Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Getting “More Bang for the Buck”

Practitioners view monetary rewards as an important and powerful motivational tool. Yet organizational research has focused primarily on the economic value of these rewards. In this essay, the authors challenge this view by suggesting that monetary rewards also acquire symbolic meaning via the organization's distribution practices. They contend that the presence of symbolic meaning adds symbolic value to the economic value of the reward, which increases the reward's overall perceived value. They argue that the increased perceived value of the reward can lead to desired organizational outcomes. Conversely, the authors argue that the absence of symbolic meaning can lessen the overall perceived value of the reward. This increases the likelihood of undesired organizational outcomes. These ideas have implications for organizational scholars' theories about monetary rewards and for how practitioners distribute monetary rewards in organizations.
Preference, context and communities: a multi-faceted approach to predicting smartphone app usage patterns

Reliable smartphone app prediction can strongly benefit both users and phone system performance alike. However, real-world smartphone app usage behavior is a complex phenomena driven by a number of competing factors. In this pa- per, we develop an app usage prediction model that leverages three key everyday factors that affect app usage decisions -- (1) intrinsic user app preferences and user historical patterns; (2) user activities and the environment as observed through sensor-based contextual signals; and, (3) the shared aggregate patterns of app behavior that appear in various user communities. While rapid progress has been made recently in smartphone app prediction, existing prediction models tend to focus on only one of these factors. We evaluate a multi-faceted approach to prediction using (1) a 3-week 35-user field trial, along with (2) analysis of app usage logs of 4,606 smartphone users worldwide. We find our app usage model can not only produce more robust app predictions than conventional techniques, but it can also enable significant smartphone system optimizations.
Liver Enzymes Abnormalities among Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy Experienced and HAART Naïve HIV-1 Infected Patients at Debre Tabor Hospital, North West Ethiopia: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Study

Liver disease has emerged as the most common non-AIDS-related cause of death in HIV patients. However, there is limited data regarding this condition including our setting in Ethiopia. Hence, liver enzyme abnormalities among highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) experienced and HAART naïve patients were assessed in this study. A total of 164 HAART experienced and 164 HAART naïve patients were studied. Blood specimen was collected to determine alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), CD4 count, and viral hepatitis. The prevalence of liver enzyme abnormality was 20.1% and 22.0% among HAART experienced and HAART naïve patients, respectively. The HAART experienced patients had higher mean ALT than HAART naïve patients (P = 0.002). Viral hepatitis (AOR = 6.02; 95% CI = 1.87–19.39), opportunistic infections (AOR = 2.91; 95% CI = 1.04–8.19), current CD4 count <200 cells/mm3 (AOR = 2.16; 95% CI = 1.06–4.39), and male sex (AOR = 1.83; 95% CI = 1.001–3.33) were associated with elevated ALT and/or AST. In conclusion, liver enzyme abnormalities were high in both HAART experienced and HAART naïve HIV-1 infected patients. Hence, monitoring and management of liver enzyme abnormalities in HIV-1 infected patients are important in our setting.
Principal Licensure Exams and Future Job Performance: Evidence From the School Leaders Licensure Assessment

Many states require prospective principals to pass a licensure exam to obtain an administrative license, but we know little about the potential effects of principal licensure exams on the pool of available principals or whether scores predict later job performance. We investigate the most commonly used exam, the School Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA), using 10 years of data on Tennessee test takers. We uncover substantial differences in passage rates by test-taker characteristics. In particular, non-Whites are 12 percentage points less likely than otherwise similar White test takers to attain the required licensure score. Although candidates with higher scores are more likely to be hired as principals, we find little evidence that SLLA scores predict measures of principal job performance, including supervisors’ evaluation ratings or teachers’ assessments of school leadership from a statewide survey. Our results raise questions about whether conditioning administrative licensure on SLLA passage is consistent with principal workforce diversity goals.
Perception of dynamic facial emotional expressions in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)

Previous studies have shown deficits in the perception of static emotional facial expressions in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but results are inconclusive. Possibly, using dynamic facial stimuli expressing emotions at different levels of intensities may produce more robust results, since these resemble the expression of emotions in daily life to a greater extent. 30 Young adolescents with high-functioning ASD (IQ>85) and 30 age- and intelligence-matched controls (ages between 12 and 15) performed the Emotion Recognition Task, in which morphs were presented on a computer screen, depicting facial expressions of the six basic emotions (happiness, disgust, fear, anger, surprise and sadness) at nine levels of emotional intensity (20–100%). The results showed no overall group difference on the ERT, apart from a slightly worse performance on the perception of the emotions fear (p<0.03) and disgust (p<0.05). No interaction was found between intensity level of the emotions and group. High-functioning individuals with ASD perform similar to matched controls on the perception of dynamic facial emotional expressions, even at low intensities of emotional expression. These findings are in agreement with other recent studies showing that emotion perception deficits in high-functioning ASD may be less pronounced than previously thought.
The behavioral role of the Mauthner neuron impulse

of the original article: The notion of the command cell has been highly influential in invertebrate neurobiology, and related notions have been increasingly used in research on the vertebrate nervous system. The term "command neuron" implies that the neuron has some critical function in the generation of a normally occurring behavior. Nevertheless, most authors either explicitly or implicitly use a strictly operational definition, independent of considerations of normal behavioral function. That is, command neurons are often defined as neurons which, when stimulated by the experimenter, evoke some behavioral response. Even when utilizing such an operational definition, investigators frequently differ on what they consider to be the exact characteristics that a neuron must have (or not have) to be considered a command cell. A few authors appear to treat command neurons in relation to normal function, but a precise behaviorally relevant definition has not been specified. Because of the ambiguity in the definition of command neurons, the term can refer to a wide variety of neurons which may play divergent behavioral roles. In some ways the attempt to label a cell as a command neuron may interfere with the process of discovering the complex causal determinants of behavior. Nevertheless, the notion that individual cells are responsible for certain behaviors is highly appealing, and an attempt to define the command neuron rigorously could be worthwhile. We suggest that a command neuron be defined as a neuron.that is both necessary and sufficient for the initiation of a given behavior. These criteria can be tested by: (1) establishing the response pattern of the putative command neuron during presentation of a given stimulus and execution of a well specified behavior; (2) removing the neuron and showing that the response is no longer elicited by the stimulus (necessary condition); and (3) firing the neuron in its normal pattern and showing that the complete behavioral response occurs (sufficient condition). In some cases, groups of neurons, when treated as a whole, may satisfy the necessity and sufficiency criteria for a given behavior, even though individual neurons of the group fail to meet the criteria. We suggest that such a group be termed a "command system" for the behavior in question. Individual neurons in the command system can be termed "command elements" if, when fired in their normally occurring pattern, they elicit a part of the behavior, or "modulatory elements" if they do not in isolation elicit any response, but alter the behavior produced by other elements in the command system. Is the Mauthner cell a Kupfermann & Weiss command neuron? Robert C. Eaton, Chris M. Wieland, and Randolf
Never too young to learn democracy!: a case study of a democratic approach to learning in a Religious and Moral Education (RME) secondary class in the West of Scotland

Whilst it is acknowledged that there is a case for giving pupils a say in what affects them most—the content and methodology of what and how they learn, such practice is not widespread. This paper discusses the rationale behind giving pupils a genuine say in determining their methods of learning and suggests how this approach is entirely within the spirit of policy on education for citizenship. It describes the attempt to do so in a Religious and Moral Education class in a West of Scotland comprehensive. It reports on how the class organized itself and the decisions the pupils took and evaluates the effectiveness, in terms of promoting positive attitudes, of this method of determining learning. The methodology involves comparing between pupils at the same stage studying in this way and those not. Finally, the paper examines pupil evaluations and reflection on this method of involving pupils.
A positive correlation between neutrophils in regional lymph nodes and progression of gastric cancer.

UNLABELLED BACKGROND/AIM: Recent evidence indicates that inflammation is a hallmark of cancer. Tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) contribute to tumor invasion. However, whether TANs and lymph node metastasis are related is unknown. Intranodal lymphatic vessel density (LVD) is significantly correlated with tumor progression, lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer. Herein, we investigated the effects of TANs in regional lymph nodes. MATERIALS AND METHODS We investigated the association of the density of TANs in regional lymph nodes with clinicopathological features by immunohistochemistry. Furthermore, we examined the prognostic value of TANs in lymph nodes. RESULTS The number of TANs in regional lymph nodes was positively correlated with intranodal LVD and micrometastases. Patients with higher cluster of differentiation 15(+) TAN counts had significantly poorer prognosis than those with lower counts. CONCLUSION Our results suggest that TANs in regional lymph nodes promote the invasion of lymph nodes by cancer cells via augmentation of lymphangiogenesis and thereby contribute to tumor progression.
When death enables life: incorporation of organs from deceased donors in Finnish kidney recipients

Abstract Anthropological and sociological studies of organ transplantation practices have pointed to the ambiguities that are created by the use of deceased donors for organ procurement purposes. It raises questions of bodily incorporation, ownership of bodily resources and the commodification of the ‘as good as dead’ body. For organ recipients, it is sometimes difficult to incorporate these objects derived through death, this ‘otherness’ for the sake of extending life in their own bodies. Although the transplantation process is clothed in very objective, biological terms by medical professionals, the presence of death as both a biological phenomenon and one replete with social meanings is a concern voiced by some recipients. Alienation, guilt, normalisation strategies and notions of mixed selves feature in their accounts of living with the transplant. The aim of the article is to contribute to the discussion initiated by philosopher Margrit Shildrick on the transformative nature of an embodied self by looking at how Finnish kidney recipients deal with incorporating a transplant from a deceased donor. The article is based on qualitative interviews with 18 Finnish kidney transplant recipients narrating the trajectory of their kidney failure, where one of the themes related to their self-perception following transplantation surgery.
The cross‐over phenomenon: unexpected patterns of change in students’ approaches to learning

A key aim of educational course design is to encourage students to adopt deeper approaches to learning. This article reports the findings of three studies that explored how medical students responded to three carefully designed educational course units. The findings suggest that, while a subgroup of the students responded by adopting deeper approaches (as intended by the designers of the course units), another subgroup responded by adopting more surface approaches. Two further subgroups displayed minimal changes in their approaches despite significant changes in their learning contexts. The finding (in all three studies) of a notable proportion of students adopting more surface approaches is of particular concern, as this could adversely affect the impact of even the most carefully designed educational program. These findings suggest that the context‐dependent nature of approaches to learning merits further investigation, as it may be more complex than previously described in the literature.
Intercultural differences and role perceptions of Israeli Arab and Israeli Bedouin teachers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent social groups maintaining traditional‐collectivistic or modern‐individualistic lifestyles while sharing a similar nationality ethnicity and cultural origin, may be differentiated on the basis of their professional job perceptions and attitudes.Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaires were administered to 323 Bedouin teachers who live in the southern part of Israel while maintaining a rather traditional way of life and to 232 Arab teachers who live in modern towns where Arabs and Jews coexist.Findings – The results show that Bedouin teachers exhibit a higher degree of compliance and loyalty to the leader and are more conservative and emotional in comparison to Israeli Arab teachers. These results testify to the strong relationship existing between values and norms accumulated during ethnic socialization processes and individual role perceptions especially when individuals' lifestyles correspond to these values.Originality/value – In consid.
Advances in aliquot sequences

In this paper we describe some advances in the knowledge of the behavior of aliquot sequences starting with a number less than 10000. For some starting values, it is shown for the first time that the sequence terminates. The current record for the maximum of a terminating sequence is located in the one starting at 4170; it converges to 1 after 869 iterations getting a maximum of 84 decimal digits at iteration 289.
The Politics of Governance in Higher Education: The Case of Quality Assurance

The politics of governance in higher education is dominated by a discourse of quality assurance which assumes the external regulation of academic activity to be the natural state of affairs. This article analyses the ideological origins of that discourse and its resonance with more general trends in the public management of welfare, the nature of the opposition from traditional university values, the stages in the translation of ideological advantage into specific forms of regulation, and the consequent shifts in the balance of power between the major players in higher education. Underlying this analysis is a framework which views the governance of higher education as an arena in which there is a continuing struggle for the control of high status knowledge through the functions of standard setting, evaluation and intervention.
Bowen's formula for a rational graph-directed Markov system

We establish Bowen's formula for the Julia set of a non-elementary, expanding, irreducible and aperiodic rational graph-directed Markov system satisfying the backward separating condition. Towards this end, we shall prove that the associated skew product map is topologically exact on the skew product Julia set, and satisfies the density of repelling periodic points. Moreover, we give a criterion for expandingness in terms of hyperbolicity.
Group Cohesiveness as a Determinant of Success and Member Satisfaction in Team Performance

The effectiveness of sport teams in competition is dependent upon many factors, one of which is the ability of individual members to work together. The coach often refers to this ability as teamwork, togetherness, or morale, while the researcher refers to it as group integration or group cohesiveness. Physical educators and coaches alike have long postulated that the most effective team is not necessarily composed from a con1bination of the best skilled individuals. The ability of individuals to effect tively interact with teammates to obtain a group-desired goal has been recognized as contributing to team effectiveness. A common held assump. tion is that the higher the cohesiveness of a team the more effective it will be. The purpose of the present study was to investigate this assumption among intramural basketball teams. The problem was to determine if different levels of group cohesiveness affected the effectiveness and individual member satisfaction of these teams. Lott and Lott (1965), in their review of the group cohesion literature, cite considerable research directed at the relationship between cohesiveness and performance. The conclusion reached by these reviewers is that the findings have been contradictory - i. e. , in some situations a high level of cohesiveness was beneficial, while in other cases this same level of cohesiveness impaired performance. Lott and Lott state that:
A First Glimpse at Narcotics Offenders in an Islamic Republic

This study tests the efficacy of social control, differential association, social learning, and self-esteem theories as explanations for the variation in individual levels of illegal drug involvement among a sample of adult incarcerated drug offenders in Iran. The results of path analysis indicate that measures of differential association (with drug-involved peers) and self-esteem had significant direct effects on self-reported narcotics crimes, whereas attachment, belief, and family drug involvement were indirectly associated with variation in level of drug involvement. As a result of its sharply different cultural and religious contexts, Iran presents a unique case for the evaluation of theoretical models developed to explain offending in Western nations. Yet because of its political structure and ideological and religious sensitivity to drug use, there have been few published analyses of drug use and drug offenders in Iran, making this study one of the first of its kind in either Western or Persian-language journals.
Cognitive processing of personally relevant information

Abstract Subjects performed an idiographic, computerised version of the modified Stroop colour-naming task after having undergone a film-induced mood manipulation designed to produce either anxiety, elation, or a neutral mood. The Stroop stimuli were words related either to the subject's positive current concerns (e.g. goals, interests), to the subject's negative current concerns (e.g. personal worries), or to neither. The results indicated that words strongly related to subject's positive as well as to negative current concerns produced significantly more Stroop interference than did words unrelated or weakly related to their current concerns. Although the films strongly influenced the subjects' moods in predicted directions initially, mood changes were largely not maintained throughout the experiment. Thus, it is not surprising that no significant interactions with word type were found. These results indicate that the “emotional Stroop effect” occurs in normal subjects as well as in anxious patients, an.
Bearing Fault Detection in Adjustable Speed Drives via a Support Vector Machine with Feature Selection using a Genetic Algorithm

This paper presents a novel method to detect bearing defects in adjustable speed drives (ASD's). The harmonics in pulse-width-modulation (PWM) input voltage waveforms and EMI noise in ASD systems make bearing fault detection more difficult. The proposed method accomplishes bearing fault detection in ASD's by combining motor current signature analysis (MCSA), wavelet packet decomposition (WPD), a genetic algorithm (GA), and a support vector machine (SVM). The SVM in conjunction with the GA is applied to the rms values of the wavelet packet coefficients to obtain significant wavelet packet nodes which produce optimal classifiers for classifying both healthy and defective bearings in ASD systems.
Job stress and satisfaction among nurses: individual differences

In a study involving 276 nurses in a large hospital in Northern Ireland, a comprehensive set of questionnaires was administered to assess multiple job-related variables. Nurses in general appeared to display high scores on the stresses related to confidence and competency in role, home–work conflict, and organisational involvement (subscales which are themselves closely associated with demands in social interaction at work). These are stresses which were related to psychological well-being. There were no gender differences on occupational stress or the health outcome variables. Age did emerge as significantly related to total stress and mental health (older nurses reporting more stress, and the younger nurses experiencing better psychological health). Grade of nursing was unrelated to job stress and outcome health variables, including work satisfaction. Although no differences were observed between wards/specialism and stress, differences were revealed along satisfaction, with maternity nurses (and intensive care nurses) displaying the highest level of satisfaction at work, and surgical (and medical) nurses showing the lowest. Finally, Type A emerged as a significant determinant of physical health, in contrast to internal locus of control, which was more related to mental health, (lower) occupational stress, and job satisfaction. No significant Type A×locus of control interactions were observed. The implications of these findings for nursing care are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Tongue Liminary Threshold Identification to Electrotactile Stimulation

Many applications use electrostimulation of the human skin to provide tactile sensation. The effect of electrotactile stimulations were studied on a 6x6 matrix of tactile electrodes placed on the anterior part of the tongue. The liminary threshold with continuous or discontinuous waveform and patterns with 2 or 4 electrodes was investigated. The result suggest that for energy saving and to improve the yield, it would probably be better to use discontinuous stimulation with two electrode patterns.