (δ2Hf) can be linked to amount-weighted long-term, growing season precipitation δ2H (δ2Hp) surfaces to create δ2Hf isoscapes for assignment to molt origin. However, transfer functions linking δ2Hp with δ2Hf are influenced by physiological and environmental processes. A better understanding of the causes and consequences of variation in δ2Hf values among individuals and species will improve the predictive ability of geographic assignment tests. We tested for effects of species, land cover, forage substrate, nest substrate, diet composition, body mass, sex, and phylogenetic relatedness on δ2Hf from individuals at least two years old of 21 songbird species captured during the same breeding season at a site in northeastern Alberta, Canada. For four species, we also tested for a year × species interaction effect on δ2Hf. A model including species as single predictor received the most support (AIC weight = 0.74) in explaining variation in δ2Hf. A species-specific variance parameter was part of all best-ranked models, suggesting variation in δ2Hf was not consistent among species. The second best-ranked model included a forage substrate × diet interaction term (AIC weight = 0.16). There was a significant year × species interaction effect on δ2Hf suggesting that interspecific differences in δ2Hf can differ among years. Our results suggest that within- and among-year interspecific variation in δ2Hf is the most important source of variance typically not being explicitly quantified in geographic assignment tests using non-specific transfer functions to convert δ2Hp into δ2Hf. However, this source of variation is consistent with the range of variation from the transfer functions most commonly being propagated in assignment tests of geographic origins for passerines breeding in North America.
Sprogpolitik: So ein Ding müssen wir auch haben

To argue that language policies are subject to the vagaries of fashion may be a slight exaggeration. But language policies have indeed attracted growing interest and been increasingly debated over the last three to four years. During this time many companies and organisations have formulated a language policy, or they are currently in the process of doing so. At the national level several politicians have been complaining that no language policy exists for the Danish language. On the other hand, many journalists and several linguists have been criticising the language policy for which the Danish Language Council is responsible as inappropriate. All these statements may appear rather contradictory. The confusion can, however, partly be accounted for by the prevalence of different definitions of what a language policy is and what it involves. In this contribution we will suggest ways of resolving the terminological problems and also discuss some concrete Danish proposals for the part of language policy that we have termed ‘specific language policy’.
iCanCope with Pain™: User-centred design of a web- and mobile-based self-management program for youth with chronic pain based on identified health care needs

Chronic pain self-management involves providing patients with knowledge, coping strategies and social support that help them to manage their pain. This type of intervention has been shown to be useful in treating chronic pain; however, many eligible chronic pain patients never receive such treatment due to limited accessibility and high cost. The use of Internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy has the potential to change this. In this study, the authors report their progress in the development of an Internet- and smartphone-based application for chronic pain self-management.
Quality of life in HIV-infected individuals receiving antiretroviral therapy is related to adherence

This study assesses changes in quality of life (QoL) over time among HIV-infected individuals receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) and evaluates how this relates to ART adherence. Prospective, longitudinal data were examined from 1050 participants in two large, randomized, multi-centre antiretroviral clinical trials. QoL was assessed by the SF-12; adherence by the Terry Beirn Community Programs for Clinical Research on AIDS Antiretroviral Medication Self-report. Participants included 20% women, 53% African Americans, 16% Latinos; mean age was 39 years; mean baseline CD4+ cell count 230 cells/mm3; 89% were ART-naïve at entry. Baseline physical and mental health summary QoL scores were 45.4 and 42.9, comparable to scores reported in other advanced HIV populations. Significant improvements in mean QoL scores were seen for the group as a whole after 1 to 4 months on new ART regimens, and persisted for 12 months. Participants reporting 100% ART adherence achieved significantly higher QoL scores at 12 months compared to those with poorer adherence, particularly if 100% adherence was consistent (p<0.001). Those with at least 80% ART adherence had smaller gains in QoL at 12 months when compared to baseline, while those with <80% adherence had worsening of QoL. In this analysis, ART adherence was associated with improved QoL, particularly if adherence was sustained.