Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring Staff Perceptions of University Identity and Activities: The Mission and Values Inventory

Higher education institutions need to ascertain whether their stakeholders understand the school's mission, vision, and values. In the present study, the psychometric properties of a mission identity and activity measure were investigated with two staff samples. Using a principal component factor analysis (varimax rotation), respondents in Sample 1 (n = 178) indicated that the institution's identity was reflective of an inclusive and innovative (10 items) university—taking risks on new programs while retaining its urban identity and tradition of respect, understanding, and personalism—and a sense of Catholic pluralism (6 items)—retaining a Catholic university identity where other faiths are included and freely expressed. University mission-driven activities and programs reflected urban/global engagement opportunities (8 items), including community-based service learning courses, study abroad programs, and international students on campus; specific institutional religious heritage (9 items), like lunch-time speaker series, hosting writers who speak on the Catholic heritage of the university, and travel programs highlighting the university's heritage; and, Catholic and other faith-formation opportunities (6 items), including worship and sacrament events, interfaith and non-Catholic opportunities, spiritual education programs. Sample 2 staff (n = 361), using a confirmatory factor analysis, yield the same factor structure. Limitations and implications are discussed.
COMPARING DELINQUENCY CAREERS IN COURT RECORDS AND SELF-REPORTS*

Most knowledge about delinquency careers is derived from official records. The main aim of this paper is to compare conclusions about delinquency careers derived from court referrals with conclusions derived from self-reports. Data are analyzed from the Seattle Social Development Project, which is a prospective longitudinal survey of 808 youths. Annual court and self-report data were available from age 11 to age 17 for eight offenses. The prevalence of offending increased with age, in both court referrals and self-reports. There was a sharp increase in the prevalence of court referrals between ages 12 and 13, probably because of the reluctance of the juvenile justice system to deal with very young offenders. The individual offending frequency increased with age in self-reports, but it stayed constant in court referrals, probably because of limitations on the annual number of referrals per offender. There was significant continuity in offending in both court referrals and self-reports, but continuity was greater in court referrals. The concentration of offending (and the importance of chronic offenders) was greater in self-reports. An early age of onset predicted a large number of offenses in both self-reports and court referrals. However, an early onset predicted a high rate of offending in court referrals but not in self-reports, possibly because very young offenders who were referred to court were an extreme group. About 37% of offenders and 3% of offenses led to a court referral. The more frequent offenders were less likely to be referred to court after each offense, but most of them were referred to court sooner or later. There was a sharp increase between ages 12 and 13 in the probability of an offender and an offense leading to a court referral. It is concluded that criminal career research based on self-reports sometimes yields different conclusions compared with research based on official records.
Light Cascaded Convolutional Neural Networks for Accurate Player Detection

Vision based player detection is important in sports applications. Accuracy, efficiency, and low memory consumption are desirable for real-time tasks such as intelligent broadcasting and automatic event classification. In this paper, we present a cascaded convolutional neural network (CNN) that satisfies all three of these requirements. Our method first trains a binary (player/non-player) classification network from labeled image patches. Then, our method efficiently applies the network to a whole image in testing. We conducted experiments on basketball and soccer games. Experimental results demonstrate that our method can accurately detect players under challenging conditions such as varying illumination, highly dynamic camera movements and motion blur. Comparing with conventional CNNs, our approach achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on both games with 1000x fewer parameters (i.e., it is light}.
Large Magellanic Cloud Planetary Nebula Morphology: Probing Stellar Populations and Evolution

Planetary nebulae (PNe) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) offer the unique opportunity to study both the population and evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars, by means of the morphological type of the nebula. Using observations from our LMC PN morphological survey, and including images available in the Hubble Space Telescope Data Archive and published chemical abundances, we find that asymmetry in PNe is strongly correlated with a younger stellar population, as indicated by the abundance of elements that are unaltered by stellar evolution (Ne, Ar, and S). While similar results have been obtained for Galactic PNe, this is the first demonstration of the relationship for extragalactic PNe. We also examine the relation between morphology and abundance of the products of stellar evolution. We found that asymmetric PNe have higher nitrogen and lower carbon abundances than symmetric PNe. Our two main results are broadly consistent with the predictions of stellar evolution if the progenitors of asymmetric PNe have on average larger masses than the progenitors of symmetric PNe. The results bear on the question of formation mechanisms for asymmetric PNe—specifically, that the genesis of PNe structure should relate strongly to the population type, and by inference the mass, of the progenitor star and less strongly on whether the central star is a member of a close binary system.
Extended-Spectrum Cephalosporin Compared to Cefazolin for Treatment of Klebsiella pneumoniae-Caused Liver Abscess

ABSTRACT From January 1995 to May 2000, a total of 107 adults with liver abscess due to Klebsiella pneumoniae admitted at a large medical center in northern Taiwan were reviewed. Patients were considered to have received cefazolin or an extended-spectrum cephalosporin if they received at least 3 days of that antibiotic within the first 5 days of hospitalization. Fifty-nine (55.1%) patients received cefazolin, and 48 (44.9%) patients received an extended-spectrum cephalosporin. The demographic data, clinical features, severities of illness, and rates of early drainage for the two groups were comparable. However, the rates of developing complications for the two groups were significantly different (37.3 versus 6.3%, respectively; P < 0.001). Furthermore, six independent factors preventing severe complications following liver abscess due to K. pneumoniae were identified: normal platelet count, alkaline phosphatase less than 300 U/liter, no gas formation in the abscess, APACHE III score less than 40, use of an extended-spectrum cephalosporin, and early drainage. In conclusion, cefazolin therapy may be suboptimal for patients with liver abscess due to K. pneumoniae despite active in vitro susceptibility. Use of an extended-spectrum cephalosporin and early drainage for patients with liver abscess due to K. pneumoniae are suggested.
Instructional Costs of Inclusive Schooling

Relatively little is known about the relative costs of inclusion, particularly as they compare to more prevalent self-contained and/or segregated out-of-district placement options. This investigation was conducted to report longitudinal cost data associated with one district's evolution toward more inclusive schooling practices. Results of archival data analysis revealed: (a) that District costs were significantly less on an annual basis relative to comparable costs for out-of-district services; (b) a significant increase in the number of students with severe disabilities over the 5-year period, with District costs still well below that of out-of-district services; (c) a doubling in contractual (related services) costs over the 5-year period, linked most directly to the dramatic increase in the number of students with more intensive needs; and (d) a significant increase in the number of and reliance on para-professional staff for supporting classified and nonclassified students in general education.
Narrative Styles of Palestinian Bedouin Adults and Children

This paper contrasts natural oral narratives of Bedouin adults and children (ages 8- 11) in the Negev Desert (South Israel). The analysis showed some striking stylistic differences, on both developmental and genre-related grounds. Adults, narrating tribal legends in a stylized, performed idiom. used distinct styles for the textual levels of orientation, plotline, and direct speech; the children told folktales and anecdotes in a relatively undifferentiated, near-conversational style. Adults set out from a concrete, non-past stage and shifted to a past plotline; whereas the childrens folkloristic openings, in the distant past, drifted to a concrete, relived present. There were significant differences in rhetorical means for perspectivizing, information packaging. connectivity, and tempo control. The children's narrative style was found to be much "flatter" and less evaluative than the adults, in keeping with developmental findings. However, some of the older children displayed global text organization, using diverse cohesive means typical of the folktale. This may show these children to be more sensitive to global genre structure than to local rhetorical means.
Application of ICA to realistically simulated 1H-MRS data

1H‐MRS signals from brain tissues capture information on in vivo brain metabolism and neuronal biomarkers. This study aims to advance the use of independent component analysis (ICA) for spectroscopy data by objectively comparing the performance of ICA and LCModel in analyzing realistic data that mimics many of the known properties of in vivo data.
In Praise of Amateurism: A Friendly Critique of Moje's “Call for Change” in Secondary Literacy

In an October 2008 JAAL Commentary, Moje took issue with the teaching of generic reading strategies in the middle and high school content areas. She argued for teachers to provide “disciplinary literacy” instruction, focusing on the specific kinds of reading and writing that go on in content areas. The present article concurs with that argument to a point. However, the author questions Moje's use of the term disciplinary to describe the kinds of instruction that content area teachers provide—or should provide—at the secondary level. Middle and high school students are better served, the author concludes, by learning to read, write, and argue using relatively nonspecialized language. [Notes. Find the original commentary by Elizabeth Moje, along with a link to an explanatory podcast, at http:dx.doi. org10.1598JAAL. 52.2. 1. See also Moje's response to Heller in this issue at http:dx.doi. org10.1598JAAL. 54.4. 5, and continuing discussion on Heller's blog at http:literacyforamateurs.blogspot. com. ]
Professional Beliefs about Parents of Children with Mental and Emotional Disabilities: A Cross-Discipline Comparison

The views of social workers, child psychiatrists, and psychologists about parents of children with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders were compared in this study. The Providers’ Beliefs About Parents questionnaire was used to measure views about parents’ competence, parents’ pathology, parents’ credibility, parents’ role in the etiology of children's problems, information sharing with parents, giving explicit directives to parents about how to help their children, and related child mental health issues such as use of psychotropic medication with children and adolescents and perceived importance of research-based knowledge about child and adolescent psychopathology. Variables most associated with parent-friendly beliefs and attitudes were endorsement of a neuropsychological orientation and familiarity with parent support groups. Views of respondents did not differ by ethnicity, gender, or parental status. Child psychiatrists were most in agreement with parent-friendly attitudes and beliefs, clinical social workers were least in agreement, and psychologists were midway between the other two groups.
Pronunciation assessment via a comparison-based system

In this paper, we present preliminary results on applying a comparison-based framework to the task of pronunciation scoring. The comparison-based system works by aligning a student’s utterance with a teacher’s utterance via dynamic time warping (DTW). Features that describe the degree of mis-alignment are extracted from the aligned path and the distance matrix. We focus on a dataset in Levantine Arabic, a low-resource language for which there is not enough automatic speech recognition (ASR) capability available. Three different speech representations are investigated: MFCCs, Gaussian posteriorgrams, and English phoneme state posteriorgrams decoded on Levantine data. Experimental results show that the system can improve both correlation and mean squared error between machine predicted scores and human ratings compared to a template-based system. Index Terms: pronunciation scoring, dynamic time warping, posteriorgrams
A Theory of Effective Computer-Based Instruction for Adults

This study presents a theory of critical components that affect the effectiveness of computer-based instruction (CBI) for adults. The theory was developed to provide a framework for research to explain or predict effective learning by adults using a desktop computer. The five conclusions drawn from this theory are as follows: (a) the characteristics of self-directedness and computer self-efficacy of adult learners play an important role in designing CBI for adults; (b) CBI design is interwoven with the units of self-directedness, computer self-efficacy, learning goal level, instructional design, and external support; (c) learning goal level affects instructional design strategy and the instructional control component of CBI design; (d) external support and instructional support are needed to provide a positive CBI experience; and (e) the theory draws together the isolated variables researchers consider important in the adult learning process and aligns them to provide effective CBI.
The Role of Social Support in Adaptation to Cancer and to Survival

Social support continues to be studied by many investigators as a variable associated with adaptation to the stress of cancer and its treatment. Recent selected studies are reviewed and limitations of the studies are noted, including the predominance of cross-sectional designs, lack of agreement on instruments to use to assess social supports and outcome measures, and the dearth of substantive models for guiding research and interventions. Although studies have also explored the relationship between support and survival, results are inconclusive. Future studies should include longitudinal designs, analyze support as an interactional process based on mutual influence, and explore the relationship between social support and the domains of quality of life (in addition to mood).
Predicting Risk of Malignancy in Adnexal Masses

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the accuracy of preoperative ultrasonography, serum CA 125, and patient demographics as a means of predicting risk of malignancy in women with a ultrasonographically confirmed adnexal mass. METHODS: Tumor morphology derived from ultrasonographic images, tumor size, tumor bilaterality, serum CA 125, and patient demographics were evaluated preoperatively in 395 patients undergoing surgery from 2001 to 2008. Tumor morphology was classified as complex, solid, or cystic. Preoperative findings were compared with tumor histologic findings at the time of surgery. Multivariable classification and regression tree analysis were used to identify a group of patients at high risk of ovarian malignancy. RESULTS: One hundred eighteen patients had ovarian cancer, 13 patients had ovarian tumors of borderline malignancy, and 264 had benign ovarian tumors. Multivariable classification and regression tree analysis defined women at high risk of ovarian malignancy as those with an adnexal mass having complex or solid morphology and a serum CA 125 value greater than 35 units/mL. This definition had a positive predictive value of 84.7% and a negative predictive value of 92.4% and correctly identified 77.3% of patients with stage I and stage II ovarian cancer and 98.6% of patients with stage III and stage IV ovarian cancer. CONCLUSION: Patients with solid or complex ovarian tumors and an elevated serum CA 125 level (greater than 35 units/mL) are at high risk of ovarian malignancy. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
The Dominant View of Popularization: Conceptual Problems, Political Uses

The culturally-dominant view of the popularization of science rests on a two-stage model: first, scientists develop genuine knowledge; second, popularizers spread streamlined versions to the public. At best, popularization is seen as a low-status educational task of `appropriate simplification'. At worst, it is `pollution' — the distortion of science by outsiders. This paper shows that the dominant view suffers from conceptual problems, and greatly oversimplifies the process. But, despite these weaknesses, the dominant view serves scientists (and others who derive their authority from technical expertise) as a resource in public discourse, providing a repertoire of rhetorical devices for interpreting science for outsiders, and a powerful tool for sustaining the social hierarchy of expertise.
A Homogenization Technique for the Boltzmann Equation for Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition

We present a homogenization technique for rarefied gas flow over a microstructured surface consisting of patterns of periodic features. The length scale of the model domain is comparable to the mean free path of the molecules, while the scale of the surface patterns is much smaller. The flow is modeled by a system of linear Boltzmann equations with a diffusive boundary condition at the patterned surface. The resulting homogenized boundary condition holds at a virtual flat surface and incorporates the microscopic geometry information about the surface structure on the macroscopic level. Numerical results validate the approach. The setup models low pressure chemical vapor deposition processes in the manufacturing of integrated circuits.
The Supersingular Locus of the Shimura Variety for GU(1, s)

Abstract In this paper we study the supersingular locus of the reduction modulo $p$ of the Shimura variety for $\text{GU}\left( 1,\,s \right)$ in the case of an inert prime $p$ . Using Dieudonné theory we define a stratification of the corresponding moduli space of $p$ -divisible groups. We describe the incidence relation of this stratification in terms of the Bruhat–Tits building of a unitary group. In the case of $\text{GU}\left( 1,\,2 \right)$ , we show that the supersingular locus is equidimensional of dimension 1 and is of complete intersection. We give an explicit description of the irreducible components and their intersection behaviour.
Molecular behavior adapts to context: heparanase functions as an extracellular matrix-degrading enzyme or as a T cell adhesion molecule, depending on the local pH

Migration of lymphocytes into inflammatory sites requires their adhesion to the vascular endothelium and subendothelial extracellular matrix (ECM). The ensuing penetration of the ECM is associated with the expression of ECM-degrading enzymes, such as endo-beta-D glucuronidase (heparanase), which cleaves heparan sulfate (HS) proteoglycans. We now report that, depending on the local pH, a mammalian heparanase can function either as an enzyme or as an adhesion molecule. At relatively acidified pH conditions, heparanase performs as an enzyme, degrading HS. In contrast, at the hydrogen ion concentration of a quiescent tissue, heparanase binds specifically to HS molecules without degrading them, and thereby anchors CD4+ human T lymphocytes. Thus, the local state of a tissue can regulate the activities of heparanase and can determine whether the molecule will function as an enzyme or as a proadhesive molecule.
The dative alternation in Danish and Polish – A learners perspective

Abstract Three experiments investigating how two groups of adult Polish learners of Danish as a foreign language acquire the Danish dative alternation are reported. Experiment 1 is a speeded acceptability judgment task, which shows that Group 1 has the same pattern as native speakers i.e. slower responses to the dispreffered new-given NP-constructions, but no givenness effect with the PP-constructions. Experiment 2 shows that Group 2 also have acquired this pattern, even though earlier research suggests that the givenness asymmetry in the dative alternation is hard to learn. Experiment 3 shows that even in Polish there is a givenness asymmetry, such that the given–new order is clearly preferred in the NP-construction, but less so in the PP-construction. The rapid acquisition of the Danish pattern could thus be explained by Polish having the same pattern. In short: Both Polish and Danish have a givenness asymmetry in the dative alternation, which could explain why Polish learners of Danish in both groups behave almost like native Danish speakers.
Perceptions of effectiveness, fairness and feedback of assessment methods: a study in higher education

This paper draws upon a broader piece of research aimed at investigating assessment in higher education. It focuses upon the perceptions of undergraduates about issues of effectiveness, fairness and feedback, particularly in regard to the so-called learner-centred methods. In total, 378 undergraduate students participated in the study at the University of Minho (254) and at the University of Lisbon (124). Data were collected through questionnaires. Findings suggest that the most frequent assessment methods are written tests, oral presentations in group and project work. Participants who are assessed by methods which require their active involvement view assessment as a fairer and more effective process than students who are assessed by more traditional methods such as examinations and written tests. However, the idea of conflict in assessment emerged as a key distinctive feature associated with learner-centred assessment methods such as project work and portfolios. Implications of the findings for developing learner-centred methods in higher education are discussed.