Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship Between Electricity Consumption, Manufacturing Output and Financial Development: A New Evidence from Nigeria

Electricity is regarded as sine quo non for any meaningful social, economic and modern scientific advancement of any country in the world. It is regarded as a force and engine room of the industrial sector. However, in Nigeria, instability in power supply is negatively affecting manufacturing efficiency. Time series data for 1981 until 2015 was used to examine the symmetric relationship between the electric consumption, manufacturing output and financial development in Nigeria. The result indicates the co-movement in the variable over long time horizon, meaning that any inefficiency in electricity supply would impedes industrial output. Moreover, the Granger causality test based on vector error correction framework shows the presence of causality between power utilization of manufacturing firms and economic growth without feedback. In this sense it can be stress that stable electricity consumption is important factor for Nigeria? s manufacturing sector. The result of variance decomposition further indicates that the variation in the industrial output responds more to shocks in the electricity supply than its own shock. This finding suggests that energy is the engine of manufacturing sector in Nigeria.
Investigating organizational socialization: a fresh look at newcomer adjustment strategies

Purpose – The majority of organizational newcomers have prior work experience. Organizational socialization tactics are less effective for such “experienced newcomers”, relative to graduate newcomers. Hence experienced newcomers tend to rely on their own actions to become socialized. The aim of this article is to assess and potentially extend the range of adjustment strategies identified as being used by experienced newcomers themselves to achieve positive adjustment.Design/methodology/approach – Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 86 experienced newcomers entering a professional services organization.Findings – Nineteen strategies emerged, with seven newly identified in this research. These are compared with strategies found in past research.Practical implications – HR, and the managers and colleagues of newcomers can use the strategies identified and categorized here to encourage newcomers to use organizationally‐appropriate behaviors. Newcomers can use these strategies to help themselves ach.
Cytotoxic effects of 15d-PGJ2 against osteosarcoma through ROS-mediated AKT and cell cycle inhibition

Polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1), a critical cell cycle regulator, has been identified as a potential target in osteosarcoma (OS). 15-deoxy-Δ12, 14-prostaglandin J2 (15d-PGJ2), a prostaglandin derivative, has shown its anti-tumor activity by inducing apoptosis through reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated inactivation of v-akt, a murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog, (AKT) in cancer cells. In the study analyzing its effects on arthritis, 15d-PGJ2 mediated shear-induced chondrocyte apoptosis via protein kinase A (PKA)-dependent regulation of PLK1. In this study, the cytotoxic effect and mechanism underlying 15d-PGJ2 effects against OS were explored using OS cell lines. 15d-PGJ2 induced significant G2/M arrest, and exerted time- and dose-dependent cytotoxic effects against all OS cell lines. Western blot analysis showed that both AKT and PKA-PLK1 were down-regulated in OS cell lines after treatment with 15d-PGJ2. In addition, transfection of constitutively active AKT or PLK1 partially rescued cells from 15d-PGJ2-induced apoptosis, suggesting crucial roles for both pathways in the anti-cancer effects of 15d-PGJ2. Moreover, ROS generation was found treatment with 15d-PGJ2, and its cytotoxic effect could be reversed with N-acetyl-l-cysteine. Furthermore, inhibition of JNK partially rescued 15d-PGJ2 cytotoxicity. Thus, ROS-mediated JNK activation may contribute to apoptosis through down-regulation of the p-Akt and PKA-PLK1 pathways. 15d-PGJ2 is a potential therapeutic agent for OS, exerting cytotoxicity mediated through both AKT and PKA-PLK1 inhibition, and these results form the basis for further analysis of its role in animal studies and clinical applications.
Toward a post-constructivist ethics in/of teaching and learning

Constructivist epistemologies focus on ethics as a system of values in the mind – even when previously co-constructed in a social context – against which social agents compare the actions that they mentally plan before performing them. This approach is problematic, as it forces a wedge between thought and action, body and mind, universal and practical ethics and thought and affect. Drawing on a fragment of a concrete classroom episode as an exemplary case, I develop and exemplify a post-constructivist discourse on ethics that centres on the dialogical relation of participants in conversation and that overcomes the problems of the constructivist approach. This practical ethics is consistent with the dialectical (dialogical) conception of the world-as-event. I conclude by suggesting that the Saying constitutes a dialectical/dialogical paradigm of a post-constructivist ethics.
“Race Coding” and White Opposition to Welfare

Crime and welfare are now widely viewed as “coded” issues that activate white Americans' negative views of blacks without explicitly raising the “race card. ” But does the desire of whites to combat crime or curtail welfare really stem from their dislike of blacks? Are these not pressing problems about which Americans rightly should be concerned—apart from any associations these issues may have with race? In this paper I assess the extent to which white Americans' opposition to welfare is rooted in their attitudes toward blacks. Using conventional survey modeling techniques and a randomized survey-based experiment from a national telephone survey, I find that racial attitudes are the single most important influence on whites' welfare views. I also show that whites hold similar views of comparably described black and white welfare mothers, but that negative views of black welfare mothers are more politically potent, generating greater opposition to welfare than comparable views of white welfare mothers.
A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Rater Liking and Performance Ratings

This meta-analysis reviewed the magnitude and moderators of the relationship between rater liking and performance ratings. The results revealed substantial overlap between rater liking and performance ratings (ρ = .77). Although this relationship is often interpreted as indicative of bias, we review studies that indicate that to some extent the relationship between liking and performance ratings potentially reflects “true” differences in ratee performance. Moderator analyses indicated that the relationship between liking and performance ratings was weaker for ratings of organizational citizenship behaviors, ratings made by peer raters, ratings in nonsales jobs, and ratings made for development; however, the relationship was strong across moderator levels, underscoring the robustness of this relationship. Implications for the interpretation of performance ratings are discussed. Ashley W. Sutton is currently employed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and Sean P. Baldwin is currently employed by Human Resources Research Organization.
Sexual Motives and Sentencing

The motives ascribed to offenders in the sentencing of sexual abuse crimes can be highly contentious. Some critics claim that sexual assaults are acts of power and violence and that reference to sexual motives minimizes violence and the seriousness of the offense. The present study examines 74 Canadian judicial sentencing decisions (1993-1997) involving offenders who had sexually abused children and adolescents. Using discursive social psychology, the authors analyze judicial explanations for the offenses, and their implications for mitigation and aggravation. Violent attributions were rare. Sex-based explanations predominated, variously invoking the selfish gratification of offenders’ sexual desires, sexual impulses, pedophilia, and offenders’ attraction to victims. However, in contrast to critics’ claims, these explanations are used by judges to emphasize the seriousness of these crimes. The findings highlight the importance of analyzing discourse in relation to action sequences rather than in isolation. The authors discuss the implications for the study of sexual assault and legal discourse.
Communicating emotion with animated text

Traditionally, typographers and designers have relied on variations in the shape and form of letters and text to enhance textual meaning. It is hypothesized that animated text may be used to recreate a broader range of paralinguistic meaning and emotion than is possible with the use of static text alone. This pilot study was conducted to provide conceptual validation for the hypothesis that animated text can communicate certain emotions such as anger, sadness, happiness and fear. Animations were subjected to pre-testing and refined as needed. Subjects were tested for their understanding of the emotional content of a sample set of animated sentences. There was strong support for the animations created to measure ‘sadness’ and ‘happiness’. Findings also indicated that certain textual motions are associated with the intensity of certain emotions.
A Genetic Algorithm for Detecting Significant Floating-Point Inaccuracies

It is well-known that using floating-point numbers may inevitably result in inaccurate results and sometimes even cause serious software failures. Safety-critical software often has strict requirements on the upper bound of inaccuracy, and a crucial task in testing is to check whether significant inaccuracies may be produced. The main existing approach to the floating-point inaccuracy problem is error analysis, which produces an upper bound of inaccuracies that may occur. However, a high upper bound does not guarantee the existence of inaccuracy defects, nor does it give developers any concrete test inputs for debugging. In this paper, we propose the first metaheuristic search-based approach to automatically generating test inputs that aim to trigger significant inaccuracies in floating-point programs. Our approach is based on the following two insights: (1) with FPDebug, a recently proposed dynamic analysis approach, we can build a reliable fitness function to guide the search; (2) two main factors - the scales of exponents and the bit formations of significands - may have significant impact on the accuracy of the output, but in largely different ways. We have implemented and evaluated our approach over 154 real-world floating-point functions. The results show that our approach can detect significant inaccuracies in the subjects.
Implementing Mathematics Reform in Urban Schools

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, it aimed to determine whether the teachers’ choice of motivation style influenced their mathematics teaching. Second, it investigated the influence of teachers’ choice of motivation style on their willingness and ability to implement reform-based mathematics curriculum and instruction. Eight high school mathematics teachers fromthe two groups of autonomysupportive and controlling style of motivation were observed over the course of 5 months as they implemented a reform-based unit of instruction in geometry. All teachers worked in an urban school district. There were significant differences between the two groups of teachers relative to how they taught mathematics and interacted with students. Autonomy-supportive teachers’ behaviors were more compatible with current reform recommendations for mathematics teaching. Moreover, autonomy-supportive teachers were more willing to teach and more successful in implementing the reform-based unit of instruction in geometry. All teachers experienced difficulty creating a student-centered mathematics classroom.
HANNIBAL: An efficient tool for logic verification based on recursive learning

This paper introduces a new approach to logic verification of combinational circuits, which is based on recursive learning. In particular, the described method efficiently extracts equivalencies between internal nodes of the two circuits to be verified. We present a tool, HANNIBAL, which is very efficient for many practical verification problems where such internal equivalencies exist. The presented method can also be used to drastically accelerate other verification tools. Experimental results clearly show the efficiency of HANNIBAL. For example, HANNIBAL verifies the multiplier c6288 against the redundancy-free version c6288nr in only 48 s on a Sparc Workstation ELC.
Cochlear Delay and Medial Olivocochlear Functioning in Children with Suspected Auditory Processing Disorder

Behavioral manifestations of processing deficits associated with auditory processing disorder (APD) have been well documented. However, little is known about their anatomical underpinnings, especially cochlear processing. Cochlear delays, a proxy for cochlear tuning, measured using stimulus frequency otoacoustic emission (SFOAE) group delay, and the influence of the medial olivocochlear (MOC) system activation at the auditory periphery was studied in 23 children suspected with APD (sAPD) and 22 typically developing (TD) children. Results suggest that children suspected with APD have longer SFOAE group delays (possibly due to sharper cochlear tuning) and reduced MOC function compared to TD children. Other differences between the groups include correlation between MOC function and SFOAE delay in quiet in the TD group, and lack thereof in the sAPD group. MOC-mediated changes in SFOAE delay were in opposite directions between groups: increase in delay in TD vs. reduction in delay in the sAPD group. Longer SFOAE group delays in the sAPD group may lead to longer cochlear filter ringing, and potential increase in forward masking. These results indicate differences in cochlear and MOC function between sAPD and TD groups. Further studies are warranted to explore the possibility of cochlea as a potential site for processing deficits in APD.
The salience of skin tone: effects on the exercise of police enforcement authority

Using nationally representative data, I examine the relationship between skin tone and police contact, in particular, the relationship between blacks' and Latinos' skin tone and being stopped or arrested by the police, controlling for prior delinquency and other important factors. Descriptive results show that darker-skinned blacks and Latinos are stopped and arrested more often than lighter-skinned members of the same group. When controlling for delinquency alone, blacks experience a significant increase in the number of times they are stopped and an 18% increase in the odds of being arrested by police as skin tone darkens. For Latinos, the interaction of skin tone and gender significantly affects the odds of police stops and arrests even controlling for demographic factors, suggesting that future research on skin tone should incorporate analysis for Latino/as as well as blacks.
Individual Differences in Holistic Processing Predict the Own-Race Advantage in Recognition Memory

Individuals are consistently better at recognizing own-race faces compared to other-race faces (other-race effect, ORE). One popular hypothesis is that this recognition memory ORE is caused by differential own- and other-race holistic processing, the simultaneous integration of part and configural face information into a coherent whole. Holistic processing may create a more rich, detailed memory representation of own-race faces compared to other-race faces. Despite several studies showing that own-race faces are processed more holistically than other-race faces, studies have yet to link the holistic processing ORE and the recognition memory ORE. In the current study, we sought to use a more valid method of analyzing individual differences in holistic processing by using regression to statistically remove the influence of the control condition (part trials in the part-whole task) from the condition of interest (whole trials in the part-whole task). We also employed regression to separately examine the two components of the ORE: own-race advantage (regressing other-race from own-race performance) and other-race decrement (regressing own-race from other-race performance). First, we demonstrated that own-race faces were processed more holistically than other-race faces, particularly the eye region. Notably, using regression, we showed a significant association between the own-race advantage in recognition memory and the own-race advantage in holistic processing and that these associations were weaker when examining the other-race decrement. We also demonstrated that performance on own- and other-race faces across all of our tasks was highly correlated, suggesting that the differences we found between own- and other-race faces are quantitative rather than qualitative. Together, this suggests that own- and other-race faces recruit largely similar mechanisms, that own-race faces more thoroughly engage holistic processing, and that this greater engagement of holistic processing is significantly associated with the own-race advantage in recognition memory.
Breaches of past promises, current job alternatives, and promises of future idiosyncratic deals: Three-way interaction effects on organizational commitment

This article examines the three-way interaction effect of breaches of past promises, current job alternatives, and promises of future idiosyncratic deals on affective organizational commitment. Specifically, we posit that the negative relationship between breaches of past promises and affective organizational commitment is strongest when employees are promised idiosyncratic deals in the future and when they perceive that few job alternatives are currently available elsewhere. Data collected from 196 managers at two points in time over a one-year period support the proposed three-way interaction effect. This article highlights the importance of differentiating fulfillment of past contract obligations from promises of future idiosyncratic deals in further research on psychological contract breaches.
Putting normativity in its proper place

Abstract Knobe considers two explanations for the influence of moral considerations on “non-moral” cognitive systems: the “person as moralist” position, and the “person as [biased] scientist” position. We suggest that this dichotomy conflates questions at computational and algorithmic levels, and suggest that distinguishing the issues at these levels reveals a third, viable option, which we call the “rational scientist” position.
Evaluating the "Critical Period" Hypothesis: Perceptual Learning of Mandarin Tones in American Adults and American Children at 6, 10 and 14 Years of Age

In this study, we examined the perceptual learning of lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese by American young adults, and children from 6 to 14 years old, covering the age range surrounding the “critical period”. The participants received a two-week computerized Mandarin tone training program designed to be child-friendly. The results showed that, for the trainees in each of the four age groups but not the controls, percent correct identification increased significantly from the pre-training test to the post-training test, indicating significant improvement after training across age groups. However, comparing the pre-puberty and the post-puberty groups, we did not find an abrupt decrease in the degree of improvement, as would have been predicted by the Critical Period Hypothesis. These results support the view that language learning is not a strictly timed developmental process with rigid cut-off periods.
The Role of Gender and Ethnicity in Pedagogical Agent Perception

To investigate the role of pedagogical agent gender and ethnicity, 139 students were randomly assigned to one of four conditions, where agents differed by ethnicity (African-American, Caucasian) and gender (male, female). Results indicated a main effect for agent gender, in which male agents were perceived as more extraverted and agreeable than the female agents. Further, with respect to learning and motivation, students working with the male agents were more satisfied with their performance and reported that the agents better facilitated self-regulation. An interaction effect between student ethnicity and agent ethnicity revealed that students working with agents of the same ethnicity perceived the agents to be significantly more engaging and affable. Another significant interaction of student gender and agent ethnicity revealed that female students perceived the African-American agents to be more open to new things than the Caucasian agents, whereas the opposite was the case for the female students.
On Being Positive: Concerns and Counterpoints

In this article I examine the attractions and shortcomings of the “positive” neohumanisitic turn in organizational theorizing and how positivity might be developed. I evaluate positivity's moral and cultural underpinnings and claims to separate positive from negative emotions, and I explore the deployment of positiveness in HRM programs of empowerment, emotional intelligence, and fun at work. I conclude with suggestions on how positive scholarship could be reconfigured in light of the present critique and against the emancipatory ideas of critical organizational theory.
Recursive filters for partially observable finite Markov chains

In this note, we consider discrete-time finite Markov chains and assume that they are only partly observed. We obtain finite-dimensional normalized filters for basic statistics associated with such processes. Recursive equations for these filters are derived by means of simple computations involving conditional expectations. An application to the estimation of parameters of the so-called discrete-time batch Markovian arrival process is outlined.
Impact of Flavonols on Cardiometabolic Biomarkers: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Human Trials to Explore the Role of Inter-Individual Variability

Several epidemiological studies have linked flavonols with decreased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, some heterogeneity in the individual physiological responses to the consumption of these compounds has been identified. This meta-analysis aimed to study the effect of flavonol supplementation on biomarkers of CVD risk such as, blood lipids, blood pressure and plasma glucose, as well as factors affecting their inter-individual variability. Data from 18 human randomized controlled trials were pooled and the effect was estimated using fixed or random effects meta-analysis model and reported as difference in means (DM). Variability in the response of blood lipids to supplementation with flavonols was assessed by stratifying various population subgroups: age, sex, country, and health status. Results showed significant reductions in total cholesterol (DM = −0.10 mmol/L; 95% CI: −0.20, −0.01), LDL cholesterol (DM = −0.14 mmol/L; 95% CI: −0.21, 0.07), and triacylglycerol (DM = −0.10 mmol/L; 95% CI: −0.18, 0.03), and a significant increase in HDL cholesterol (DM = 0.05 mmol/L; 95% CI: 0.02, 0.07). A significant reduction was also observed in fasting plasma glucose (DM = −0.18 mmol/L; 95% CI: −0.29, −0.08), and in blood pressure (SBP: DM = −4.84 mmHg; 95% CI: −5.64, −4.04; DBP: DM = −3.32 mmHg; 95% CI: −4.09, −2.55). Subgroup analysis showed a more pronounced effect of flavonol intake in participants from Asian countries and in participants with diagnosed disease or dyslipidemia, compared to healthy and normal baseline values. In conclusion, flavonol consumption improved biomarkers of CVD risk, however, country of origin and health status may influence the effect of flavonol intake on blood lipid levels.