SIRIS-Lab/unlabelled-sti-corpus huggingface dataset:
Micro-, meso-, and macro-level determinants of educational inequalities: an interdisciplinary approach

Governments across the world recognize the right of the child to education on the basis of equal opportunity. Education shall allow children to develop their talents, abilities, and personality, and the principle of equal opportunity shall guarantee the eradication of any kind of discrimination. Accordingly, in a meritocratic system, educational outcomes should be directly related to individual merit. However, research shows that ascriptive (‘non-merit’) characteristics such as social origin also play a role in shaping educational outcomes. For instance, across OECD countries, no more than one out of five students from families with a low educational background attains a degree in tertiary education, as opposed to two thirds of students from families with at least one parent with tertiary education. These disparities are often considered as a measure of inequality of opportunity and therefore deserve attention from both scientists and policymakers. To date, despite an increasing body of knowledge on educational inequalities, only very little research exists on additive and interactive effects of micro-, meso-, and macro-level characteristics on educational inequalities. Against this background, the proposed research project shall use an interdisciplinary analytic framework to assess how micro-level psychological characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy and motivation), meso-level (family and school) characteristics, and macro-level characteristics (educational policies and wider societal contexts) affect social inequalities in education, and whether their distinct combinations shape inequalities. Data will be derived from standardized cross-national surveys (PISA, TIMSS) as well as from longitudinal cohort studies (e.g., BCS70, MCS, YDS). A variety of state-of-the-art research methods will be employed, including multilevel analysis and growth curve modeling, to generate scientific evidence and extend theory on major determinants of social disparities in education.
Functionalized Nanoscale Micelles with Brain Targeting Ability and Intercellular Microenvironment Biosensitivity for Anti-Intracranial Infection Applications

Due to complication factors such as blood-brain barrier (BBB), integrating high efficiency of brain target ability with specific cargo releasing into one nanocarrier seems more important. A brain targeting nanoscale system is developed using dehydroascorbic acid (DHA) as targeting moiety. DHA has high affinity with GLUT1 on BBB. More importantly, the GLUT1 transportation of DHA represents a "one-way" accumulative priority from blood into brain. The artificial micelles are fabricated by a disulfide linkage, forming a bio-responsive inner barrier, which can maintain micelles highly stable in circulation and shield the leakage of entrapped drug before reaching the targeting cells. The designed micelles can cross BBB and be further internalized by brain cells. Once within the cells, the drug release can be triggered by high intracellular level of glutathione (GSH). Itraconazole (ITZ) is selected as the model drug because of its poor brain permeability and low stability in blood. It demonstrates that the functionalized nanoscale micelles can achieve highly effective direct drug delivery to targeting site. Based on the markedly increased stability in blood circulation and improved brain delivery efficiency of ITZ, DHA-modified micelles show highly effective in anti-intracranial infection. Therefore, this smart nanodevice shows a promising application for the treatment of brain diseases.
Development of internal reference material to control the quality of outputs of electromaterial recycling products

The aim of the project is to develop a reference material for the control of chemical analysis of metal concentrates. This material will be used to check the relevance of degradation techniques, analytical procedures and follow-up results, as well as commercial certified reference materials, in monitoring the quality of production and at the same time for checking the accuracy of data generated in the laboratories of business partners. Ref. material should better reflect composition of composites than commercial reference materials intended for metallurgy. a.
Atlas of renaissance antiquarianism

ATRA - Atlas of Renaissance Antiquarianism is a digital system that will map the circulation of antiquarian learning in sixteenth-century Europe. Its purpose is to contribute to the promotion of new knowledge on antiquarian studies in the Renaissance and demonstrate how the antiquarian approach – that based the growth of thought on documented sources and empirical evidence – played a primary role in the evolution of the entire cultural/intellectual life of Early Modern times. The main intent is to allow the interconnection of data that otherwise would probably never come into contact and to bring to the surface issues not yet bridled in rigid classifications. This will enable the discovery of new cultural itineraries and convergences in Renaissance scholarship; trace the paths that led to parallel or independent ideas; and uncover new trends of thought that can help us better understand the evolution of European civilization and spirit. 
Innovative and revolutionary interpretative pathways will come to light, conferring a renewed awareness of the concept of Renaissance antiquarianism and offering to the entire academic community further instruments to investigate the History of Ideas. 
This project is essential for Acciarino’s personal career growth and for the global development of this field of study. Thanks to this training and to his entire course of studies that has allowed him to grow as a researcher and as an academic scholar at a European level, he will also be able to cooperate with cutting-edge institutions of excellence for multidisciplinary research in Renaissance studies and develop competencies in digital humanities that will render his professional profile technologically up-to-date and more competitive.
Through the Renaissance network created between UNIVE and University of Toronto, dialogue, research and innovation will gradually grow and become a guiding light for the entire academic community.
Pathogen surveillance in wild bottlenose dolphins Tursiops truncatus

The number and prevalence of diseases is rapidly increasing in the marine ecosystem. Although there is an increase in the number of marine diseases observed world-wide, current understanding of the pathogens associated with marine mammals is limited. An important need exists to develop and apply platforms for rapid detection and characterization of pathogenic agents to assess, prevent and respond to disease outbreaks. In this study, a broad-spectrum molecular detection technology capable of detecting all sequenced microbial organisms, the Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array, was used to assess the microbial agents that could be associated with wild Atlantic dolphins. Blowhole, gastric, and fecal samples from 8 bottlenose dolphins were collected in Charleston, SC, as part of the dolphin assessment effort. The array detected various microbial agents from the dolphin samples. Clostridium perfringens was most prevalent in the samples surveyed using the microarray. This pathogen was also detected using microbiological culture techniques. Additionally, Campylobacter sp., Staphylococcus sp., Erwinia amylovora, Helicobacter pylori, and Frankia sp. were also detected in more than one dolphin using the microarray, but not in culture. This study provides the first survey of pathogens associated with 3 tissue types in dolphins using a broad-spectrum microbial detection microarray and expands insight on the microbial community profile in dolphins.
Lack of association between deficient mismatch repair expression and outcome in endometrial carcinomas of the endometrioid type

Endometrial carcinomas of the endometrioid type (EEC) are associated with a good prognosis. However, about 20% of them recur and new prognostic markers are needed. Microsatellite instability (MSI), associated with mismatch repair (MMR) deficiency, is a frequent alteration in EECs that has been associated with prognosis. However, its prognostic impact on EECs remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to clarify the relationship between MMR deficiency and outcome in a large cohort of well classified EECs.A total of 212 EEC samples were analyzed by immunohistochemistry for the MMR genes MLH-1, MSH-2, MSH-6 and PMS-2. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and log-rank tests were performed to study the prognostic significance of dMMR taking into account clinical and pathological parameters.We observed no association between MMR deficiency and OS or PFS in our 212 EEC patients (p-value=0.6565 and 0.4380, respectively). When we performed the analysis in different FIGO-stage groups, we did not find association between MMR and OS or PFS in stages I, I/II or III/IV. When we analyzed the specific group of patients with lymphatic invasion separately, MMR expression was not associated with OS or PFS either.MMR deficiency does not seem to be a good prognostic marker in endometrioid type endometrial carcinomas.
METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR RESOLUTION INDEPENDENT IMAGE COLLABORATION

An image collaboration system conducts resolution independent image collaboration among a host computer and participating client computers. The subject of the image collaboration involves at least one source image. The source image is transformed into a hierarchical representation, such that each level of the hierarchical representation is sufficient to reconstruct the source image at a given resolution. The host computer displays, at a first resolution, an image based on one or more of the source images. To conduct the resolution independent image collaboration, the host computer generates a resolution independent description of the image, which describes the first display image relative to the source image, and broadcasts the resolution independent description of the image to the participating clients. In response, the participating clients generate an image from the resolution independent description of the image at the host computer at a resolution sufficient for display at the participating clients. Resolution independent image collaboration for use in a medical informatics system is also disclosed.
Ultrasonically improved galvanochemical technology for the remediation of industrial wastewater

Two general methodologies adopted for the decontamination of industrial wastewater containing oil and metal ions are flocculation and coagulation. Both methods require the addition of chemicals and in the case of electrocoagulation the additional use of electrical power. Another methodology that was developed in Russia some years ago involves the production of Fe2O3 particles as coagulants by a galvanochemical reaction between iron and coke. Both of these materials are inexpensive and generally available in bulk. Ultrasonic processing of the particles generated in this reaction reduces the particle size of the Fe2O3 particles and provides surface cleaning making them more effective. Trials have proved their efficiency for the decontamination of wastewater made up in a laboratory and real wastewater from a carriage cleaning station on the St. Petersburg Metro. A mathematical model for the process has been developed.
LOW PRESSURE STEAM TURBINE INCLUDING PIVOTABLE NOZZLE

A low pressure steam turbine is disclosed including a rotor having: a rotor body; and a plurality of bucket stages disposed axially along the rotor body, the plurality of bucket stages including a last bucket stage; and a nozzle assembly at least partially surrounding the rotor, the nozzle assembly including a plurality of nozzle stages corresponding to the plurality of bucket stages, wherein a nozzle in a nozzle stage axially upstream of the last bucket stage is adjustable to modify a fluid flow within the last bucket stage during operation of the low pressure steam turbine.
On the Design and Analysis of Incentive Mechanisms in Network Science

Title of dissertation: ON THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF INCENTIVE MECHANISMS IN NETWORK SCIENCE Yang Gao, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Dissertation directed by: Professor K. J. Ray Liu Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering With the rapid development of communication, computing and signal processing technologies, the last decade has witnessed a proliferation of emerging networks and systems, examples of which can be found in a wide range of domains from online social networks like Facebook or Twitter to crowdsourcing sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk or Topcoder; to online question and answering (QA all the way to new paradigms of traditional systems like cooperative communication networks and smart grid. Different from tradition networks and systems where uses are mandated by fixed and predetermined rules, users in these emerging networks have the ability to make intelligent decisions and their interactions are self-enforcing. Therefore, to achieve better system-wide performance, it is important to design effective incentive mechanisms to stimulate desired user behaviors. This dissertation contributes to the study of incentive mechanisms by developing game-theoretic frameworks to formally analyze strategic user behaviors in a network and systematically design incentive mechanisms to achieve a wide range of system objectives. In this dissertation, we first consider cooperative communication networks and propose a reputation based incentive mechanism to enforce cooperation among selfinterested users. We analyze the proposed mechanism using indirect reciprocity game and theoretically demonstrate the effectiveness of reputation in cooperation stimulation. Second, we propose a contract-based mechanism to incentivize a large group of self-interested electric vehicles that have various preferences to act coordinately to provide ancillary services to the power grid. We derive the optimal contract that maximizes the system designer’s profits and propose an online learning algorithm to effectively learn the optimal contract. Third, we study the quality control problem for microtask crowdsourcing from the perspective of incentives. After analyzing two widely adopted incentive mechanisms and showing their limitations, we propose a cost-effective incentive mechanism that can be employed to obtain high quality solutions from self-interested workers and ensure the budget constraint of requesters at the same time. Finally, we consider social computing systems where the value is created by voluntary user contributions and understanding how user participate is of key importance. We develop a game-theoretic framework to formally analyze the sequential decision makings of strategic users under the presence of complex externality. It is shown that our analysis is consistent with observations made from real-word user behavior data and can be applied to guide the design of incentive mechanisms in practice. ON THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF INCENTIVE MECHANISMS IN NETWORK SCIENCE
The Saito–Kurokawa lifting and Darmon points

Let $E_{/_\Q}$ be an elliptic curve of conductor $Np$ with $p\nmid N$ and let $f$ be its associated newform of weight 2. Denote by $f_\infty$ the $p$-adic Hida family passing though $f$, and by $F_\infty$ its $\Lambda$-adic Saito-Kurokawa lift. The $p$-adic family $F_\infty$ of Siegel modular forms admits a formal Fourier expansion, from which we can define a family of normalized Fourier coefficients $\{\widetilde A_T(k)\}_T$ indexed by positive definite symmetric half-integral matrices $T$ of size $2\times 2$. We relate explicitly certain global points on $E$ (coming from the theory of Stark-Heegner points) with the values of these Fourier coefficients and of their $p$-adic derivatives, evaluated at weight $k=2$.
Direct interspecies electron transfer in advanced anaerobic digestion system for gaseous transport biofuel production

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been widely applied to produce biogas through complex communities of syntrophic bacteria and methanogenic archaea. However, AD can suffer from the inefficiency of biogas production, which fundamentally arises from the low efficiency of mediated interspecies electron transfer (MIET) via hydrogen between bacteria and archaea. Dr Richen Lin proposes an advanced AD-based circular economy system by introducing conductive materials (such as biocompatible graphene nanomaterial and digestate derived pyrochar) for third generation gaseous transport biofuel production from algae feedstock. The proposal will particularly explore the mechanism of efficient direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) between bacteria and methanogens in the presence of conductive materials. The biomethane production rate and total energy recovery in the proposed system are expected to be enhanced by 20-40% as compared to existing AD technology. The goal will be achieved by the following research objectives: 1) Theoretically compare the efficiencies of MIET and DIET in AD; 2) Develop optimal strategies to stimulate DIET and improve biogas production from algae; 3) Outline a future circular economy system by introducing pyrochar into AD. Dr Lin has a strong record of publications (26 peer review journal articles) in bioenergy through his PhD studies in Zhejiang University, China. He proposes a two year stay in the €35M Science Foundation Ireland funded research centre Marine and Renewable Energy Ireland (MaREI). He will be hosted in the Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork and supervised by Prof Jerry Murphy. The fellowship will incorporate a three month secondment in Gas Networks Ireland (an industrial partner in MaREI) to facilitate the integration of new technology in green gas industry. The objective of this proposal is to establish Dr Lin as a leading researcher in bioenergy and assist him in acquiring a position of professional maturity.
Traffic-Aware and Energy-Efficient Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

The energy of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is generally powered by limited and portable batteries. However, there are some specific scenarios where the nodes can gain energy continuously, such as the electric energy data collection, the power line monitoring and using renewable energy. Meanwhile, due to the centralized traffic pattern in WSNs, congestion occurs easily and has a negative impact on the network performance, namely, decreasing throughput and increasing energy consumption. In this paper, a solution to sufficiently maintain the energy efficiency and avoid congestion for energy-unlimited WSNs is presented. Based on the similarity between data forwarding in WSNs and water transmission in pipeline, a traffic-aware and energy-efficient routing (TER) algorithm is proposed. The TER algorithm is designed by constructing a pipeline model in terms of physical distance and traffic load. The goal of this basic approach is to force the packets to steer clear of obstacles created by congestion and eventually move toward the sink. The simulation results show that the proposed solution generates better performance in terms of the global energy consumption , timeliness and reliability as compared to the other two algorithms.
Edinburgh companion to Scottish women's writing

This book explores the richness of women's contribution to Scottish literature. By combining historical spread with a thematic structure, this volume explores the ways in which gender has shaped literary output and addresses the changing situations in which women lived and wrote. It places the work of established writers such as Margaret Oliphant, Naomi Mitchison and A.L. Kennedy in new contexts and discusses the writing of critically neglected figures such as Sileas na Ceapaich, Mary Queen of Scots, Anne Grant, Janet Hamilton, Isabella Bird, F. Marion McNeill and Denise Mina. It includes innovative scholarship from leading critics of gender and Scottish Studies, such as Sarah Dunnigan (Edinburgh), Carol Anderson (Open University), Pam Perkins (Manitoba) and Florence Boos (Iowa). It responds to current developments in the field of feminist and literary studies. It includes a guide to further reading for each chapter.
SAP and XIAP deficiency in hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is a multisystem inflammatory disorder due to cytokine overproduction from excessively activated lymphocytes and macrophages. HLH has been divided into two subgroups: primary HLH and secondary HLH. Primary HLH includes PRF1, UNC13D, STX11, STXBP2, RAB27A, LYST, SH2D1A and XIAP gene mutations; and secondary HLH is associated with infections, malignancies and autoimmune diseases. Among primary HLH-related genes, SH2D1A and XIAP are genetically responsible for X-linked lymphoproliferative syndrome (XLP) due to signaling-lymphocytic-activation-molecule-associated protein (SAP) and XIAP deficiencies, respectively. XLP is characterized by extreme vulnerability to Epstein–Barr virus infection. The major clinical manifestations of XLP consist of HLH (60%), lymphoproliferative disorder (30%) and dysgammaglobulinemia (30%). Analysis of clinical phenotypes of XLP patients suggests that XLP predominantly shows familial HLH phenotypes, whereas some XLP patients present sporadic HLH. For many decades, clinicians and investigators have been concerned with possible XLP in young boys presenting with Epstein–Barr-virus-associated HLH. This review aims to describe the new knowledge about XLP and to draw the attention of the pediatrician to XLP, which should be differentiated from other forms of HLH.
Fablication method of an optical lens arrray using ultraviolet light and ultrasound vibration

An optical lens array is used various field such as camera modules and liquid crystal displays. In this report, a new fabrication technique of a lens array was proposed using ultraviolet (UV)-curable resin and ultrasound vibration. The hardening characteristics of the gel were investigated. An UV-curable gel film was formed on a glass plate having four ultrasound transducers. By exciting the transducers, the lattice flexural vibration was generated on the glass plate. The acoustic radiation force was generated to the gel surface, so that the gel was statically deformed. The lens array could be formed for 20 minutes under UV-light irradiation with keeping the deformation. The quality factor of the transducer resonance was measured in order to investigate the curing of resin, and the quality factor decreased with time. It was found that the gel acts as the damper and additional mass as the lens array was formed.