Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of extraction solvents on antioxidant and antimicrobial properties of fenugreek seeds (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.)

The present study was aimed to investigate the efficacy of fenugreek seeds as a potential natural source of antioxidants and antimicrobials. Fenugreek seed (FS) extracts were prepared using ethanol (75%), methanol (75%) and water as extraction solvents. Ethanol (E-FSP), methanol (M-FSP), water (W-FSP) and hot water (HW-FSP) extracts were obtained from ground FS, whilst water extract (W-GeFS) was obtained from germinated FS. The results revealed that all extracts of the ground FS exhibited antioxidant and antimicrobial activities and the extractability of bioactive compounds in the presence of water was higher in germinated seeds (W-GeFS). Highest phenolic (156.3 mg GAE/ g) and flavonoid (38.5 mg CE/ g) contents were found in W-GeFS. It also showed the strongest DPPH radical-scavenging activity of 68 % inhibition at a lower concentration (0.06 mg/ ml). In addition, highest vitamin C equivalent antioxidant capacity (143.28 mg vitamin C/ g) with an IC 50 value of 42.1 µg/ ml were found in W-GeFS. Based on disc diffusion method, W-GeFS exhibited highest antimicrobial activity against all tested bacterial pathogens (Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli). Thus, it can be concluded from the results that W-GeFS extract from germinating fenugreek seeds (W-GeFS) has the potential to be used as a natural source of bioactive compounds with varied applications in food industry especially, for active film packaging purposes to prolong the shelf-life of food products.
Offenders' lies and truths: an evaluation of the Supreme Court of Sweden's criteria for credibility assessment

Abstract The criteria used by Swedish courts for assessing credibility of plaintiffs' accounts were for the first time scientifically evaluated. Furthermore, unlike much previous deception detection research, we used offenders as participants instead of college students. False and truthful confessions by 30 offenders were analysed, and few significant effects were obtained. Truthful confessions were rated as having a higher degree of clarity than false confessions. Women's truthful confessions were rated as more credible than their false confessions. The offenders who were most experienced in being interviewed by the police gave a stronger impression of talking about something self-experienced in their false than in their truthful confessions; hence, it seems that offenders with more police interview experience have developed a kind of expertise in telling a convincing lie about crime. Overall, the criteria for credibility assessment used by Swedish courts had very limited usefulness in discriminating truthful and false confessions. A critique of the current status of evaluating statements in Swedish courts is provided.
Mental Health Issues in Juvenile Justice Residential Placements: A Multi-Method Agency Evaluation

ABSTRACT This evaluation study uses multiple methods to examine ways mental health issues are identified in juvenile justice residential placements. The study addresses essential characteristics of young males identified with mental health problems and differences between young people identified with mental health problems and the general residential population in a large, multi-site, nonprofit agency. The evaluation found that young males identified with mental health problems had several contacts with the social service network, the juvenile justice system and the mental health system before placement in the juvenile justice residential care setting. The evaluation raises concerns about identification mechanisms used to determine if residents have mental health problems, the responsiveness of residential program models, the need for post-residential community-based support, the importance of training residential staff, and the integration of mental health professionals into the intervention team.
Net-Public Sphere Research: Beyond The “First Phase”

Abstract In recent years much has been said about the possibility of the Internet facilitating and extending the public sphere of informal rational-critical communication between private affairs and official decision making. However, the abundant speculation has not yet been matched by extensive empirical research. Ongoing theoretical debate about the validity and content of the public sphere conception makes empirical evaluation difficult, as does the Internet’s constitution through a vast and dynamic array of human interactions, cultural contexts, and social institutions. Despite these difficulties, a number of pioneering studies have attempted to investigate the Net-public sphere relation. In this paper I offer a critical reflection upon some of these early studies, a reflection that explores three reoccurring methodological problems and their possible solutions, with the aim of providing strategies for developing more meaningful Net-public sphere research. These problems involve: developing a normative conception of the public sphere suitable for critical analysis; improving the transition between theory and empirical evaluation; and adequately explaining and extending findings. My suggested solutions include the specification of public sphere criteria from Habermas’ theory of communicative rationality; the identification of a variety of case sensitive indicators that can facilitate the transition between criteria and practice; and the suggestion that explanation and extension of findings be undertaken by way of comparative case study research.
Sub-Sampled Newton Methods II: Local Convergence Rates

Many data-fitting applications require the solution of an optimization problem involving a sum of large number of functions of high dimensional parameter. Here, we consider the problem of minimizing a sum of $n$ functions over a convex constraint set $\mathcal{X} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^{p}$ where both $n$ and $p$ are large. In such problems, sub-sampling as a way to reduce $n$ can offer great amount of computational efficiency. Within the context of second order methods, we first give quantitative local convergence results for variants of Newton's method where the Hessian is uniformly sub-sampled. Using random matrix concentration inequalities, one can sub-sample in a way that the curvature information is preserved. Using such sub-sampling strategy, we establish locally Q-linear and Q-superlinear convergence rates. We also give additional convergence results for when the sub-sampled Hessian is regularized by modifying its spectrum or Levenberg-type regularization. Finally, in addition to Hessian sub-sampling, we consider sub-sampling the gradient as way to further reduce the computational complexity per iteration. We use approximate matrix multiplication results from randomized numerical linear algebra (RandNLA) to obtain the proper sampling strategy and we establish locally R-linear convergence rates. In such a setting, we also show that a very aggressive sample size increase results in a R-superlinearly convergent algorithm. While the sample size depends on the condition number of the problem, our convergence rates are problem-independent, i.e., they do not depend on the quantities related to the problem. Hence, our analysis here can be used to complement the results of our basic framework from the companion paper, [38], by exploring algorithmic trade-offs that are important in practice.
Modeling the Choice of Telecommuting: 3. Identifying the Choice Set and Estimating Binary Choice Models for Technology-Based Alternatives

In previous papers in this series we have presented a conceptual model of the individual decision to telecommute and explored relationships among constraints, preference, and choice. In a related paper we developed a binary model of the preference for home-based telecommuting. Noting that there is a wide gap between preferring to telecommute (88% of the sample) and actually telecommuting (13%), in this paper we develop binary logit models of telecommuting adoption. Two approaches to dealing with constraints are compared: incorporating them directly into the utility function, and using them to define the choice set. Models using the first approach appear to be statistically superior in this analysis, explaining 63–64% of the information in the data. Variables significant to choice include those relating to work and travel drives, and awareness, manager support, job suitability, technology, and discipline constraints. The best model was used to analyze the impact of relaxing three key constraints on the 355 people in the sample for whom telecommuting was previously identified to be a preferred impossible alternative (PIA). When unawareness, lack of manager support, and job unsuitability constraints are relaxed, 28% of the people in the PIA category would be expected to adopt telecommuting. The importance of behavioral models to forecast telecommuting adoption accurately is emphasized and is suggested to have wider implications for predicting technology-based activity changes.
CARS: Congestion-aware request scheduler for network interfaces in NoC-based manycore systems

Network congestion is a critical issue of memory parallelism in network-based manycore systems where multiple memories can be accessed simultaneously. Therefore, a congestion-aware method is necessitated to deal with the network congestion. In this paper, we present a streamlined method in order to reduce the network congestion. The idea is to use the global congestion information as a metric in network interfaces to reduce the congestion level of highly congested areas. Network interfaces connected to memory modules are equipped with an adaptive scheduler using the global congestion information to reduce additional traffic to congested areas. Experimental results with synthetic test cases demonstrate that the on-chip network utilizing the proposed adaptive scheduler presents up to 23% improvement in average latency.
The Practicality of Behavioral Observation Scales, Behavioral Expectation Scales, and Trait Scales.

The practicality of three appraisal instruments were measured in terms of user preference, namely, behavioral observation scales (BOS), behavioral expectation scales (BES), and trait scales. A questionnaire containing items pertaining to differentiating good from poor performers, objectivity, providing feedback, suggesting training needs, and ease of use was administered to managers and their subordinates. In all instances, BOS were preferred to BES, and in all but two instances, BOS were viewed as superior to trait scales. Trait scales were felt to be as good if not better than BES. A second questionnaire administered to attorneys indicated that BOS would be easier to defend in the courtroom than either BES or trait scales.
An overview of methods and tools for ontology learning from texts

Ontology learning aims at reducing the time and efforts in the ontology development process. In recent years, several methods and tools have been proposed to speed up this process using different sources of information and different techniques. In this paper, we have reviewed 13 methods and 14 tools for semi-automatically building ontologies from texts and their relationships with the techniques each method follows. The methods have been grouped according to the main techniques followed and three groups have been identified: one based on linguistics, one on statistics, and one on machine learning. Regarding the tools, the criterion for grouping them, which has been the main aim of the tool, is to distinguish what elements of the ontology can be learned with each tool. According to this, we have identified three kinds of tools: tools for learning relations, tools for learning new concepts, and assisting tools for building up taxonomies.
Asset Pricing with Garbage

A new measure of consumption, garbage, is more volatile and more correlated with stocks than the canonical measure, NIPA consumption expenditure. A garbage-based CCAPM matches the U.S. equity premium with relative risk aversion of 17 versus 81 and evades the joint equity premium-risk-free rate puzzle. These results carry through to European data. In a cross section of size, value, and industry portfolios, garbage growth is priced and drives out NIPA expenditure growth.
Do insomnia complaints cause hypertension or cardiovascular disease?

OBJECTIVE We prospectively investigated odds ratios (ORs) for development of hypertension or cardiovascular disease by endorsement of sleep complaints. METHODS The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study is a prospective, population-based study of cardiovascular disease. Our study sample was 8757 ARIC participants without hypertension and 11,863 ARIC participants without cardiovascular disease at baseline. We applied multivariate regression analysis to predict the ORs of development of hypertension or cardiovascular disease over 6 years of follow-up by endorsement of symptoms of difficulty falling asleep (DFA), waking up repeatedly (SCD), awakening tired and fatigued (NRS), or combinations of these symptoms. We controlled for age, sex, alcohol intake, income, smoking, diabetes, heart disease, menopausal status, depression, educational level, Body Mass Index, respiratory symptoms, and pulmonary function. RESULTS Endorsement of all 3 sleep complaints predicted a slightly increased risk of cardiovascular disease (OR 1.5, 1.1-2.0) but not of hypertension. Endorsement of either DFA or SCA predicted slightly increased risk of hypertension (OR 1.2, 1.03-1.3) CONCLUSIONS The definition of insomnia affects its impact. A combination of 3 sleep complaints (DFA, SCD, NRS) predicted a slightly increased risk of cardiovascular disease but not hypertension, and a complaint of either DFA or SCD predicted increased hypertensive risk. It is not clear whether these modest and inconsistent effects are of clinical significance.
A Coupled Dynamical Model of Redox Flow Battery Based on Chemical Reaction, Fluid Flow, and Electrical Circuit

The redox (Reduction-Oxidation) flow battery is one of the most promising rechargeable batteries due to its ability to average loads and output of power sources. The transient characteristics are well known as the remarkable feature of the battery. Then it can also compensate for a sudden voltage drop. The dynamics are governed by the chemical reactions, fluid flow, and electrical circuit of its structure. This causes the difficulty of the analysis at transient state. This paper discusses the transient behavior of the redox flow battery based on chemical reactions. The concentration change of vanadium ions depends on the chemical reactions and the flow of electrolysis solution. The chemical reaction rate is restricted by the attached external electric circuit. In this paper, a model of the transient behavior is introduced. The validity of the derived model is examined based on experiments for a tested micro-redox flow battery system.
Age Influence in the Prognosis of Bacterial Secondary Peritonitis

Today the age of 60-65 years old is considered the seniority threshold. The structural, functional and metabolic alterations which occur following to the aging process determine an exacerbation of the impact which any aggression will have on the body. This retrospective study analyses a group of 245 patients with severe peritonitis, which had been hospitalized and treated in Surgery 2 nd Clinic of the Sf. Apostol Andrei Emergency Clinical Hospital in the period 2007-2016. The median age 54 years old [range 30-95]; 68 patients (27.76% of cases) were > 65 years old (65+) and 177 patients (72.24% of cases) with age between < 65 years old (65-). Out of the results obtained, it is obvious the impact of age in the evolution and prognosis of bacterial peritonitis.
Engaging Students in Social Work Research Education

This article discusses existing issues in social work research education. It includes challenges to delivering research education at the MSW level such as student anxiety and disinterest, and incorporates an exploration of post graduation interest in research. The authors recommend that professors increase the emphasis on practical applications of research and encourage students to disseminate research results via publication. The article concludes with the implications of encouraging student research within the social work profession.
LEARNING AND ATTITUDE CHANGE AT BRITISH NUCLEAR FUEL'S SELLAFIELD VISITORS CENTRE

Abstract Knowledge of and attitude towards nuclear power were measured in a before/after evaluation study of Sellafield Visitors Centre. The attitude scale was broken down into its component factors using a Principal Components Analysis with orthogonal rotation. Five factors were extracted and these were interpreted as: (a) economic and technical; (b) health and safety; (c) emotional; (d) environmental; (e) passive acceptance. These factors were then analysed in ANOVAs to assess changes due to the Visitor Centre by gender, age and previous education. A verbal knowledge questionnaire was also administered before/after and analysed with similar ANOVAs but with the attitudinal factors included as covariates. It was found that knowledge increased significantly across all categories of visitor. In attitude measures, the environmental and the economic and technical factors changed positively but although health and safety changed positively for men—it changed negatively for women. The emotional factor changed negatively for the younger visitors and did not change positively for any of the demographic groupings. The knowledge questionnaire, together with a pictorial knowledge test, were compared with a behavioural mapping measure to explore the properties of displays that contribute most to learning.
Co-Teaching: An Illustration of the Complexity of Collaboration in Special Education

Although collaboration among service providers has been a hallmark of special education almost since its inception, co-teaching, the sharing of instruction by a general education teacher and a special education teacher or another specialist in a general education class that includes students with disabilities, is a relatively recent application. As a result of recent federal legislation and related policy changes, co-teaching has evolved rapidly as a strategy for ensuring that these students have access to the same curriculum as other students while still receiving the specialized instruction to which they are entitled. Despite considerable enthusiasm expressed by those who write about co-teaching and those who implement it, co-teaching illustrates the complexity of conceptualizing and studying collaboration in special education. Most inquiry on co-teaching has emphasized co-teachers' roles and relationships or program logistics rather than demonstrating its impact on student achievement and other key outcomes, and far more literature exists describing co-teaching and offering advice about it than carefully studying it. Contributing to the admittedly equivocal evidence base for co-teaching are factors such as the still emerging understanding of this special education service delivery vehicle, inconsistencies in definitions and implementation, lack of professional preparation, and dilemmas related to situating co-teaching in a supportive, collaborative school culture. The future of co-teaching may be dependent on increasing the quantity and quality of research on it and placing co-teaching in the larger context of school reform and improvement.
The Value of Graduate Education in Hospitality: Industry's Perception

This research undertakes the critical project of evaluating industry's perception of hospitality graduate education. Through this exploratory descriptive study hospitality industry recruiters were interviewed to reveal their opinions on whether graduate education is necessary in today's competitive environment, as well as what type of graduate degree is most marketable. Key competencies essential for a master's level graduate are identified and subject areas of critical importance in graduate programs are uncovered. Differences in opinions among the segments of the industry are reported and evaluated as well. This study presents vital implications for driving the future development of hospitality graduate education programs and curriculum.
A multimedia-enhanced collaborative learning environment

The proliferation of the Internet has brought about the notion of online virtual communities. One enabling technology for online communities is multiuser environments such as Multi-User Dimensions (MUDs) and Object-Oriented MUDS (MOOs). These text-based collaborative learning environments have recently have been integrated with the World Wide Web, thus harnessing the graphics and multimedia-rich environments available therein. Learners can directly experience, manipulate, and create objects in their rich multimedia form. MUDs and MOOs are augmented with synchronous collaboration technology that provided simultaneous control and viewing of shared documents and applications. In this paper, we describe a multimedia-enhanced MOO system called SpaceALIVE! and our experiences from a pilot project involving Singapore students who use SpaceALIVE! as a collaborative learning environment are reported.
Cognitive Mobile Virtual Network Operator: Investment and Pricing with Supply Uncertainty

This paper presents the first analytical study of optimal investment and pricing decisions of a cognitive mobile virtual network operator (C-MVNO) under spectrum supply uncertainty. Compared with a traditional MVNO who only obtains spectrum by long-term leasing contracts, a C-MVNO can acquire short-term spectrum by both sensing the empty "spectrum holes" of licensed bands and dynamically leasing from the spectrum owner. As a result, a C-MVNO can make flexible investment and pricing decisions to match the current demands of the secondary unlicensed users. Spectrum sensing is typically cheaper than dynamic spectrum leasing, but the obtained useful spectrum amount is random due to primary licensed users' stochastic traffic. The CMVNO needs to determine the optimal amounts of sensing and leasing spectrum, considering the trade-offs between cost and uncertainty. The C-MVNO also needs to determine the optimal retail price to sell the spectrum to the secondary unlicensed users, taking into account wireless heterogeneity of users such as different maximum transmission power levels and channel gains. We model and analyze these decisions and the interactions between the C-MVNO and secondary users as a multi-stage Stackelberg game. We show several interesting properties of the network equilibrium, such as threshold structures of the optimal investment and pricing decisions, independence between the optimal price and users' wireless characteristics, and fair and predictable spectrum allocations to the users. Compared with the traditional MVNO, spectrum sensing can significantly improve the C-MVNO's expected profit and users' payoffs.