Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Syrians’ acceptance of digital lectures: a case study

Abstract Technology-based learning modules are mostly challenged by their acceptance. A single-case study and mixed research method are used to explore a unique situation of applying digital lectures at the postgraduate Programmes at the Faculty of Tourism at Damascus University as a solution for brain drain in the Syrian higher education system. Results indicate that Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy (EE), Personal Innovativeness and Satisfaction with the Quality of Services have a significant effect on students’ Behavioural Intention to accept digital lectures. This effect was stronger for males. However, EE was a better predictor for students under 30. In addition, students regarded the use of digital lectures as an alternative plan to continuing their postgraduate studies abroad within the current restrictions on Syrians. For the future successful implementation of e-learning modules, infrastructure-related issues should be taken into account. The study recommends universities going through brain drain and similar crisis situations to utilise digital lectures.
Determinants of tourism hotel market efficiency

Purpose The purpose of this paper to study the hotel performance determinants by examining the impact of the internal and the external environment of the hotel on its performance. Design/methodology/approach A bootstrapped truncated regression model is used following the evaluation of efficiency score for hotels using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The effects of the cited variables are discussed to determine the best development strategy for increasing hotel performance. Findings This paper has four major contributions. First, the test results confirm that macro-contextual factors, such as international attraction and market competition, have a direct influence on hotel efficiency. Second, hotel efficiency depends on hotel characteristics, such as hotel age, hotel type, management type and the location of the hotel. Third, the tenure of the general manager, education level of the board staff and number of managers influence hotel efficiency. Finally, general tourism wages increase the efficiency score of the corporate hotel performance. Research limitations/implications Tourism employment studies require further improvement, and their challenges should be highlighted when countries develop tourism strategies. Moreover, hiring employees with a better educational background appears to be an effective human resource strategy to reduce inefficiency in the hotel sector. Tourism performance and development need a thorough investigation into tourism wages to attract the best students and the best graduates to the tourism sector to bring out the needed number and skills of employees. Practical implications The conclusions of this paper are consistent with the literature results. However, it is important to separate market concentration from market competition for whose literature concluded an opposite influence on the hotel performance. The authors explain this contrast by the measure choice. Social implications The performance of the hotel depends not only on the physical resources and on the destination characteristics but also on the management characteristics. Originality/value This paper is the first to test empirically the influence of destination attractiveness, competition level, hotel size, hotel age, management contract, hotel type, location, advertising, manager’s tenure, tourism education and wages on the hotel performance in Tunisia.
Social inequalities in reception of social welfare support: A population based twin study

Social welfare support runs in families. Recent studies using Nordic registry data have found individualdifferences in genetic factors to be of substantial importance for medical benefits. However, to date there hasbeen no genetically informative studies on receiving social welfare support. To prevent young adults to notdrop out of the work life and become recipients of social welfare support, it is of substantial interest toclarify to what extent the familiarity of social welfare support is due to genetic or social differences betweenfamilies. We used data from the Historical-Event Database on 7,698 Norwegian twins born 1967-1979 toestimate the relative contribution of genetic factors, the effective familial environment (i.e. the “sharedenvironment”), and individual-specific environmental factors. We found that the two forms of familial risk,genetic and shared environmental, explained 39% and 45%, respectively, of the risk for receiving socialwelfare support among young Norwegian twins. Only 17% of the variance in risk factors could be explainedby individual-specific risk factors. It appears that risk for receiving social welfare support can to a greatextent be explained by environmental differences between families. Therefore prevention strategies targetingsocial inequalities between families would indeed be effective. Furthermore, genetic risk factors are alsoimportant in explaining risk for receiving social welfare support. These effects could be mediated throughheritable traits related to substance abuse, psychiatric disorders, and personality. Individual-specific risk factorswere of very little importance. Hence, with regard to receiving social welfare support, family matters.
How digital design shapes political participation: A natural experiment with social information

Political behaviour increasingly takes place on digital platforms, where people are presented with a range of social information—real-time feedback about the behaviour of peers and reference groups—which can stimulate (or depress) participation. This social information is hypothesized to impact the distribution of political activity, stimulating participation in mobilizations that are increasing in popularity, and depressing participation in those that appear to be less popular, leading to a non-normal distribution. Changes to these platforms can generate natural experiments allowing for an estimate of the impact of different kinds of social information on participation. This paper tests the hypothesis that social information shapes the distribution of political mobilizations by examining the introduction of trending information to the homepage of the UK government petition platform. The introduction of the trending feature did not increase the overall number of signatures per day, but the distribution of signatures across petitions changed significantly—the most popular petitions gained more signatures at the expense of those with fewer signatories. We further find significant differences between petitions trending at different ranks on the homepage. This evidence suggests that the ubiquity of trending information on digital platforms is introducing instability into political markets, as has been shown for cultural markets. As well as highlighting the importance of digital design in shaping political behaviour, the findings suggest that a non-negligible group of individuals visit the homepage of the site looking for petitions to sign, without having decided the issues they wish to support in advance. These ‘aimless petitioners’ are particularly susceptible to changes in social information.
Eye Movements and Memory for Objects and Their Locations

In this paper we briefly describe preliminary data from two experiments that we have carried out to investigate the relationship between visual encoding and memory for objects and their locations within scenes. In these experiments, we recorded participants’ eye movements as they viewed a photograph of a cubicle with 12 objects positioned pseudo-randomly on a desk and shelves. After viewing the photograph, participants were taken to the actual cubicle where they undertook two memory tasks. The participants were asked to identify the 12 target objects (from the photograph) presented amongst 12 distractors. They were then given the 12 target objects and were required to place each of them in the location that they occupied in the photograph. These tests assessed participants’ memory for identity of the objects and their locations. In Experiment 1, we assessed the influence of the encoding period and the test delay on object identity and location memory. In Experiment 2, we manipulated scanning behaviour during encoding by “boxing” some of the objects in the photo. We showed that using boxes to change eye movement behaviour during encoding directly affected the nature of memory for the scene. The results of these studies indicate a fundamental relationship between visual encoding and memory for objects and their locations. We explain our findings in terms of the Visual Memory Model (Hollingworth & Henderson, 2002).
Housing Investment: What Makes it so Volatile? Theory and Evidence from OECD Countries

This paper explains how mortgage market liberalization can introduce greater volatility in the housing market. It begins by documenting two stylized facts for OECD countries that models with perfect credit markets fail to explain: (i) housing investment is about five times as volatile as output and (ii) housing investment tends to be more volatile in economies with more liberalized mortgage markets. The paper then develops a DSGE model where households face a credit constraint and housing is used as collateral. This housing collateral constraint creates a link between the housing market and borrowing capacity, a link that amplifies the response of housing demand to shocks and becomes stronger with more mortgage market liberalization. Finally, calibrated models with a housing collateral constraint explain about 90 percent of housing investment volatility in the UK economy.
Comparação de equações antropométricas para estimativa da gordura corporal em indivíduos com excesso de peso Comparison of anthropometric equations to estimate body fat in subjects with overweight

Introduction: Obesity has been the subject of several studies that highlight its prevalence, as well as risk factors. Due to the excessive accumulation of body fat lead to health problems of the people, it is important to check the amount and distribution of body fat by assessing body composition. Some prediction equations of body fat percentage (%BF) have been developed for the purpose of having the willingness practical means for the determination of %BF. Objective: To compare the equations proposed by Deurenberg et al. Lean et al. and Gomez Ambrosi et al. to determine the body fat of overweight and obese subjects, with the reference method by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Methods: We conducted 78 assessments with individuals of both sexes overweight and obese aged between 35 and 68 years. The % BF was obtained by DXA (reference method) and the equations of Deurenberg et al., Lean et al. and Gomez-Ambrosi et al. called CUNBAE (Clínica Universidad de Navarra-Body Adiposity Estimator). We used the Kolgomorov-Smirnov test for data abnormality and the accuracy of the results the paired t test, Pearson correlation, Bland & Altman analysis. Results: The equations showed no statistically significant difference from the reference value (DXA). There was high correlational (r = 0,86 to 0,91) between the % BF of equations and the reference method, and average results of the difference -0,4% to 0,1%, but with high dispersion values (range 8,4% to -7,8%). Conclusion: Although the equations used in this study have presented high dispersion values in the analysis of compliance with the reference method, the use of these may have considerable importance in estimating the body fat of large population groups.
High Glycolate Oxidase Activity Is Required for Survival of Maize in Normal Air1[OA]

A mutant in the maize (Zea mays) Glycolate Oxidase1 (GO1) gene was characterized to investigate the role of photorespiration in C4 photosynthesis. An Activator-induced allele of GO1 conditioned a seedling lethal phenotype when homozygous and had 5% to 10% of wild-type GO activity. Growth of seedlings in high CO2 (1%–5%) was sufficient to rescue the mutant phenotype. Upon transfer to normal air, the go1 mutant became necrotic within 7 d and plants died within 15 d. Providing [1-14C]glycolate to leaf tissue of go1 mutants in darkness confirmed that the substrate is inefficiently converted to 14CO2, but both wild-type and GO-deficient mutant seedlings metabolized [1-14C]glycine similarly to produce [14C]serine and 14CO2 in a 1:1 ratio, suggesting that the photorespiratory pathway is otherwise normal in the mutant. The net CO2 assimilation rate in wild-type leaves was only slightly inhibited in 50% O2 in high light but decreased rapidly and linearly with time in leaves with low GO. When go1 mutants were shifted from high CO2 to air in light, they accumulated glycolate linearly for 6 h to levels 7-fold higher than wild type and 11-fold higher after 25 h. These studies show that C4 photosynthesis in maize is dependent on photorespiration throughout seedling development and support the view that the carbon oxidation pathway evolved to prevent accumulation of toxic glycolate.
Global Encoding for Abstractive Summarization

In neural abstractive summarization, the conventional sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) model often suffers from repetition and semantic irrelevance. To tackle the problem, we propose a global encoding framework, which controls the information flow from the encoder to the decoder based on the global information of the source context. It consists of a convolutional gated unit to perform global encoding to improve the representations of the source-side information. Evaluations on the LCSTS and the English Gigaword both demonstrate that our model outperforms the baseline models, and the analysis shows that our model is capable of generating summary of higher quality and reducing repetition.
Metal−Organic Frameworks Based on Double-Bond-Coupled Di-Isophthalate Linkers with High Hydrogen and Methane Uptakes

Solvothermal reactions of Cu(NO3)2 with azoxybenzene-3,3′,5,5′-tetracarboxylic acid (H4aobtc) or trans-stilbene-3,3′,5,5′-tetracarboxylic acid (H4sbtc) give rise to two isostructural microporous metal−organic frameworks, Cu2(abtc)(H2O)2·3DMA (PCN-10, abtc = azobenzene-3,3′,5,5′-tetracarboxylate) and Cu2(sbtc)(H2O)2·3DMA (PCN-11, sbtc = trans-stilbene-3,3′,5,5′-tetracarboxylate), respectively. Both PCN-10 and PCN-11 possess significant enduring porosity with Langmuir surface areas of 1779 and 2442 m2/g (corresponding to BET surface areas of 1407 or 1931 m2/g, respectively) and contain nanoscopic cages and coordinatively unsaturated metal centers. At 77 K, 760 Torr, the excess gravimetric (volumetric) hydrogen uptake of PCN-10 is 2.34 wt % (18.0 g/L) and that of PCN-11 can reach 2.55 wt % (19.1 g/L). Gas-adsorption studies also suggest that MOFs containing C═C double bonds are more favorable than those with N═N double bond in retaining enduring porosity after thermal activation, although N═N has slightly hi.
Phytoplankton light absorption and the package effect in relation to photosynthetic and photoprotective pigments in the northern tip of Antarctic Peninsula

This study investigates the variability in the spectral absorption of phytoplankton in Antarctic waters. A large in situ data set comprising phytoplankton pigments and hyperspectral absorption was measured in the northern tip of Antarctic Peninsula during 2013 and 2014 summers at several depths. A proxy of package effect was estimated from the phytoplankton absorption spectra, independently of chlorophyll a. Variations in the concentration of photosynthetic and photoprotective pigments were discernible by changes in this metric but not in the chlorophyll a specific absorption coefficient of phytoplankton. The fucoxanthin to chlorophyll a ratio correlated positively to package effect due to an increase in cell size of phytoplankton (diatoms) and increasing fucoxanthin content per cell to maximize light harvesting in depth. The package effect was found to covary inversely with photoprotective pigments relative to chlorophyll a, partially due to their contribution to enhance absorption in the blue part of the spectrum. Using a cluster analysis (k-means algorithm) on the phytoplankton absorption spectra, we illustrate the capacity to identify a regular increase in the degree of package effect. This approach can be useful to classify the phytoplankton assemblages in Antarctic waters according to different degrees of pigment packaging, each one related to a specific pigment composition. Our results demonstrate the potential for this classification at different temporal and spatial scales from ocean color satellite data. This should improve our understanding of deviations in global bio-optical algorithms when applied to the Southern Ocean.
China’s Outward Direct Investment: Evidence from a New Micro Dataset

More than seventy percent of China’s outward direct investment (ODI), according to the Ministry of Commerce statistics, is invested in Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands. Using a unique micro-level dataset collected by the Heritage Foundation that documents individual ODI transactions, we first show that the official statistics and the Heritage Foundation measure of China’s ODI are correlated only in the sample of non-haven economies, because the official statistics treat tax havens as final destinations rather than transit points. On average, a dollar increase in the Heritage Foundation measure of ODI is associated with less than a fifteen cent increase in the official ODI among the non-haven economies, and the downward bias is even larger for investment in energy. We also document that the sharp increase in the official ODI to Hong Kong coincides with the rise in the Heritage Foundation measure of ODI to OECD countries since 2007. Finally, we show that some of the well-documented stylized facts about the pattern of China’s ODI are artifacts of the mismeasurement of the official data. For instance, contrary to previous findings, we find no evidence that China’s ODI is attracted to host countries with poor governance, and that neither cultural proximity nor geographical distance is a major determinant of China’s ODI. Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation data suggest that the resource seeking motive of China’s ODI is at least as strong as the market seeking motive.
Exploring Interactions with Physically Dynamic Bar Charts

Visualizations such as bar charts help users reason about data, but are mostly screen-based, rarely physical, and almost never physical and dynamic. This paper investigates the role of physically dynamic bar charts and evaluates new interactions for exploring and working with datasets rendered in dynamic physical form. To facilitate our exploration we constructed a 10x10 interactive bar chart and designed interactions that supported fundamental visualisation tasks, specifically; annotation, filtering, organization, and navigation. The interactions were evaluated in a user study with 17 participants. Our findings identify the preferred methods of working with the data for each task i.e. directly tapping rows to hide bars, highlight the strengths and limitations of working with physical data, and discuss the challenges of integrating the proposed interactions together into a larger data exploration system. In general, physical interactions were intuitive, informative, and enjoyable, paving the way for new explorations in physical data visualizations.
Pseudo-differential analog readout circuit for MEMS microphones performing 135dBSPL AOP and 66dBA SNR at 1Pa

An Analog Readout Circuit for Capacitive MEMS microphones is presented. Thanks to an innovative architecture, it combines the advantages in terms of robustness, cheapness, and industrialization of Single-Backplate MEMS Microphones with input dynamic range and rejection to spurs proper of Dual-Backplate solutions. A prototype has been realized in a 0. 13μm CMOS process, performing 66dBA SNR at 94dBSPL with an AOP of 135dBSPL, and consuming 180pA at 2.6 V supply voltage.
Serological Evaluation of Soluble CD44 in Renal Cancer

In this study, we examined the feasibility of using elevated serum CD44 concentration as an indicator in renal cancer. We performed enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assays using 63 sera obtained from 47 patients with renal cancer and 16 healthy controls and evaluated the clinico‐pathological parameters. The concentration of soluble CD44 standard (sCD44std), indicating the concentration of all circulating CD44 isoforms, was significantly higher in renal cancer patients than in normal individuals (745±170 ng/ml vs. 563±159 ng/ml, P=0.001). The concentration of soluble CD44 splice isoforms sharing exon v6 (sCD44v6) was also higher in the same patients (287±121 vs. 220±59, P=0.056). However, there were no correlations between the concentrations of sCD44std or sCD44v6 and clinico‐pathological parameters such as grade, stage, histological type, tumor size and growth type. The ratio of sCD44std/sCD44v6 was higher in the rapid growth‐type cancers than in the slow growth‐type cancers (3.95±2.12 vs. 2.63±0.82, P=0.014). These findings suggested that the serum concentration of unknown soluble CD44 isoforms not sharing exon v6, which are present in sCD44std, increases in patients with rapid growth‐type cancers. These findings indicated that sCD44std and sCD44v6 are not useful indicators of tumor burden and metastasis in patients with renal cancer, but that an unknown sCD44 isoform(s) plays a role in the biological behavior of the rapid growth‐type cancers.
The Role of Provision Points in Online Crowdfunding

Abstract Extending recent work on market mechanisms in new fintech offerings, we explore the implications of a key mechanism in online crowdfunding-the use of a provision point. Under a provision point mechanism (otherwise known as all-or-nothing or fixed fundraising scheme), the fundraiser, typically an entrepreneur, only receives funds pledged toward his or her campaign if a preregistered fundraising target is met, rather than keeping everything that is raised. Provision points may weaken contributors' reliance on prior capital accumulation for judging a project's potential for success, by eliminating their concerns about a partial fundraising outcome and by signaling the project or entrepreneur's quality. Yet, provision points may also induce attention to prior capital accumulation, because the materialization of one person's contribution depends explicitly on sufficient contributions from others (a network effect). We assess this tension empirically, leveraging proprietary data from a leading crowdfunding platform that allows entrepreneurs to opt into a provision point. We consider the effects of prior capital accumulation on visitors' conversion and contribution decisions, and the moderating influence of a provision point. We find that provision points weaken the association between prior capital accumulation and visitor contribution, implying a reduction in potential herd behavior.