Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The management of psychosocial risk factors amongst rural development workers in india

Work stress research has traditionally been limited to industrialized nations and urban settings, with a paucity of studies that have focused on workers in rural contexts and/or in developing economies.This study examined the applicability of the Job Demands–Resources Model of burnout among a sample of Indian rural development workers (N=194). Self–administered surveys measuring job demands, job resources, burnout, psychological distress and job satisfaction were distributed to participants. Job demands was the significant main variable accounting for exhaustion whereas control and rewards predominantly accounted for cynicism and job satisfaction respectively. Both demands and rewards were equally important in accounting for levels of psychological distress. Significant interaction effects were also found between job demands and job resources, and several outcome variables.The practical management implication is to enhance worker well–being by either reducing work demands or increasing job resources, especially levels of control and rewards. Focus should be on women and older workers who are particularly vulnerable to exhaustion and cynicism.
Determinantes das intenções de compra de viagens online: Uma abordagem holística

Objetivos | A compra de viagens online tem atraido investigadores dado o seu significativo crescimento, originando uma crescente literatura nesta area de investigacao. Contudo, estudos sobre o que motiva os consumidores a comprar online tem sido fragmentados. De facto, os estudos existentes em grande parte baseiam-se no Modelo de Aceitacao de Tecnologia (Davis, 1985, 1989), na Teoria da Acao Refletida (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), na Teoria do Comportamento Planeado (Ajzen, 1991), ou na Teoria de Difusao de Inovacoes (Rogers, 1995). Uma extensa revisao da literatura permitiu revelar a existencia de uma falta de estudos que integrem todas as teorias para uma melhor compreensao da compra de viagens online. Deste modo, baseado em literatura relevante na area de turismo e do comportamento do consumidor, este estudo propoe e testa empiricamente um modelo integrado para explorar quais os fatores que afetam a intencao de comprar viagens online. Mais, propoe um novo constructo, designado de envolvimento com os social media, definido como o nivel de interesse ou ligacao emocional com os social media e que examina a sua relacao com a intencao de compra de viagens online. O modelo proposto e composto por dez constructos, dos quais tres sao multidimensionais. Suportadas pela literatura existente foram formuladas 18 hipoteses de investigacao.
Shame and domestic violence: treatment perspectives for perpetrators from self psychology and affect theory*

Perpetrators of domestic violence have traditionally been seen as an undeserving client group when considered in relation to the victims of their violence. Apart from anger management and psycho-educational groups for male perpetrators, very few other treatment options have been suggested. In treating couples, Goldner (1998) has advocated holding men accountable for their violence while at the same time utilizing concepts from attachment theory to provide treatment for them. This paper draws mainly upon self psychology and the affect theory literature to better understand the underlying dynamics of violent behaviour in intimate relationships, with particular reference to the role of shame as a precursor of violence. Qualitative data linking shame and violence were drawn from interviews with men attending a group for their violent behaviour. I argue that treatment may focus at the level of shame and its connection to violence, and that this may require working with the individual perpetrator, rather than the couple, in order to adequately address the issue of violence. I suggest some general guidelines for working with violent men that incorporate aspects of shame.
Multidimensional and Adaptive Non-Intrusive Anomaly Detection in Network Services

We propose the analysis of signal-based metrics with a combination of wavelet transform and Mahalanobis dis- tance to automatically detect anomalies in network services. In contrast to conventional detection methods like thresholding, our technique adapts automatically to gradual changes in the measured signals and deals well with periodical load patterns. It supports multidimensional analysis to improve reliability and significance of the detection and provides confidence values, which are the base for judging the anomaly. Keywords—Anomaly detection, Mahalanobis distance, net- works, wavelet
Performance Funding for Higher Education

Since the 1970s, federal and state policy-makers have become increasingly concerned with improving higher education performance. In this quest, state performance funding for higher education has become widely used. As of June 2014, twenty-six states were operating performance funding programs and four more have programs awaiting implementation. This article reviews the forms, extent, origins, implementation, impacts (intended and unintended), and policy prospects of performance funding. Performance funding has become quite widespread with formidable political support, yet it has also experienced considerable implementation vicissitudes, with many programs being discontinued and even those that have survived encountering substantial obstacles and unintended impacts. Although evidence suggests that performance funding does stimulate colleges and universities to substantially change their policies and practices, it is yet unclear whether performance funding improves student outcomes. The article concludes by advancing policy recommendations for addressing the implementation obstacles and unintended side effects associated with performance funding.
Use of herbicides to control alligatorweed and restore native plants in managed marshes

Marsh management is used to improve the quality of wetland habitats for a variety of waterfowl and other waterbirds. However, alien plants, such as alligatorweed (Alternanthera philoxeroides (Mart.) Griseb. ), may impact success of marsh management by competing with and displacing important native plants. In managed marshes, we tested effects of application rate (high, medium, and low) and timing (April and July) of two herbicides (triclopyr amine and imazapyr) on controlling alligatorweed and restoring native plants. In the year of treatment, imazapyr controlled alligatorweed better than triclopyr amine when applied in April, but the herbicides were equally effective when applied in July. High application rate of herbicides in April controlled alligatorweed better than the low application rate, but application rates of herbicides in July did not influence control. In the year of treatment, application of triclopyr amine resulted in greater native plant biomass than imazapyr. High application rate of herbicides in April resulted in greater native plant biomass in the year of treatment than low application rate, but native plant biomass did not differ among rates of herbicides applied in July. One year after treatment, the high application rate of herbicides resulted in less alligatorweed than the low application rate, and July applications of either herbicide generally controlled alligatorweed better than April applications. Application of imazapyr in July resulted in greater biomass of native plants one year after treatment than either imazapyr or triclopyr amine applied in April. This study demonstrates that single herbicide applications can be effective at controlling alligatorweed, and that these applications can have immediate and longer-term benefits for restoring native plants to managed marshes.
Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide and Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide Inhibit Antigen-Induced Apoptosis of Mature T Lymphocytes by Inhibiting Fas Ligand Expression1

Apoptosis in T and B lymphocytes is a major element controlling the immune response. The Ag-induced cell death (AICD) in T cells is a main mechanism for maintaining peripheral tolerance and for limiting an ongoing immune response. AICD is initiated by Ag re-engagement of the TCR and is mediated through Fas/Fas ligand (FasL) interactions. Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and the structurally related pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) are two multifunctional neuropeptides present in the lymphoid microenvironment that act primarily as anti-inflammatory agents. In the present study we investigated whether VIP and PACAP affect AICD in mature peripheral T cells and T cell hybridomas. VIP and PACAP reduce in a dose-dependent manner anti-CD3-induced apoptosis in Con A/IL-2-preactivated peripheral T cells and the murine T hybridomas 2B4.11 and A1.1. A functional study demonstrates that the inhibition of AICD is achieved through the inhibition of activation-induced FasL expression at protein and mRNA levels. VIP/PACAP-mediated inhibition of both AICD and FasL expression is mediated through the specific receptors VPAC1 and VPAC2. Of obvious biological significance is the fact that VIP and PACAP prevent Ag-induced clonal deletion of CD4+ T cells, but not that of CD8+ T cells. By affecting FasL expression, VIP and PACAP may play a physiological role in both the generation of memory T cells and the inhibition of FasL-mediated T cell cytotoxicity.
Ensino por problemas: uma abordagem para o desenvolvimento do aluno

O ensino por meio de problemas tem sido caracterizado, no Brasil, como proposta inovadora, geralmente aparecendo em duas abordagens: aprendizagem baseada em problemas e metodologia da problematizacao. Tais abordagens apresentam-se como metodologias que superam o ensino tradicional, com a clara intencao de propiciar a aprendizagem ativa do aluno. Ambas contribuem, de fato, para tornar o aluno mais ativo na aprendizagem, mas tambem apresentam algumas insuficiencias. Neste texto, sao discutidas essas insuficiencias e apresentada uma abordagem situada na perspectiva da teoria historico-cultural: a teoria do ensino desenvolvimental. Tal teoria tambem valoriza o ensino por problemas, avancando nos seguintes aspectos: explicacao teorica e metodologica da atividade de aprendizagem numa perspectiva historico-cultural; explicacao da formacao de conceitos como processo de mudanca qualitativa do pensamento do aluno e de sua capacidade para estabelecer novas relacoes com o conhecimento associado a acoes transformadoras. Argumenta-se que essa abordagem historico-cultural e mais promissora, uma vez que realca a formacao do pensamento teorico-cientifico do aluno como fator de desenvolvimento de suas capacidades intelectuais, de sua atividade pensante. Alem disso, propoe-se um sistema de acoes de aprendizagem que ajudam o aluno a formar um metodo de pensamento baseado na compreensao do objeto de conhecimento em sua genese e movimento de transformacao. Na conclusao, destaca-se que essa abordagem historico-cultural pode potencializar os efeitos do ensino no desenvolvimento do aluno e conferir mais qualidade a aprendizagem, sendo util nos diversos niveis de ensino.
Effect of Elevated Temperature and Loading Rate on Delamination Fracture Toughness

The effects of temperature and loading rate on delamination growth were studied. The delamination fracture toughness of IM7/K3B was measured at 149 C, 177 C, and 204 C. At each temperature the tests were performed with a variety of loading rates so that the delamination initiated over the range of time from 0.5 sec to 24 hrs. The double cantilever beam (DCB) test was used to measure fracture toughness. The results showed that the delamination resistance is a complicated function of both time and temperature with the effect of temperature either increasing or decreasing the fracture toughness depending on the time scale. The results also showed that the fracture toughness changed by as much as a factor of three as the time scale changed over the five orders of magnitude tested.
Leadership for School Improvement: The Role of the Head of Department in UK Secondary Schools

The study examines the role of the Head of Department in UK secondary schools in terms of its potential for school improvement. Thirty-two heads of department in secondary schools in Birmingham and Manchester were shadowed and interviewed in order to identify: (1) their leadership and management styles; (2) the sense of empowerment felt by each; (3) initiatives for improving teaching, learning and achievement in their departments; and (4) obstacles to improving teaching, learning and achievement. Four deputy head teachers in the sample schools were also interviewed with the purpose of eliciting their views on the role of the head of department in facilitating school improvement. The findings support the prediction that distributed leadership (or shared power) among senior and middle managers in UK schools still remains rhetoric rather than practice and that there is a growing need for current middle management development and training provision to change radically if middle managers are to be supported as curriculum leaders and managers
Packet coalescing exploiting data redundancy in GPGPU architectures

General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) are becoming a cost-effective hardware approach for parallel computing. Many executions on the GPGPUs place heavy stress on the memory system, creating network bottlenecks near memory controllers. We observe that data redundancy in communication traffic is common-place across a wide range of GPGPU applications. To exploit the data redundancy, we propose a packet coalescing mechanism to alleviate the network bottlenecks by directly reducing the traffic volume. The key idea is to coalesce multiple packets into one without increasing the packet size when they carry redundant cache blocks. To ensure that the coalesced packets are delivered to their respective destinations, we adopt multicast routing for the interconnection network of GPGPUs. Our coalescing approach yields 15% IPC improvement (up to 112%) in a large-scale GPGPU with 2D mesh across various GPGPU applications, by reducing average memory access time (AMAT) by 15.5% (up to 65.2%) and obtaining network bandwidth savings by 13% (up to 37%). Also, our coalescing approach achieves 7% IPC improvement in the NVIDIA Fermi architecture with the crossbar.
Optimizing space utilization of file systems on PCM-based storage devices

Phase-change memory (PCM) is a promising candidate as a storage medium to resolve the performance gap between main memory and storage in battery-powered mobile computing systems. However, it is more expensive than flash memory, and thus introduces a more serious storage capacity issue in low-cost solutions. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that existing file systems are usually designed to trade space utilization for performance over block-oriented storage devices. In this work, we propose a multi-grained block management scheme to optimize the space utilization of file systems on PCM-based storage systems. By utilizing the byte-addressability and fast read/write feature of PCM, a methodology is proposed to dynamically allocate multiple sizes of blocks to fit the size of each file, so as to resolve the space fragmentation issue with minimized space and management overheads. A series of experiments was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed scheme, and the results show that the proposed scheme could significantly improve the space utilization of file systems.
“The Meth Factor”: Group Membership, Information Management, and the Navigation of Stigma

Methamphetamine (or “meth”), a central nervous system stimulant, has been constructed as a dangerous drug with certain and extreme consequences. Incomplete and sometimes inaccurate portrayals, while aimed at preventing the initiation of use, stigmatize those who do use. Using data from in-depth, qualitative interviews with eight Northern Colorado women who are active meth users, this article explores how female meth users navigate this stigma through negotiation of group membership and management of information. The women in this study internalize and challenge the stigma: They identify as meth users and addicts yet view their own practices as distinguishing them from other users; and, they carefully control the extent to which they tell others of their use, even when contradictory to their sense of self and desirable relationships. These findings support the need for increased recognition and further examination of the role and enactment of agency among drug users and other oppressed groups.
Teamwork in sport: a theoretical and integrative review

A commonly held belief in sports is the need for team members to be able to work well together in order for that team to be successful. Despite this assumption, research in the field of sport psychology has yet to formally or sufficiently conceptualize what is meant by teamwork. In this theoretical and integrative review, we draw from the extant organizational psychology and team development literature to present a multidimensional conceptual framework of teamwork in sport. We provide a working definition of teamwork in sport and discuss how teamwork sits within a broader model of team effectiveness. We conclude by providing an overview of salient research avenues on teamwork and team effectiveness in sport, which have potential implications for guiding interventions with sports teams.
Revisiting the Quantum Brain Hypothesis: Toward Quantum (Neuro)biology?

The nervous system is a non-linear dynamical complex system with many feedback loops. A conventional wisdom is that in the brain the quantum fluctuations are self-averaging and thus functionally negligible. However, this intuition might be misleading in the case of non-linear complex systems. Because of an extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, in complex systems the microscopic fluctuations may be amplified and thereby affect the system’s behavior. In this way quantum dynamics might influence neuronal computations. Accumulating evidence in non-neuronal systems indicates that biological evolution is able to exploit quantum stochasticity. The recent rise of quantum biology as an emerging field at the border between quantum physics and the life sciences suggests that quantum events could play a non-trivial role also in neuronal cells. Direct experimental evidence for this is still missing but future research should address the possibility that quantum events contribute to an extremely high complexity, variability and computational power of neuronal dynamics.
From Obscurity to Daylight

Abstract The study of dissociation and dissociative disorders in Puerto Rico began in the 1980s. Initially the literature was limited to case-studies and anecdotal reports. In the 1990s a plethora of more sophisticated studies began to be published, including the reliability and validity of some well-known dissociative instruments and scales, including the Dissociative Experiences Scale. Also, some doctoral students in clinical psychology decided to conduct their research dissertations on dissociative disorders. Beginning with the new century, more sophisticated research methodologies are being applied to the study of dissociation in Puerto Rico, including some recent epidemiological findings with youths. Although still limited, the data-base on dissociation in Puerto Rico has been increasing rapidly. The article concludes with some reflections on how to be successful in obtaining support for future studies.
Apprenticing Adolescent Readers to Academic Literacy

Throughout the United States, concern is growing among educators about the numbers of students in secondary schools who do not read well. In response, committed and well-meaning educators are increasingly advocating remedial reading courses for struggling adolescent readers. In this article, Cynthia Greenleaf, Ruth Schoenbach, Christine Cziko, and Faye Mueller offer an alternative vision to remedial reading instruction. The authors describe an instructional framework — Reading Apprenticeship — that is based on a socially and cognitively complex conception of literacy, and examine an Academic Literacy course based on this framework. Through case studies of student reading and analyses of student survey and test score data, they demonstrate that academically underperforming students became more strategic, confident, and knowledgeable readers in the Academic Literacy course. Students in Academic Literacy gained on average what is normally two years of reading growth within one academic year on a standardized.
Pushed Toward the Exit? How Female MPs Leave Parliament

Worldwide, politicians devote increasing attention to the sociodemographic representativeness of political institutions. The underrepresentation of specific groups (and of women in particular) in political institutions is a democratic problem (Phillips 1995). To counter the lack of representativeness of political institutions, measures have been adopted to increase the influx of female politicians in parliaments and governments. Among others, quota regulations have been implemented in several countries in recent years (Dahlerup 2007; Krook 2007).
Social Support as Relationship Maintenance in Gay Male Couples Coping with Hiv or Aids

The purpose of this study was to explore how particular sources of social support (partners, friends, and family) affect the relationship maintenance of gay male couples in which one (HIV-discordant couples) or both partners have HIV or AIDS (HIV-concordant couples). Using a qualitative grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), 40, one-hour, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 gay male couples, 15 discordant and 5 concordant couples. Findings indicated that relational partners were the primary source of social support for both HIV-positive and HIV-negative partners, followed by close friends, and then family members. The support provided by relational partners was particularly salient to couples in this study. Contrary to past research that has found family members hesitant to provide social support, couples here reported moderate to high levels of support from families. Findings also indicated that gay male couples' social network support from close friends and family functioned both as illness-related social support on an individual level and as a means of relationship maintenance support on the dyadic level. For couples dealing with chronic illness, these findings suggest that illness-related social support also likely serves relationship maintenance functions. Future research is needed to explore the degree to which the interdependence of social support and relationship maintenance can be strategically utilized by couples coping with chronic illness.