Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Academic Probation, Time Management, and Time Use in a College Success Course

Effective time management often undergirds students’ success in college, and many postsecondary learning centers offer services to help students assess and improve this aspect of their learning skills. In the context of a college success course, we gathered insights from assignments to consider various facets of students’ time-related behaviors and attitudes. Specifically, we examined a range of indicators of time management (i.e., setting goals and priorities, mechanics of time management, preference for organization, and procrastination) and use (i.e., total hours tracked in various categories, patterns of time use during a seven-day period). Implications for practice derive from the tendencies for the group of enrolled students as a whole as well as the differences between students who were and were not on academic probation.
The clinical evaluation committee in a large multicenter phase 3 trial of drotrecogin alfa (activated) in patients with severe sepsis (PROWESS): Role, methodology, and results*

ObjectiveIn the multinational PROWESS trial, drotrecogin alfa (activated) significantly reduced mortality rate in patients with severe sepsis compared with placebo. The use of large multiple-center trials can potentially complicate interpretation of results in severe sepsis populations because of variability in medical attitudes and practices and the frequency of confounding events such as protocol violations. The objective of this study was to perform a blinded, critical, integrated review of data from the 1,690 severe sepsis patients from 164 medical centers enrolled in the PROWESS trial using a Clinical Evaluation Committee. DesignBlinded, critical, integrated review of data. SettingParticipating sites. PatientsThe 1,690 severe sepsis patients from 164 medical centers enrolled in the PROWESS trial. InterventionsWe performed analyses of the optimal cohort, defined as patients who had full compliance with the protocol, had evidence of an infection, and received adequate anti-infective therapy. We also performed other analyses, including significant underlying disorders, life support measures, and causes of death. Measurements and Main ResultsThe optimal cohort of 81.4% of the intention-to-treat population [drotrecogin alfa (activated), n = 695; placebo, n = 680] had similar baseline severity of illness between the two groups, a similar pharmacodynamic effect, and a relative risk of death estimate consistent with that observed in the overall PROWESS trial (0.83, 95% confidence interval 0.69–0.99 vs. 0.806, 95% confidence interval 0.69–0.94). A beneficial effect of drotrecogin alfa (activated) similarly was observed in patients with significant underlying disorders (0.73, 95% confidence interval 0.57–0.93) who were more severely ill and had a higher percentage of patients forgoing life-sustaining therapy. In contrast with the original investigator determinations, a benefit associated with drotrecogin alfa (activated) treatment in urinary tract infection adjudicated by the Clinical Evaluation Committee was observed. ConclusionsThe survival benefit associated with drotrecogin alfa (activated) use was consistent with the results of the overall trial regardless of whether patients met criteria of the optimal cohort or had a significant underlying disorder.
The perception and interpretation of contrastive focus by Polish children and adults

Abstract The study aimed at testing Polish children’s and adult’s ability to identify and interpret three different contrastive focus types; narrow final focus, narrow non-final focus, and broad focus. In the first experiment eight-year-old children (N = 15) and young adults (N = 15, age range 19–23) were asked to spot the focus in short utterances, and produce contrastive elements in response to three types of inputs with three distinct focus types. In the second experiment eight and four year old children (N = 14 and N = 15, respectively) and young adults (N = 16) listened to two types of utterances – with final contrastive and non-final contrastive focus and were asked to select a picture that best matched the implied meaning of the auditory input. Although in each group there were individuals with ceiling results and chance results, on average the adults outperformed the children in all the tasks. Implications of the findings for testing prosody development are discussed.
Hybrid PN-ZP-DMT Scheme for Spectrum-Efficient Optical Communications and Its Application to SI-POF

In this paper, a novel discrete multi-tone (DMT) scheme is proposed for optical communications. Instead of the traditional cyclic prefix, a hybrid structure of pseudonoise (PN) sequence and zero-padding (ZP) sequence is proposed to serve as guard interval for the DMT transmission in order to achieve higher spectrum efficiency. The proposed PN-ZP-DMT scheme directly reuses PN sequence for channel estimation. The proposed PN-ZP-DMT scheme is then applied to plastic optical fiber (POF) transmission systems. Compared to the classical DMT block-based channel estimation and time-frequency pilot-based channel estimation, the PN sequence-based channel estimation improves both performance and spectrum efficiency in POF. The optimal selection of PN sequence length is investigated. Simulation results show that the PN sequence-based channel estimation can approach the optimal performance. Moreover, some practical features of PN-ZP-DMT transmission over POF such as system complexity and influence of time synchronization errors are studied. Finally, a PN-ZP-DMT transmission with 1.49-Gbps net rate is implemented in the low-cost 50 m step index-POF system which eventually proves the effectiveness of the proposal.
Sensitively Temperature-Dependent Spin–Orbit Coupling in SrIrO 3 Thin Films

Spin–orbit coupling induces nonperturbation effects in many recently developed novel fields including topological insulators and spin–orbit assistant Mott insulators. In this study, strongly temperature-dependent spin–orbit coupling is observed at a low temperature in a 5d strongly correlated compound, SrIrO3. With an increase in temperature, the rate of increase in Rashba coefficient is about 30–45%/K, nearly 100 times over that observed in semiconductor heterostructures. Microscopically, the large increase in Rashba coefficient is attributed to the significant evolution of effective Lande g factor with temperature, whose mechanism is discussed qualitatively. Sensitively temperature-dependent spin–orbit coupling in SrIrO3 might be applied in spintronic devices.
Becoming Famous Overnight : Limits on the Ability to Avoid Unconscious Influences of the Past

Nonfamous names presented once in an experiment are mistakenly judged as famous 24 hr later. On an immediate test, no such false fame occurs. This phenomenon parallels the sleeper effect found in studies of persuasion. People may escape the unconscious effects of misleading information by recollecting its source, raising the criterion level of familiarity required for judgments of fame, or by changing from familiarity to a more analytic basis for judgment. These strategies place constraints on the likelihood of sleeper effects. We discuss these results as the unconscious use of the past as a tool vs its conscious use as an object of reflection. Conscious recollection of the source of information does not always occur spontaneously when information is used as a tool in judgment. Rather, conscious recollection is a separate act.
Analyzing the Co-evolution of Network Structure and Content Generation in Online Social Networks

With the rapid growth of online social network sites (SNS), it has become imperative to investigate what drives content production on these platforms. We posit that the content producing behavior of users is influenced not just by their personal attributes like age and gender, but also by their social network structure. However, it is empirically challenging to estimate network structure and behavior through traditional approaches as the social network structure and the content production behavior influence the evolution of each other. In the current study, we adapt an actor-based continuous-time model to jointly estimate the co-evolution of the users' social network structure and their content production behavior using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based simulation approach. We apply our model to an online social network of university students and uncover strong evidence for both social influence and homophilous friend selection. Interestingly, we find that individuals befriend others who are similar in content production during the friendship formation stage, but gradually diverge in their content production behavior from these similar others over time. We offer potential explanations for this phenomenon and emphasize the importance of these findings for platform owners and product marketers.
Engajamento escolar: adaptação e evidências de validade da escala EAE-4DE

Engajamento escolar refere-se ao nivel de envolvimento do aluno em atividades escolares, envolvendo quatro aspectos: comportamental, cognitivo, afetivo e agente. Este estudo objetivou adaptar e obter evidencias de validade da escala EAE–4DE para o contexto brasileiro. Participaram desta pesquisa 337 alunos do 5o e 6o anos do Ensino Fundamental de escolas publicas e privadas. Os dados foram submetidos a ana- lise fatorial exploratoria com o metodo de extracao dos principais eixos fatoriais. O metodo das Analises Paralelas foi empregado, o que resultou em quatro fatores que explicaram 52,08% da variância. Os fatores foram teoricamente coerentes com as quatro dimensoes do engajamento escolar previstas na escala original e apresentaram indices Alfa de Cronbach de aceitaveis (0,62 para o cognitivo) a bons (0,74, 0,78 e 0,81 para agente, comportamental e afetivo, respectivamente). Destaca-se a utilidade da escala para rastreio e monitoramento do engajamento na escola, mas recomenda-se cautela na interpretacao do fator “engajamento cognitivo”.
On the Deterministic-Code Capacity of the Two-User Discrete Memoryless Arbitrarily Varying General Broadcast Channel With Degraded Message Sets

An inner bound on the deterministic-code capacity region of the two-user discrete memoryless arbitrarily varying general broadcast channel (AVGBC) was characterized by Jahn, assuming that the common message capacity is nonzero; however, he did not indicate how one could decide whether the latter capacity is positive. Csiszaacuter and Narayan's result for the single-user arbitrarily varying channel (AVC) establishes the missing part in Jahn's characterization. Nevertheless, being based on Ahlswede's elimination technique, Jahn's characterization is not applicable for symmetrizable channels under state constraint. Here, the various notions of symmetrizability for the two-user broadcast AVC are defined. Sufficient non-symmetrizability condition that renders the common message capacity of the AVGBC positive is identified using an approach different from Jahn's. The decoding rules we use establish an achievable region under state and input constraints for the family of degraded message sets codes over the AVGBC
Three models of transparency in ethnographic research: Naming places, naming people, and sharing data

Ethnographic research consists of multiple methodological approaches, including short- and/or long-term participant observation, interviews, photographs, videos, and group field work, to name a few. Yet, it is commonly practiced as a solitary endeavor and primary data is not often subject to scholarly scrutiny. In this paper, I suggest a model in which to understand the different ways in which ethnographies can be transparent – naming places, naming people, and sharing data – and the varied decisions ethnographers have made with regard to them: whether to name a region, city or specific neighborhood, name primary participants or public officials, and to share interview guides, transcripts, or different kinds of field notes. In doing so, this paper highlights how decisions regarding transparency are part of an ethnographer’s methodological toolkit, and should be made on a case-by-case basis depending on the who, what, where, when and why of our research.
TAK1 (MAP3K7) Signaling Regulates Hematopoietic Stem Cells through TNF-Dependent and -Independent Mechanisms

A cytokine/stress signaling kinase Tak1 (Map3k7) deficiency is known to impair hematopoietic progenitor cells. However, the role of TAK1 signaling in the stem cell function of the hematopoietic system is not yet well defined. Here we characterized hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) harboring deletion of Tak1 and its activators, Tak1 binding proteins 1 and 2 (Tab1 and Tab2) using a competitive transplantation assay in a mouse model. Tak1 single or Tab1/Tab2 double deletions completely eliminated the reconstitution activity of HSCs, whereas Tab1 or Tab2 single deletion did not cause any abnormality. Tak1 single or Tab1/Tab2 double deficient lineage-negative, Sca-1+, c-Kit+ (LSK) cells did not proliferate and underwent cell death. We found that Tnfr1 deficiency restored the reconstitution activity of Tak1 deficient bone marrow cells for 6–18 weeks. However, the reconstitution activity of Tak1- and Tnfr1-double deficient bone marrow cells declined over the long term, and the number of phenotypically identified long-term hematopoietic stem cells were diminished. Our results indicate that TAB1- or TAB2-dependent activation of TAK1 is required for maintenance of the hematopoietic system through two mechanisms: one is prevention of TNF-dependent cell death and the other is TNF-independent maintenance of long-term HSC.
A Scale for Differentiating Affective and Cognitive Nature Connection Dimensions, Externally Validated in Terms of Self-Transcendence and Environmental Concern

Nature connection has important predictive power for many facets of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Yet up to now, there has been no theory-based measurement to differentiate the affective and cognitive dimensions of nature connection. We followed four-step strategy to develop such an instrument. In the first step, we evaluated items from established scales, based on semantic analysis, to identify possible items to assign to affective and cognitive dimensions. In the second step, we quantitatively validated the chosen items by applying the new scales in a quantitative questionnaire survey completed by German university students (n = 237, Mage = 22.12, SD = 3.09). In the third step, we used confirmatory factor analysis to empirically separate the dimensions. Finally, in the fourth step, we conducted correlations and structural equation modeling between the newly proposed cognitive and affective nature connection dimensions and the external validation variables self-transcendence and environmental concern. Affective nature connection showed higher correlations with self-transcendence and environmental concern than its cognitive counterpart. Furthermore, self-transcendence predicted 6% of the cognitive dimension of nature connection and 20% of the affective dimension. Although both dimensions correlated significantly with each other, only affective nature connection could predict (13%) environmental concern. Moreover, self-transcendence showed a significant indirect effect on environmental concern via affective nature connection. We successfully developed a new instrument that independently measures the cognitive dimension and affective dimension of nature connection.
Culture and Depression: A Cross-Cultural Meta-Analysis of the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale

Cultural differences in the prevalence and symptomatology of depression have been well documented. Eastern samples typically display lower prevalence rates of depression coupled with greater reporting of somatic symptoms, while Western samples have higher prevalence rates and report more psychological symptoms. Scholars have argued that both collectivism and economic factors might explain these cultural differences. Less emphasis has been placed on cultural differences of depression levels, and whether dimensions of cultural variability and country-level factors can explain any observed differences. This study reports a cross-cultural meta-analysis of studies using the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), examining mean scores of the SDS across 89,989 individuals from 30 countries. As expected, clinical samples showed higher depression scores compared to general population samples. Notably, income inequality (indexed by the Gini index) was weakly related to SDS scores, with higher levels of depression observed in nations with lower levels of inequality. In addition, SDS scores were not related to measures of collectivism. The results suggest that while economic factors do influence depression levels in a given society, differences in the emphasis societies place on the interdependence between individuals and the group do not exert any influence.
New insights into nocturnal nucleation

Abstract. Formation of new aerosol particles by nucleation and growth is a significant source of aerosols in the atmosphere. New particle formation events usually take place during daytime, but in some locations they have been observed also at night. In the present study we have combined chamber experiments, quantum chemical calculations and aerosol dynamics models to study nocturnal new particle formation. All our approaches demonstrate, in a consistent manner, that the oxidation products of monoterpenes play an important role in nocturnal nucleation events. By varying the conditions in our chamber experiments, we were able to reproduce the very different types of nocturnal events observed earlier in the atmosphere. The exact strength, duration and shape of the events appears to be sensitive to the type and concentration of reacting monoterpenes, as well as the extent to which the monoterpenes are exposed to ozone and potentially other atmospheric oxidants.
Bad or Mad: The Psychiatrist in the Sentencing Process

Circumstances in which presentence psychiatric reports are requested and their use and influence on judicial sentencing are examined through both offender histories of men convicted of a sex offense and interviews with judges. Offenders for whom a report was ordered and those sentenced without a report were compared. The seriousness of the offense, previous record, and age of victim were among factors significantly related to ordering a report. The presence of a report did not generally affect the type or length of the sentence. The recommendation of the psychiatrist and the sentence corresponded in only half the cases, a finding lower than that expected from research with probation reports and some scholarly opinion.
Multichannel Acoustic Echo Cancellation and Noise Reduction in Reverberant Environments using the Transfer-Function GSC

In this paper, we present a multi-channel acoustic echo canceller that is integrated into the transfer-function generalized sidelobe canceller (TF-GSC). The proposed scheme consists of a primary TF-GSC, for dealing with the noise interferences, and a secondary modified TF-GSC, for dealing with the echo cancellation. The secondary TF-GSC includes an echo canceller embedded within a replica of the primary TF-GSC components. Experimental results demonstrate improved performance compared to cascade schemes of acoustic echo cancellation and adaptive beamforming.
RECQL1 and WRN DNA repair helicases: potential therapeutic targets and proliferative markers against cancers

RECQL1 and WRN helicases in the human RecQ helicase family participate in maintaining genome stability, DNA repair, replication, and recombination pathways in the cell cycle. They are expressed highly in rapidly proliferating cells and tumor cells, suggesting that they have important roles in the replication of a genome. Although mice deficient in these helicases are indistinguishable from wild-type mice, their embryonic fibroblasts are sensitive to DNA damage. In tumor cells, silencing the expression of RECQL1 or WRN helicase by RNA interference induces mitotic catastrophe that eventually kills tumor cells at the mitosis stage of the cell cycle. By contrast, the same gene silencing by cognate small RNA (siRNA) never kills normal cells, although cell growth is slightly delayed. These findings indicate that RECQL1 and WRN helicases are ideal molecular targets for cancer therapy. The molecular mechanisms underlying these events has been studied extensively, which may help development of anticancer drugs free from adverse effects by targeting DNA repair helicases RECQL1 and WRN. As expected, the anticancer activity of conventional genotoxic drugs is significantly augmented by combined treatment with RECQL1- or WRN-siRNAs that prevents DNA repair in cancer cells. In this review, we focus on studies that clarified the mechanisms that lead to the specific killing of cancer cells and introduce efforts to develop anticancer RecQ-siRNA drugs free from adverse effects.
Using Agents to Improve International Maritime Transport Security

Agent-based techniques have the potential to improve the security of international maritime transport threatened by a steep rise of maritime piracy. We have demonstrated that a randomized route-selection strategy resulting from a normal two-player game formulation of the transit problem can decrease the number of attacks and the payoff accumulated by pirates. Coordinating the movement of patrol and transit vessels without a central authority requires techniques for semi-cooperative planning and coalition formation. With regard to existing applications of agent-based techniques, the maritime domain seems currently under-represented compared to other traffic and transportation domains. This work is a first step in addressing the situation and bringing this important domain into the focus of researchers in the multiagent systems field.
Improving a Web Usability Inspection Technique Using Qualitative and Quantitative Data from an Observational Study

We have proposed a checklist-based usability inspection technique (WDP - Web Design Perspectives-Based Usability Evaluation) specific for Web applications’ usability evaluation and we are following an experimentation-based methodology to support its development and improvement. This paper describes an observational study conducted, aimed at eliciting how inspectors apply the WDP technique. We discuss the quantitative and qualitative results of the result and their impact on improving the WDP technique. We analyzed the qualitative data using the procedures from the Grounded Theory (GT) method.
Social Transfers and Child Poverty in European Countries: Pro-poor Targeting or Pro-child Targeting?

Abstract Children are generally at a higher risk of poverty than the population as a whole, although the mechanisms that lead to their socio-economic vulnerability vary widely across European countries. This paper aims to further our understanding of to what extent cross-country variations in child poverty risk are associated with different ways of social transfer targeting: pro-poor versus pro-child targeting. In particular, we address the potential impact on child poverty of countries’ intent to target transfers at lower incomes and children across 30 European countries. Using a multilevel framework, we find that not only the size of the transfer system, but also the form of targeting matters in reducing child poverty. Specifically, the countries’ intent to target children matters even more than their intent to target lower incomes, in terms of reducing child poverty. Moreover, the prevalence of multi-generational households in a country seems to be associated with an attempt to protect against child poverty in countries with lower levels of pro-child targeting.