Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emotions and teaching styles among academics: the mediating role of research and teaching efficacy

Abstract The key purpose of this research was to investigate the mediating role of academics’ self-efficacy in teaching and research (termed ‘academic self-efficacy’) in the relationship between emotions in teaching and teaching styles. Two hundred and thirty-two academics from 13 higher educational institutions in Shanghai, mainland China, responded to three self-report inventories, each assessing academics’ emotions in teaching, efficacy in teaching and research, and teaching styles, respectively. Results showed that academics’ emotions in teaching statistically predicted teaching styles, both directly and indirectly – through academic self-efficacy. Findings have enriched the literature on emotions in teaching, that on teaching styles, and that on teacher/academic self-efficacy. Practical implications are proposed in relation to academics and university senior managers.
Explaining Abortion Policy Developments in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island

Abstract:The landscape of abortion access in Canada has undergone major changes in the last two years, especially in the Maritime provinces. Long heralded as the worst provinces in Canada in which to find oneself in need of an abortion, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick represent holdouts to the creation of substantive abortion access in Canada: no services have been available on Prince Edward Island since 1982, while New Brunswick, in response to the decriminalization of abortion in 1988, created onerous restrictions on the circumstances in which the procedure could be accessed under medicare. These barriers to access were so longstanding that they seemed to be a permanent feature of access in Canada. That is, until, in a few short years, virtually all of these barriers were lifted. Using the multiple streams approach (MSA), this article attempts to explain why these changes came about when they did, and how they were able to take effect so rapidly. Résumé:L'accès à l'avortement au Canada a subi des changements importants au cours des deux dernières années, particulièrement dans les provinces maritimes. Longtemps proclamées les pires provinces canadiennes où l'on pourrait avoir besoin d'un avortement, l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard et le Nouveau-Brunswick représentent une résistance à la création d'un accès substantif à l'avortement au Canada : aucun service n'est disponible sur l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard depuis 1982, tandis que le Nouveau-Brunswick, en réponse à la décriminalisation de l'avortement en 1988, a créé de lourdes restrictions sur les circonstances dans lesquels la procédure pourrait être disponible sous le régime d'assurance-maladie. Ces obstacles à l'accès étaient présents depuis si longtemps qu'ils semblaient être un aspect permanent de l'accès au Canada. Jusqu'à ce que, en quelques années seulement, presque tous ces obstacles ont été retirés. À l'aide d'une approche à volets multiples, cet article tente d'expliquer pourquoi ces changements ont été apportés à ce moment précis et comment ils ont pu prendre effet aussi rapidement.
Terrestrial Laser Scanning - Investigations and Applications for High Precision Scanning

SUMMARY Nowadays, laser scanning has become an additional technique for geodetic applications. The use of laser scanners is continuously increasing. Different laser scanners of several companies are available. At the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry (IGP) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), experiences with several scanners were gained. Recently, the focus is on investigating and using the Imager 5003 of Zoller+Froehlich, Germany. In the laboratories at the IGP, the Imager 5003 laser scanner has been investigated. A 52 m calibration track line allows to compare the measured distance with the nominal distance provided by an interferometer. Several tests were carried out on this calibration track line focussing on the distance accuracy. Further on, the eccentricity of the laser scanner was examined as well as the trunnion axis error. Some results of these comprehensive investigations will be presented. The practical use of the Imager 5003 laser scanner has been tested on several objects. One of these objects, a chapel, represents an application in cultural heritage as a typical laser scanning application. Whereas the other object, a tunnel, demonstrates an application of engineering geodesy. First results of these two objects will be shown ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
The effect of Er, Cr:YSGG laser irradiation on the apical leakage of retrograde cavity

INTRODUCTION: Controversial results have been reported when organic acids, ultrasonic instruments and laser techniques were used to remove smear layer in endodontic treatments. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of removing debris and smear layer by Er,Cr:YSGG laser irradiation on the apical leakage of retrograde cavities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this ex vivo study, 24 extracted mandibular single-rooted teeth were selected and instrumented up to K-file size #35. Approximately 3 mm of root apices were dissected perpendicular to the root’s long axis. Retrograde cavities with 3 mm depth were prepared and the teeth were randomly assigned to two groups. In one group, the retrograde cavities were filled with amalgam and in the other group, the dentinal surface of the retrograde cavities were lased with Er,Cr:YSGG laser (2W, 15 seconds, G4 tip). The cavities were filled with amalgam; all tooth surfaces except for dissected outsides were covered with blue wax. Then the teeth were immersed in 2% methylene blue dye for 48 hours. The amount of dye penetration into sagittal sections was measured by stereomicroscope at ×20 magnification by two independent observers who were blinded to the experiment. Data were statistically analyzed using student t-test. RESULTS: This study demonstrated that dye penetration was 0.8 mm (±0.53) in the lased and 0.97 mm (±0.54) in the non-lased group. It showed that, Er,Cr:YSGG laser can remove the debris and smear layer and consequently reduces the amount of dye penetration, although, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: This study showed that dye penetration was less in lased group because of the better seal of the dissected surface due to the better removal of the debris and smear layer by laser; further investigations are recommended in this field. [Iranian Endodontic Journal 2009;4(4):144-8]
Low complexity blind estimation of residual carrier offset in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing based

The presence of residual carrier frequency offset (CFO) in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system leads to a loss of orthogonality between the subcarriers. This introduces inter-subcarrier interference and degrades the system performance significantly. In the literature, Liu and Tureli proposed a blind CFO estimation method based on the observation that in a typical OFDM system not all the subcarriers are used for data transmission. However, the computational complexity of such a method is very high. Based on practical considerations, we propose an approximate closed-form solution for the blind estimation of CFO that is easily implementable at a very low cost. We also propose a successive CFO estimation and compensation procedure, which reduces the performance degradation of the proposed algorithm as compared with the method of Liu and Tureli when relatively large CFO values are assumed. In addition, a decision-directed extension of the successive algorithm, which further improves the CFO estimation at a slightly higher complexity, is also given.
Impact of birth weight and postnatal diet on the gut microbiota of young adult guinea pigs

Background The gastrointestinal tract (GIT) microbiota is essential to metabolic health, and the prevalence of the Western diet (WD) high in fat and sugar is increasing, with evidence highlighting a negative interaction between the GIT and WD, resulting in liver dysfunction. Additionally, an adverse in utero environment such as placental insufficiency resulting in low birth weight (LBW) offspring, contributes to an increased risk of metabolic diseases such as fatty liver infiltration and liver dysfunction in later life. We sought to understand the potential interactive effects of exposure to a WD upon growing LBW offspring. We postulated that LBW offspring when challenged with a poor postnatal diet, would display an altered microbiota and more severe liver metabolic dysfunction. Methods The fecal microbiota of normal birth weight (NBW) and LBW young guinea pig offspring, weaned onto either a control diet (CD) or WD was determined with 16S rRNA gene next generation sequencing at young adulthood following the early rapid growth phase after weaning. A liver blood chemistry profile was also performed. Results The life-long consumption of WD following weaning into young adulthood resulted in increased total cholesterol, triglycerides and alanine aminotransferase levels in association with an altered GIT microbiota when compared to offspring consuming CD. Neither birth weight nor sex were associated with any significant changes in microbiota alpha diversity, by measuring the Shannon’s diversity index. One hundred forty-eight operational taxonomic units were statistically distinct between the diet groups, independent of birth weight. In the WD group, significant decreases were detected in Barnesiella, Methanobrevibacter smithii and relatives of Oscillospira guillermondii, while Butyricimonas and Bacteroides spp. were increased. Discussion These results describe the GIT microbiota in a guinea pig model of LBW and WD associated metabolic syndrome and highlight several WD specific GIT alterations associated with human metabolic disease.
The Non-Genomic Actions of Vitamin D

Since its discovery in 1920, a great deal of effort has gone into investigating the physiological actions of vitamin D and the impact its deficiency has on human health. Despite this intense interest, there is still disagreement on what constitutes the lower boundary of adequacy and on the Recommended Dietary Allowance. There has also been a major push to elucidate the biochemistry of vitamin D, its metabolic pathways and the mechanisms that mediate its action. Originally thought to act by altering the expression of target genes, it was realized in the mid-1980s that some of the actions of vitamin D were too rapid to be accounted for by changes at the genomic level. These rapid non-genomic actions have attracted as much interest as the genomic actions and they have spawned additional questions in an already busy field. This mini-review attempts to summarise the in vitro and in vivo work that has been conducted to characterise the rapid non-genomic actions, the mechanisms that give rise to these properties and the roles that these play in the overall action of vitamin D at the cellular level. Understanding the effects of vitamin D at the cellular level should enable the design of elegant human studies to extract the full potential of vitamin D to benefit human health.
Aggregated Biomedical Information Browser (ABB): A Graphical User Interface for Clinicians and Scientists to Access a Clinical Data Warehouse

Clinicians have unique insight into the diseases and medical conditions they treat, and may develop their own hypotheses they wish to explore by examining existing cases in a data warehouse. To facilitate manual data mining by clinicians and scientists, we have developed an interface for our clinical data warehouse, the Aggregated Biomedical-information Browser (ABB), based on OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) technology. The ABB enables clinicians, researchers, and other domain experts to quickly and intuitively explore data in our data warehouse, the Data Warehouse for Translational Research (DW4TR), without needing to involve informatics staff for data extraction. The ABB is capable of handling “on the fly” queries of any data element within the DW4TR. This functionality enables researchers to use their domain knowledge to connect disparate data points as one discovery leads to another. Hypotheses generated through manual data mining combined with domain knowledge, can then be tested using more advanced statistical methods. To illustrate this process a manual data mining example comparing breast cancer pathology in African American and Caucasian American women is performed using the ABB. Analysis of several breast cancer pathology markers suggest African American women will have a worse clinical outcome than Caucasian American women, a clinically meaningful outcome well documented in scientific literature. This report demonstrates the simple yet powerful use of the ABB for manual data exploration in the initial hypothesis generation stage.
Characterization of UWB Channel Impulse Responses Within the Passenger Cabin of a Boeing 737-200 Aircraft

With its confined volume, cylindrical structure and high density of seating, the passenger cabin of a typical midsize airliner is significantly different from the residential, office, outdoor and industrial environments previously considered by IEEE 802.15. 4a. We have characterized the shape of the ultrawideband (UWB) channel impulse response (CIR) and the fading statistics experienced by individual multipath components (MPCs) within that environment based upon 3300 complex frequency responses that we measured over the range 3.1-10.6 GHz at various locations aboard a Boeing 737-200 aircraft. We found that: (1) the shape of the CIR generally follows IEEE 802.15. 4a's dense single-cluster model, but with negligible rise time if the link is line-of-sight, (2) both the mean and variance of the exponential decay constant tend to increase with transmitter-receiver separation and also as the receiving antenna drops from the headrest to the footrest of the passenger seats, and (3) small-scale fading of individual MPCs at each measurement location within the aircraft tends to follow a Nakagami distribution with a lognormally-distributed m-parameter that has a mean value of 0.2 dB and a standard deviation of 1.1 dB. We have modified IEEE 802.15. 4a's CIR simulator to generate responses similar to those seen in the cabin.
Heavy absorption and soft X-ray emission lines in the XMM-Newton spectrum of the type 2 radio-loud quasar 3C 234

Aims. We report results on a 40 ks XMM-Newton observation of the type 2 quasar 3C 234. Optical spectropolarimetric data have demonstrated the presence of a hidden broad-line region in this powerful (MV ≤− 24.2 after reddening and starlight correction) narrow-line FRII radio galaxy. Our analysis is aimed at investigating the X-ray spectral properties of this peculiar source that have remained poorly known so far. Methods. We analyze the 0.5–10 keV spectroscopic data collected by the EPIC cameras in 2006. Results. The X-ray spectrum of this radio-loud quasar is typical of a local Compton-thin Seyfert 2 galaxy. It exhibits strong absorption (NH ∼ 3.5 × 10 23 cm −2 ) and a narrow, neutral Fe Kα emission line with an equivalent width of ≈140 ± 40 eV. Our observation also reveals that the soft portion of the spectrum is characterized by strong emission lines with a very low level of scattered primary continuum. A possible explanation of these features in terms of thermal emission from a two-temperature, collisionally ionized plasma emission seems to be unlikely due to the high luminosity estimated for this component (L0.5−2 ∼ 6 × 10 42 erg s −1 ). It is likely that most of the soft X-ray emission originates from a photoionized plasma as commonly observed in obscured, radio-quiet Seyfertlike AGNs. Conclusions. This X-ray observation has definitively confirmed the presence of a hidden quasar in 3C 234. The line-rich spectrum and the steepness of the hard X-ray continuum (Γ ≈ 1.7) found in this source weaken the hypothesis that the bulk of the X-ray emission in radio-loud AGNs with high-excitation optical lines arises from jet non-thermal emission.
Cosine Similarity Measure between Vague Sets and Its Application of Fault Diagnosis

In order to propose a novel cosine similarity measure between vague sets and to apply it to the fault diagnosis of turbine, a new similarity measure value between a testing sample and the knowledge of system faults is evaluated in the vibration fault diagnosis of turbine. The testing sample is near to a type of fault knowledge if the measure value is big. Thus, the type of vibration fault is determined according to the maximum measure value (more than some threshold). The fault-diagnosis problems of the turbine are investigated by use of the proposed cosine similarity measure. The results demonstrate that the proposed method not only diagnoses the main fault types of the turbine, but also provides useful information for multi-fault analyses and future trends. Therefore, the proposed method is reasonable and effective and provides another useful tool for fault analyses.
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONSTRAINTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF MORPHOLOGICAL ALLOMETRIES IN A BUTTERFLY

Abstract Much diversity in animal morphology results from variation in the relative size of morphological traits. The scaling relationships, or allometries, that describe relative trait size can vary greatly in both intercept and slope among species or other animal groups. Yet within such groups, individuals typically exhibit low variation in relative trait size. This pattern of high intra- and low intergroup variation may result from natural selection for particular allometries, from developmental constraints restricting differential growth among traits, or both. Here we explore the relative roles of short-term developmental constraints and natural selection in the evolution of the intercept of the allometry between the forewing and hindwing of a butterfly. First, despite a strong genetic correlation between these two traits, we show that artificial selection perpendicular to the forewing-hindwing scaling relationship results in rapid evolution of the allometry intercept. This demonstrates an absence of developmental constraints limiting intercept evolution for this scaling relationship. Mating experiments in a natural environment revealed strong stabilizing selection favoring males with the wild-type allometry intercept over those with derived intercepts. Our results demonstrate that evolution of this component of the forewing-hindwing allometry is not limited by developmental constraints in the short term and that natural selection on allometry intercepts can be powerful.
Improving channel estimation in OFDM systems for sparse multipath channels

We describe an algorithm for sparse channel estimation applicable to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems. The proposed algorithm uses a least squares (LS) technique for channel estimation and a generalized Akaike information criterion to estimate the channel length and tap positions. This effectively reduces the signal space of the LS estimator, and hence improves the estimation performance as demonstrated using computer simulations. For example, the proposed modified LS with sparse channel-estimation algorithm has a 5-dB lower mean square error in channel estimation when compared to the conventional approach , which translates to approximately 0.5 dB improvement in signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver.
Analysis of trust models in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A simulation based study

The Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) has become a key communication technology in various domains such as, military defense networks, disastrous and rescue operational command centers, vehicular networks, etc. The dynamic topology and open wireless communication medium may potentially introduce various security threats in MANET. The recent research on MANET focuses on developing security enforcement mechanisms based on various trust models. However, most of the existing trust models are application specific which impose limitations on their applicability with changes in requirements, resource constraints, and behavioural dynamics. In this paper, we present a comparative study of various trust models in MANET with respect to their performance, security enforcing features, and usability. This study experimentally reveals the limitations of existing trust models. It also shows that their is a need for designing adaptive, multi-level trust models for MANET, that supports heterogeneous applications with different requirements and contexts.
Regulation of cortical actin cytoskeleton assembly during polarized cell growth in budding yeast

We have established an in vitro assay for assembly of the cortical actin cytoskeleton of budding yeast cells. After permeabilization of yeast by a novel procedure designed to maintain the spatial organization of cellular constituents, exogenously added fluorescently labeled actin monomers assemble into distinct structures in a pattern that is similar to the cortical actin distribution in vivo. Actin assembly in the bud of small-budded cells requires a nucleation activity provided by protein factors that appear to be distinct from the barbed ends of endogenous actin filaments. This nucleation activity is lost in cells that lack either Sla1 or Sla2, proteins previously implicated in cortical actin cytoskeleton function, suggesting a possible role for these proteins in the nucleation reaction. The rate and the extent of actin assembly in the bud are increased in permeabilized delta cap2 cells, providing evidence that capping protein regulates the ability of the barbed ends of actin filaments to grow in yeast cells. Actin incorporation in the bud can be stimulated by treating the permeabilized cells with GTP-gamma S, and, significantly, the stimulatory effect is eliminated by a mutation in CDC42, a gene that encodes a Rho-like GTP-binding protein required for bud formation. Furthermore, the lack of actin nucleation activity in the cdc42 mutant can be complemented in vitro by a constitutively active Cdc42 protein. These results suggest that Cdc42 is closely involved in regulating actin assembly during polarized cell growth.
Power motivates heightened sexual attraction to the opposite sex among heterosexual men and women

Previous studies have demonstrated that power induces sexual overperception by activating mating motivation. This study examined the impact of power on sexual attraction to the opposite sex among heterosexual men and women. We manipulated power by instructing participants to recall an incident in their lives where they possessed power over someone else (high power) or someone else possessed power over them (low power). We controlled for individual variations in sex drive, sexual sensation seeking, and sociosexual orientation. We asked participants to record their sexual attraction to images of the opposite sex in swimsuits. Our results showed that high-power individuals, both men and women, recorded significantly greater sexual attraction to the images than did low-power individuals, demonstrating that power heightens sexual attraction to the opposite sex among heterosexual men and women. The findings highlight power’s activation of the mating motivation and have implications for the effect of power on sexualized behaviors.