Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Less-than-Perfect Judges: Evaluating Student Evaluations.

FALL 2010 7 decisions, the gradual democratization of the nation’s campuses, and a developing consumerism in the nation’s students—wrought tension and dissent within the higher education community. These tensions have manifested themselves in the debate over student ratings in different ways, often fixating on notions of validity, but revealing underlying complex challenges to the traditional structures of power and authority informing the changing faculty-undergraduate encounter. Certainly, research about student ratings has been exhaustive over the last 50 years. Several thousand studies have been published, many concerned with issues of validity and reliability of evaluation instruments. Yet, few studies have tackled the issue of student ratings in the context of the relationship between students and faculty and the place of higher education in society. In this article, we examine the Student ratings, 1 first introduced into the college classroom in the late 1920s, have long symbolized the often uneasy relationship between undergraduates and their professors. Originally intended as an impartial and scientific means to gauge teaching performance, by the early 1960s, student ratings had become a site of anxiety and often bitter contest between faculty and students, and between faculty and administrators. Critical forces—such as emerging federal legislation that called for improved teaching in higher education, increasing demands for accountability in higher education, the increasing use of student ratings in personnel and curriculum Less-Than-Perfect Judges: Evaluating Student Evaluations
Cluster-based page segmentation-a fast and precise method for web page pre-processing

Segmenting a web page may be one of initial steps of information retrieval or content classification performed on that page. While there has been an extensive research in this area, the approaches usually focus either on performance or quality of the results. Vision based segmentation is one of the quality focused methods, which are considerably slow. This paper proposes an approach for boosting the performance of vision based algorithms. Our approach is based on concepts of modern web and a very common scenario in which an entire web site is processed at once. In this scenario, a great amount of performance boost can be gained by isomorphic mapping of previous results gathered from pages within the site to other pages on the same site. We provide the results of experiments performed on VIPS, the most common algorithm for page segmentation.
Applying Heat Maps in a Web-Based Collaborative Graph Visualization

The visual analysis of large and complex networks is a challenging task in many fields, such as systems biology or social sciences. Often, various domain experts work together to improve the analysis time or the quality of the analysis results. Collaborative visualization tools can facilitate this process. We propose a new web-based visualization environment which supports distributed, synchronous and asynchronous collaboration for graphs with up to 10,000 nodes and edges. In addition to standard collaboration features like event tracking or synchronizing, our client/server-based system provides visualization and interaction techniques for better navigation, guidance and overview of the overall data set. During asynchronous collaborations, network changes made by specific analysts or even just visited elements are highlighted on demand by heat maps. These heat map representations are user-sensitive in a sense that the current analyst is able to perceive which changes were made by others.
Model-based Bayesian Reinforcement Learning with Tree-based State Aggregation

We describe a step towards model-based Bayesian reinforcement learning in continuous state spaces. Model-based Bayesian RL provides an elegant way of incorporating model uncertainty for trading off between exploration and exploitation. Yet, significant work remains to be done for extending model-based Bayesian RL to continuous state spaces; in this paper, we present one such extension. The key feature of our approach is its search through the space of model structures, thus adapting not only the model parameters but also the structure itself to the problem at hand.
Antimicrobial Potentials of Wild-type Enterococcus spp . from an Extreme Habitat and a Fermented Food – A Retrospective Mini-review

The wild-type enterococcal strains are very well known for the production of bacteriocins active against both grampositive and gram-negative bacteria. But reports on strains belonging to the genus enterococcus showing antifungal activity are relatively less abundant as compared to the bacteriocinogenic Enterococcus spp [45]. We showed in our study the broad-spectrum anti-Candida demonstration of an Enterococcus faecium strain isolated from the penguin rookery of the Antarctic region and anti-Aspergillus activity of E. faecalis recovered from cheddar cheese. Out of 240 isolates screened, one such isolate identified as E. facium (mentioned above)inhibited initially the Candida albicans NCIM 3471 and then six more Candida strains [47]. The partially purified anti-Candida peptide from the E. faecium strain revealed the twelve amino terminal amino acid residues. The analysis of the major twelve amino acid residues from the N-terminus, minor twelve N terminal amino acids residues, and the de novo sequences unravelled the presence and roles of LysinM motif, glycine-proline-glycine, and small stretch of bacteriocin-like motif suspected in the anti-Candida activity respectively [3,4]. Besides this, the indication about the correlation between secreted antigen (SagA/Bb) and the antiCandida activity has been revealed [50,61].
Molecular data and ecological niche modelling reveal the phylogeographic pattern of Cotinus coggygria (Anacardiaceae) in China's warm-temperate zone.

The phylogeography of common and widespread species helps to elucidate the history of local flora and vegetation. In this study, we selected Cotinus coggygria, a species widely distributed in China's warm-temperate zone. One chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) region and ecological niche modelling were used to examine the phylogeographic pattern of C. coggygria. The cpDNA data revealed two phylogeographic groups (Southern and Northern) corresponding to the geographic regions. Divergence time analyses revealed that divergence of the two groups occurred at approximately 147,000 years before the present (BP), which coincided with the formation of the downstream area of the Yellow River, indicating that the Yellow River was a weak phylogeographic divide for C. coggygria. The molecular data and ecological niche modelling also indicated that C. coggyria did not experience population expansion after glaciations. This study thus supports the fact that Pleistocene glacial cycles only slightly affected C. coggygria, which survived in situ and occupied multiple localised glacial refugia during glaciations. This finding is contrary to the hypothesis of large-scale range habitat contraction and retreat into a few main refugia.
A novel spot size convertor for hybrid integrated light sources on photonics-electronics convergence system

We have developed a spot size converter (SSC) with a trident silicon (Si) waveguide for the hybrid integrated light source in a photonics-electronics convergence system. Low loss coupling was achieved with just the simple planar form of a Si waveguide with no use of complicated structures such as vertical tapers or extra dielectric core overlaid on the waveguide. The coupling loss was 2.3 dB and the tolerance of misalignment up to a 1-dB loss increase was about ± 0.9 μm. We also confirmed that the coupling efficiency was quite robust against manufacturing fluctuations of the waveguide width compared with a conventional SSC with an inverse taper waveguide. We were able to fabricate a 52-channel light source with highly uniform output power by using the proposed trident SSC.
Concise Review: Stem Cell Antigen‐1: Expression, Function, and Enigma

Cloned 20 years ago, stem cell antigen‐1 (Sca‐1) is used extensively to enrich for murine hematopoietic stem cells. The realization that many different stem cell types share conserved biochemical pathways has led to a flood of recent research using Sca‐1 as a candidate marker in the search for tissue‐resident and cancer stem cells. Although surprisingly little is still known about its biochemical function, the generation and analysis of knockout mice has begun to shed light on the functions of Sca‐1 in stem and progenitor cells, demonstrating that it is more than a convenient marker for stem cell biologists. This review summarizes the plethora of recent findings utilizing Sca‐1 as a parenchymal stem cell marker and detailing its functional role in stem and progenitor cells and also attempts to explain the lingering mysteries surrounding its biochemical function and human ortholog.
Optimal iterative pricing over social networks

We study the optimal pricing for revenue maximization over social networks in the presence of positive network externalities. In our model, the value of a digital good for a buyer is a function of the set of buyers who have already bought the item. In this setting, a decision to buy an item depends on its price and also on the set of other buyers that have already owned that item. The revenue maximization problem in the context of social networks has been studied by Hartline, Mirrokni, and Sundararajan [4], following the previous line of research on optimal viral marketing over social networks [5,6,7]. We consider the Bayesian setting in which there are some prior knowledge of the probability distribution on the valuations of buyers. In particular, we study two iterative pricing models in which a seller iteratively posts a new price for a digital good (visible to all buyers). In one model, re-pricing of the items are only allowed at a limited rate. For this case, we give a FPTAS for the optimal pricing strategy in the general case. In the second model, we allow very frequent re-pricing of the items. We show that the revenue maximization problem in this case is inapproximable even for simple deterministic valuation functions. In the light of this hardness result, we present constant and logarithmic approximation algorithms when the individual distributions are identical.
Investigations on the Effects of Dietary Essential Oils and Different Husbandry Conditions on the Gut Ecology in Piglets after Weaning

Essential oils (EO) are being considered as possible alternatives to in-feed antibiotic growth promoters in pig nutrition. The effects of an EO mixture consisting of limonene, eugenol and pinene (10.0, 2.0, and 4.8 mg/kg diet, resp.) on gut physiology and ecology were studied in piglets. The experiment was conducted at low (commercial farm) and high hygienic conditions (experimental farm), to elucidate interactions between EO supplementation and husbandry methods. Piglets were weaned at 28 days of age, when they were offered either a control diet (C) or C with EO. Four piglets were sacrificed in each group on day 29, 30, 33 and 39. Digesta from the third distal part of the small intestine and from the colon were sampled and analysed for pH, dry matter, lactic acid, short chain fatty acids and ammonia concentrations. Enterobacteria, enterococci, lactobacilli and yeast counts were obtained by plating. Genomic DNA was extracted from digesta and polymerase chain reaction—denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis was performed. Individual microbial communities were identified at each farm. Age affected the intestinal parameters. No effects of the EO with exception for a significant reduction in colon bacterial diversity at 39 days of age could be recorded at experimental farm.
Activation of human B lymphocytes: frequency of antigen‐specific B cells triggered by alloreactive or by antigen‐specific T cell clones

Human T cell clones specific for tetanus toxoid (TT) or for alloantigens were isolated and expanded in culture using antigen stimulation and soluble growth factors. When stimulated by the specific antigen, the clones were able to proliferate in the absence of exogenous growth factors and to provide help to B cells. The alloreactive and TT‐specific clones were compared for their capacity to help an anti‐TT as well as a polyclonal antibody response. The frequency of the B cells activated to the production of specific antibody was determined by limiting dilution analysis in cultures containing limiting numbers of responding B cells and optimal numbers of cloned T helper cells. In these conditions a single activated B cell was able to produce about 10 ng of antibody. TT‐specific clones, in the presence of low TT concentrations, selectively induced a number of TT‐specific B cells to produce IgG antibody in the absence of a detectable polyclonal B cell activation. On the other hand the alloreactive clones activated higher numbers of TT‐specific B cells as a part of a strong polyspecific B cell activation. In this case the antibody production did not require the presence of TT in culture; furthermore cells producing antibodies of unrelated specificities were also activated in allostimulated cultures. IgG anti‐TT were produced only by immune donors, while IgM anti‐TT were produced by immune and nonimmune donors, providing the B cells were activated by alloreactive clones.
MmWave meshed network with traffic and energy management mechanism

mmWave meshed network is a promising architecture for cost-efficient wireless backhaul of millimeter-wave overlay heterogeneous network (mmWave overlay HetNet). As user distribution in practice is time-variant and spatially non-uniform, mmWave meshed backhaul should be controlled adaptively. This paper proposes a novel method to control mmWave meshed backhaul for efficient operation of mmWave overlay HetNet in dynamic crowd scenario e.g. event venues. Our algorithm is featured by two functionalities, i.e. backhauling route multiplexing for overloaded mmWave small cell base stations (SC-BSs) and mmWave SC-BSs' ON/OFF status switching for underloaded spot. Considering practical user distribution modeled from realistic measurement data, radio backhaul resources should be concentrated on overloaded mmWave SC-BSs. Inversely, underloaded mmWave SC-BSs should be deactivated for saving power. The performance of mmWave meshed backhaul controlled by the proposed algorithm is evaluated by system level simulation. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can cope with the locally intensive traffic and reduce energy consumption.
Spread of invasive plants from roads to river systems in Alaska: a network model

Alaska has relatively few invasive plants, and most of them are found only along the state’s limited road system. One of the most widely distributed invasives in the state, Melilotus alba Medik. , or sweetclover, has been sown both as a forage crop and as a roadside stabilization species. Melilotus has recently been found to have moved from roadsides to the flood plains of at least three glacial rivers. This species has aggressively colonized the lower Stikine River flood plain and occurs there in dense, monospecific stands. It is at an earlier stage of colonization of the Matanuska River and Nenana River flood plains as well. We are developing a network model to examine the spatial relationships among roads, river crossings, and downstream public lands of high conservation significance in interior and south-central Alaska. In 2005 and 2006, we documented the distribution of Melilotus on roadsides and near river crossings in this part of the state; we present these data combined with other records of Melilotus distribution downloaded from the Alaska Exotic Plant Information Clearinghouse database. When considered together, the distribution data and the network model identify certain road-river interfaces as critical control points for preventing the movement of Melilotus toward public land downstream. To illustrate how the model might be used by land managers, results are presented for major crossings upstream of the Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge. When complete, the network model will function as a generally applicable tool to identify the critical control points upstream from land under various ownerships and for any future invasive species that can disperse via roads and river networks in Alaska.
TrkC kinase expression in distinct subsets of cutaneous trigeminal innervation and nonneuronal cells

Neurotrophin‐activated receptor tyrosine kinases (Trks) regulate sensory neuron survival, differentiation, and function. To permanently mark cells that ever express TrkC‐kinase, mice with lacZ and GFP reporters of Cre recombinase activity were crossed with mice having IRES‐cre inserted into the kinase‐containing exon of the TrkC gene. Prenatal reporter expression matched published locations of TrkC‐expression. Postnatally, more trigeminal neurons and types of mystacial pad innervation expressed reporter than immunodetectable TrkC, indicating that some innervation transiently expresses TrkC‐kinase. Reporter‐tagged neurons include all those that immunolabel for TrkC, a majority for TrkB, and a small proportion for TrkA. TrkA neurons expressing TrkC‐reporter range from small to large size and supply well‐defined types of mystacial pad innervation. Virtually all small neurons and C‐fiber innervation requires TrkA to develop, but TrkC‐reporter is present in only a small proportion that uniquely innervates piloneural complexes of guard hairs and inner conical bodies of vibrissa follicle‐sinus complexes. TrkC‐reporter is expressed in nearly all presumptive Aδ innervation, which is all eliminated in TrkA knockouts and partially eliminated in TrkC knockouts. Many types of Aβ‐fiber innervation express TrkC‐reporter including all Merkel, spiny, and circumferentially oriented lanceolate endings, and some reticular and longitudinally oriented lanceolate endings. Only Merkel endings require TrkC to develop and survive, whereas the other endings require TrkA and/or TrkB. Thus, TrkC is required for the existence of some types of innervation that express TrkC, but may have different functions in others. Many types of nonneuronal cells affiliated with hair follicles and blood vessels also express TrkC‐reporter but lack immunodetectable TrkC. J. Comp. Neurol. 480:392–414, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
SPaC: a symbolic pareto calculator

The compositional computation of Pareto points in multi-dimensional optimization problems is an important means to efficiently explore the optimization space. This paper presents a symbolic Pareto calculator, SPaC, for the algebraic computation of multidimensional trade-offs. SPaC uses BDDs as a representation for solution sets and operations on them. The tool can be used in multi-criteria optimization and design-space exploration of embedded systems. The paper describes the design and implementation of Pareto algebra operations, and it shows that BDDs can be used effectively in Pareto optimization.
Baohuoside-1, a Novel Immunosuppressive Molecule, Inhibits Lymphocyte Activation In Vitro and In Vivo

Background. We evaluated the in vitro and in vivo immunosuppressive effects of baohuoside-1 (B1), a novel flavonoid isolated from Epimedium davidii. Methods. Proliferation assay was used to determine the antiproliferative properties on T-cell and B-cell proliferation. Flow cytometry analysis was applied to detect changes of phenotypes on activated cells. Results. B1 inhibits the lymphocyte proliferation activated by polyclonal mitogens and mixed lymphocyte reaction with a 50% inhibitory concentration of low micromolar concentration. Also, B1 suppressed T-cell activation in T cell receptor/CD3-mediated signaling pathways in a dose- and time-dependent manner. The suppression of B1 was not simply a result of a toxic effect and was recovered by withdrawing the drug. B1 down-regulated the expression of some phenotype molecules. In Ca2+-independent or -dependent antigen stimulation, although B1 had different inhibitive patterns on CD69 expression stimulated by phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) or Ca2+ ionophore, it inhibited T-cell proliferation induced by CD3/CD28 or PMA/ionomycin and partially blocked that induced by PMA/CD28. Interestingly, an additive inhibition between B1 and tacrolimus (FK506) was found in the CD69 expression stimulated by PMA/CD28 and PMA/ionomycin. Similarly, this immunosuppression by combination therapy was observed in a heart transplantation model in vivo and might act through an immunosuppressive mechanism different from FK506. Conclusions. B1, whose mechanism of action is not similar to that of FK506, has selectively immunosuppressive effects on T-cell and B-cell activation in vitro and effectively prevents rat heart allograft rejection in vivo.
Palliative Care Volunteers: Why Do They Do It?

Two studies were conducted to examine people's motives for joining a palliative care volunteer program. To generate a pool of reasons for becoming a palliative care volunteer, previous studies of motivations relevant to palliative care were reviewed and interviews were conducted with 15 palliative care volunteers (Study 1). Combining the literature review and interviews, a total of 22 distinct reasons for volunteering were identified and used to create an Inventory of Motivations for Palliative Care Voluntarism (IMPCV). In Study 2, 113 palliative care volunteers responded to the IMPCV. “To help ease the pain of those living with a life-threatening illness” was rated as the most influential reason for becoming a palliative care volunteer. A principal components factor analysis was conducted on the IMPCV. It was decided that four factors adequately represented the items: Leisure, Personal Gain, Altruism, and Civic Responsibility.
Comparative Performance Analysis of DWT- RDWT- Curvelet based Color Image Watermarking Techniques with Extraction using Independent Component Analysis

literatures report about watermarking schemes based on frequency transforms like discrete wavelet transform (DWT), redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) and Curvelet for gray scale images. For extraction, many of the researchers use their own extraction algorithm, which is the inverse of embedding algorithm, mainly based on embedding locations. Hence, this paper proposes robust color image watermarking techniques based on DWT, RDWT and Curvelet transform in RGB color space for copyright protection and data authentication. The proposed embedding technique is based on computation of noise visibility function (NVF), where the strength of watermarking is controlled. These results in watermarks embed at texture & edge areas are stronger than flat areas. For extraction, an intelligent detection technique, namely, fast independent component analysis (FastICA) is used. The features of FastICA are quick convergence, easy to implement and does not need original image for extracting watermark. Performances of the proposed schemes are evaluated in terms of metrics like peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and normalized correlation (NC) values. Robustness of the proposed scheme is validated against various image processing attacks like Gaussian noise, Salt & Pepper noise, blurring, sharpening, rotation, cropping and JPEG compression etc. The comparison analysis reveals that watermarking scheme using curvelet transform in blue plane performs superior than other transforms.
Where is the work of art

The question of transmission in contemporary art is the question of the forms of mediation that constitute post-conceptual art. It is the relation to architecture that mediates the spatialization of the post-conceptual work. This involves an multiplicity of forms of materialization. It is the network of relations between different kinds of materializations that constructs the “space” of each work.