Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reflective Practice in Social Care

Social workers face difficulties in linking concepts, theories, and action because of the complexity of social work functions. Practitioners respond to ambiguous, changing situations in a variety of ways. In this exploratory study of exemplary British social workers, a cognitive process involving three categories of reflection was found to be characteristic. Guides to practice included applied social science information, generic practice models, and community social work ideology.
Supporting students with impairments in higher education: social inclusion or cold comfort?

This paper uses a discursive analysis to examine the experience of ‘inclusion’ from several stakeholder groups in one university. The research team included disability support staff at the institution, external disability consultants and academic researchers. A critical focus group investigation centred on four groups: students who were identified as having an impairment (SWIs), academic staff (teachers), administrators and students who did not identify as having an impairment (non‐SWIs). Interviews had facilitators with both research and disability expertise. Groups recounted different experiences of inclusion. SWIs, drawing on a rights discourse, emphasised a lack of resourcing and barriers created by the teaching staff. In contrast, teachers, administrators and (to a lesser extent) non‐SWIs emphasised the importance of social inclusion, reflecting discourses around needs and humanist notions of care and support, which largely seemed to miss the core of SWI concerns about recognition of their technical competence. For all groups, questions around disclosure of disability were of greater concern than tensions between needs and rights or the recent publication of a Code of Practice for the higher education sector. The findings challenged some of the researchers’ own assumptions, with unexpected implications for practice.
Fiscal Externalities and Optimal Unemployment Insurance

A common finding of the optimal unemployment insurance literature is that the optimal UI replacement rate is around 50%, implying that current levels in the US are close to optimal. However, a key assumption in the existing literature is that unemployment benefits are the only government spending activity. In this paper I show that recommendations for optimal UI levels are dramatically reduced when one incorporates the fact that UI spending is a small part of overall government spending. This occurs because the negative impact of UI on income tax revenues implies added welfare costs, a mechanism that I refer to as a fiscal externality. Using both a calibrated structural job search model and a "sufficient statistics" method that relies on reduced-form elasticities, I find that the optimal replacement rate drops to zero once fiscal externalities are incorporated. However, I also consider the possibility that more generous UI could increase reservation wages and thus potentially increase the tax base, and I show that this second fiscal externality could have important effects on the results, with an optimal replacement rate which could rise above 70%.
Differences in the digestive tract characteristics of broiler chickens fed on complete pelleted diet or on whole wheat added to pelleted protein concentrate

1. The effects of whole grains of wheat on the digestive tract of broiler chickens was studied. A complete pelleted feed was compared with free choice feeding of whole wheat and a pelleted protein concentrate, given from 7 to 29 d of age. 2. Pepsin activity in proventriculus tissue was lower in whole wheat-fed birds than in complete diet-fed birds. The weight (g/kg body weight) of the gizzard was higher in whole wheat-fed birds and its contents had a lower pH. 3. In the intestine, there were no differences in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) concentration, protein/DNA, ribonucleic acid (RNA)/DNA, RNA/protein ratios or alkaline phosphatase activity expressed per tissue weight. The weight (g/kg body weight) of the duodenum was lower in whole wheat-fed birds and its contents had a higher pH. Also the activities of alkaline phosphatase and leucine aminopeptidase in the duodenum, and maltase in the ileum, expressed per unit of bird weight, were lower in whole wheat-fed birds. 4. These results suggest that whole grain feeding increases the chemical (pepsin in proventriculus) and physical (gizzard muscle) functionality of the upper part of the digestive tract but decreases the digestive capacity of the intestine. Higher gizzard functionality may play a positive role in the control of bacterial populations. The lower digestive enzyme activities in the intestine may be detrimental in situations of mucosal deterioration caused by intestinal disease.
Degradation of UV-A LEDs: Physical Origin and Dependence on Stress Conditions

This paper presents an extensive analysis of the degradation of UV-A light-emitting diodes (LEDs) submitted to constant current stress. The study is based on combined electrical, optical, and thermal measurements and demonstrates the following results: 1) the UV-A LEDs submitted to constant current stress show a gradual degradation, and the degradation rate is strongly dependent on the emission wavelength; 2) the degradation process is ascribed to the generation of point defects within the active region of the devices, with a subsequent increase in the nonradiative recombination rate; and 3) the time to degradation is strongly dependent on the stress current level and is thermally activated (activation energy equal to 0.36 eV).
Students’ reported justifications for their representational choices in linear function problems: an interview study

Thirty-six secondary school students aged 14–16 were interviewed while they chose between a table, a graph or a formula to solve three linear function problems. The justifications for their choices were classified as (1) task-related if they explicitly mentioned the to-be-solved problem, (2) subject-related if students mentioned their own characteristics as representational users, (3) context-related if contextual features surrounding the choice were mentioned and (4) representation-related if formal characteristics of the representations were pointed out. Justifications were mostly task- and subject-related, although contextual and representational features also played an important role. Some students (reportedly) tried to reconcile different (task-, subject-, context- and representation-related) factors before selecting a representation, which was interpreted as an attempt to use their meta-representational competence to make appropriate representational choices. The influence of the didactical contract and the experimental contract on students’ representational choices, as well as the tensions between them, are also discussed.
Collaborative Human Computation as a Means of Information Management

Information seeking in personal information collections such as email is often a solitary activity performed by the owner– user alone. However, information objects such as email that are the products of collaboration are inherently social objects. In this paper, we describe a technique, using email as an example, that exploits the actions of one’s close social network to assist in one’s own information seeking tasks. We note that tagging of email messages is an example of human computation, and then describe a system that enables the tags applied by one user to be shared with other recipients of the same email, thereby amortizing the cost of tagging and email management across all stakeholders. We discuss how such shared tagging contributes to common ground among the participants of a collaborative group, and may be performed with minimal global cognitive load by the sender of the message. We provide scenarios of collaborative information seeking tasks that include sub-tasks such as collaborative information management and synchronous re-finding of previously-encountered information. We wish to examine if such system support for semi-automated tagging reduces email overload for all users, and its impact on collaborative information seeking practices.
The work–home interface: The role of home-based predictors of burnout among mothers

Research into the work–home interface has mainly focused on work-related variables, leaving aspects associated with the home domain relatively understudied. This investigation examined both facilitation and conflict between home and work in a sample of 260 working mothers with children up to four years of age. Potential home domain predictors of burnout were examined, using structural equation modeling. A neglected home-related variable is satisfaction with substitute childcare. Thus, a new scale was developed to measure satisfaction with infant day care centers. Results show a substantial influence of home-based variables, thus supporting the need for inclusion of such variables. Parenting appraisals are related to home–work conflict and facilitation, and ultimately show the expected associations with burnout. Satisfaction with infant day care influences burnout through parenting stress and satisfaction with the parental role. These results are discussed in the light of existing literature and implications for practice are considered.
The Effects of a Mobile Stress Management Protocol on Nurses Working with Cancer Patients: a Preliminary Controlled Study

Oncology nurses face extraordinary stresses that may lead to emotional exhaustion, a feeling of emotional distance from patients and burnout. The presentation describes the preliminary results of a study to test the effects of an innovative 4-week 8-session self-help stress management training for oncology nurses supported by mobile tools (Nokia N70 smarthphone). The sample included 16 female oncology nurses with permanent status employed in different oncology hospitals in Milan, Italy. The study used a between-subjects design, comparing the experimental condition (mobile phone stress management protocol) with a control group (neutral videos through mobile phones). In addition to a significant reduction in anxiety state at the end of each session, the experimental group demonstrated a significant improvement in affective change in terms of anxiety trait reduction and coping skills acquisition at the end of the protocol.
Dynamic Polygon Clouds: Representation and Compression for VR/AR

We introduce the {\em polygon cloud}, also known as a polygon set or {\em soup}, as a compressible representation of 3D geometry (including its attributes, such as color texture) intermediate between polygonal meshes and point clouds. Dynamic or time-varying polygon clouds, like dynamic polygonal meshes and dynamic point clouds, can take advantage of temporal redundancy for compression, if certain challenges are addressed. In this paper, we propose methods for compressing both static and dynamic polygon clouds, specifically triangle clouds. We compare triangle clouds to both triangle meshes and point clouds in terms of compression, for live captured dynamic colored geometry. We find that triangle clouds can be compressed nearly as well as triangle meshes, while being far more robust to noise and other structures typically found in live captures, which violate the assumption of a smooth surface manifold, such as lines, points, and ragged boundaries. We also find that triangle clouds can be used to compress point clouds with significantly better performance than previously demonstrated point cloud compression methods. In particular, for intra-frame coding of geometry, our method improves upon octree-based intra-frame coding by a factor of 5-10 in bit rate. Inter-frame coding improves this by another factor of 2-5. Overall, our dynamic triangle cloud compression improves over the previous state-of-the-art in dynamic point cloud compression by 33\% or more.
Differential Roles of Segmented Filamentous Bacteria and Clostridia in Development of the Intestinal Immune System

ABSTRACT The presence of microflora in the digestive tract promotes the development of the intestinal immune system. In this study, to evaluate the roles of two types of indigenous microbe, segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB) and clostridia, whose habitats are the small and large intestines, respectively, in this immunological development, we analyzed three kinds of gnotobiotic mice contaminated with SFB, clostridia, and both SFB and clostridia, respectively, in comparison with germfree (GF) or conventionalized (Cvd) mice associated with specific-pathogen-free flora. In the small intestine, the number of αβ T-cell receptor-bearing intraepithelial lymphocytes (αβIEL) increased in SFB-associated mice (SFB-mice) but not in clostridium-associated mice (Clost-mice). There was no great difference in Vβ usage among GF mice, Cvd mice, and these gnotobiotic mice, although the association with SFB decreased the proportion of Vβ6+ cells in CD8β− subsets to some extent, compared to that in GF mice. The expression of major histocompatibility complex class II molecules on the epithelial cells was observed in SFB-mice but not in Clost-mice. On the other hand, in the large intestine, the ratio of the number of CD4−CD8+ cells to that of CD4+ CD8−cells in αβIEL increased in Clost-mice but not in SFB-mice. On association with both SFB and clostridia, the numbers and phenotypes of IEL in the small and large intestines changed to become similar to those in Cvd mice. In particular, the ratio of the number of CD8αβ+ cells to that of CD8αα+ cells in αβIEL, unusually elevated in the small intestines of SFB-mice, decreased to the level in Cvd mice on contamination with both SFB and clostridia. The number of immunoglobulin A (IgA)-producing cells in the lamina propria was more elevated in SFB-mice than in Clost-mice, not only in the ileum but also in the colon. The number of IgA-producing cells in the colons of Clost-mice was a little increased compared to that in GF mice. Taken together, SFB and clostridia promoted the development of both IEL and IgA-producing cells in the small intestine and that of only IEL in the large intestine, respectively, suggesting the occurrence of compartmentalization of the immunological responses to the indigenous bacteria between the small and large intestines.
Middle Managers of the Leadership Classroom: Realizing the Developmental Capacity of Teaching Assistants

In this phenomenological study, the authors explore exemplar teaching assistants’ experiences and perceptions of their work in supporting leadership development for undergraduate business students. Findings demonstrate that successful, effective teaching assistants whose role is to cultivate students’ leadership competencies conceptualize their roles as middle managers in the classroom, acting independently and focusing on system stability. Forming professional networks and establishing physical and psychological boundaries support their developmental roles. Based on the findings, the authors present guidelines for universities that use teaching assistants in developmental roles, strategies for individuals who serve as assistants, and implications for future research.
Traffic Analysis of Web Browsers

Tor network is currently the most commonly used anonymity system with more than 300,000 users and almost 3000 relays. Attacks against Tor are typically confirmation attacks where the adversary injects easily discernible traffic pattern and observes which clients and/or relays exhibit such patterns. The main limitation of these attacks is that they require a “powerful” adversary. Website fingerprinting is a new breed of attacks that identifies which websites are visited by a Tor client by learning the traffic pattern for each suspected website. Recent works showed that some classifiers can successfully identify 80% of visited websites. In this paper we use a classic classifier, namely, decision trees (C4.5 algorithm) and we study to which extent popular web browsers can resist to website fingerprinting attacks. Among four studied web browsers, Google Chrome offers the best resistance to website fingerprinting (5 times better than the other web browsers). Since most of existing fingerprinting techniques have been evaluated using Firefox web browser, we expect the accuracy results of existing works to be reduced in case Chrome browser is used.
As instituições de longa permanência para idosos no Brasil

O envelhecimento populacional está ocorrendo em um contexto de grandes mudanças sociais, culturais, econômicas, institucionais, no sistema de valores e na configuração dos arranjos familiares. Para o futuro próximo, espera-se um crescimento a taxas elevadas da população muito idosa (80 anos e mais), como resultado das altas taxas de natalidade observadas no passado recente e da continuação da redução da mortalidade nas idades avançadas. No entanto, a certeza do crescimento desse segmento populacional está sendo acompanhada pela incerteza das condições de cuidados que experimentarão os longevos. Embora a legislação brasileira estabeleça que o cuidado dos membros dependentes deva ser responsabilidade das famílias, este se torna cada vez mais escasso, em função da redução da fecundidade, das mudanças na nupcialidade e da crescente participação da mulher – tradicional cuidadora – no mercado de trabalho. Isto passa a requerer que o Estado e o mercado privado dividam com a família as responsabilidades no cuidado com a população idosa. Diante desse contexto, uma das alternativas de cuidados não-familiares existentes corresponde às instituições de longa permanência para idosos (ILPIs), sejam públicas ou privadas. No entanto, a residência em instituições não é uma prática comum na sociedade brasileira. Faltava, até então, uma visão agregada sobre as ILPIs brasileiras. Não se conhecia quantos idosos viviam em instituições, suas características – como sexo, idade, renda, condições de saúde/autonomia, laços familiares, tempo de permanência na instituição – e tampouco o número de instituições existentes, a infraestrutura, os serviços oferecidos, a estrutura de custos, os recursos com que contam, os modelos de assistência praticados, etc. A falta de informações sobre essa modalidade de serviços, bem como a expectativa de que a sua demanda tende a crescer, foi a principal motivação para a realização da pesquisa nacional, de caráter censitário, aqui descrita.
Boundary Detection Using Double-Opponency and Spatial Sparseness Constraint

Brightness and color are two basic visual features integrated by the human visual system (HVS) to gain a better understanding of color natural scenes. Aiming to combine these two cues to maximize the reliability of boundary detection in natural scenes, we propose a new framework based on the color-opponent mechanisms of a certain type of color-sensitive double-opponent (DO) cells in the primary visual cortex (V1) of HVS. This type of DO cells has oriented receptive field with both chromatically and spatially opponent structure. The proposed framework is a feedforward hierarchical model, which has direct counterpart to the color-opponent mechanisms involved in from the retina to V1. In addition, we employ the spatial sparseness constraint (SSC) of neural responses to further suppress the unwanted edges of texture elements. Experimental results show that the DO cells we modeled can flexibly capture both the structured chromatic and achromatic boundaries of salient objects in complex scenes when the cone inputs to DO cells are unbalanced. Meanwhile, the SSC operator further improves the performance by suppressing redundant texture edges. With competitive contour detection accuracy, the proposed model has the additional advantage of quite simple implementation with low computational cost.
Modified structural intensity for singularity localization in noisy signals: Application to coherent averaging for event‐synchronous ECG interference cancellation in diaphragmatic EMG signals

This paper addresses the problem of singularity location in a noisy signal. Landmark alignment performances of a modified structural intensity formulation are analyzed in the context of ‘averaged template subtraction’. The chosen application is the event‐synchronous ECG interference cancellation (ESC) in the diaphragmatic electromyographic signal. The structural intensity event‐synchronous interference canceller (SIESC) algorithm based on the modified structural intensity formulation is compared with an existing ESC algorithm that requires an ECG reference signal for the coherent averaging process. Efficiency in interference cancellation is evaluated using both simulations and real electromyogram of the diaphragm data. All the results show that the alignment error of the SIESC induces an acceptable discrepancy between the two methods. One interest of this application is to demonstrate the ability of the structural intensity to provide a detector combining robustness and precision. A drawback of this approach is the calculation cost. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Association between Mild Renal Dysfunction and Insulin Resistance or Metabolic Syndrome in a Random Nondiabetic Population Sample

Aims: The association of mild renal dysfunction (estimated glomerular filtration rate [eGFR] 60–89.9 ml/min/1.73 m2) with insulin resistance (IR) or metabolic syndrome (MS) needs be investigated in a population in which MS prevails. Methods: After excluding subjects with diabetes mellitus, 1,678 subjects from a representative cohort (median age 52 years) were studied cross-sectionally. eGFR was based on serum creatinine concentrations using the quadratic GFR equation and categorized by 90 and 60 ml/min/1.73 m2 as limits. MS was identified using the modified criteria of the Adult Treatment Panel-III. Results: In men, whereas MS was not significantly associated with a reduced eGFR category when controlled for homeostatic model assessment (HOMA), HOMA adjusted for MS or for its components was significantly associated with the likelihood of a reduced eGFR. This likelihood was increased by 14% with a doubling of HOMA in men. Age was the dominant correlate of reduced eGFR in women, whereby an association with HOMA was not significant. Conclusion: Mildly impaired kidney function is common in nondiabetic adults among whom MS prevails, and in men it is mainly associated with IR but not with central obesity and MS-related dyslipidemia. The quadratic GFR equation enables an acceptable estimation of GFR in a general population.