Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study on the effects of reading on writing performance among Faculty of Civil Engineering students

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of reading on writing performance among Faculty of Civil Engineering students. A total of twenty students from the Faculty of Civil Engineering had been identified and selected for the purpose of this research. This group of students is taking an English language course that is UHB 2422 Advanced English for Academic Communication. There were two writing sessions. The first session required the students to write an essay according to the topic given without reading the materials on related topic. Then, they were required to answer the questionnaire regarding their personal views on writing without reading text. On the other hand, in the second session of writing, the students were given a text to read and later produced a mind map based on their understanding of the text. The text then was taken and they were asked to write an essay on the given topic. They were required to answer the questionnaire regarding their personal views on writing with reading text. Observation was also made during both writing sessions. The results showed that reading has positive effects on the students? writing. The findings of this study were discussed and recommendations for future research were also suggested.
Hyperbolic-type generalized lorenz chaotic system and its canonical form

Abstract This paper shows that a large class of chaotic systems, introduced in (Celikovský and Vaněcek, 1994), (Vaněcek and Celikovský, 1996) as the generalized Lorenz system , can be further generalized to the hyperbolic-type generalized Lorenz system. While the generalized Lorenz system unifies both the famous Lorenz system and new Chen's system (Ueta and Chen, 1999), (Chen and Ueta, 2000), the hyperbolic-type generalized Lorenz system introduced here is in some way complementary to it. Such a complementarity is especially clear when considering the canonical form of the generalized Lorenz system obtained in (Celikovský and Chen, 2002), where the canonical form is characterized by the eigenvalues of the linearized part together with a key parameter τ ∈ (–1, ∞). The analogous canonical form of the hyperbolic-type generalized Lorenz system introduced here corresponds to the case of, while τ = –1 is a single special case. This new class of chaotic systems is then analyzed, both analytically and numerically, showing its rich variety of dynamical behaviours, including bifurcation and chaos. Moreover, an algorithm for transforming the hyberbolic-type generalized Lorenz system into its canonical form, as well as its inverse scheme, are presented.
Hematologic Changes Associated With Zidovudine Following Single-Drug Substitution From Stavudine in a Home-Based AIDS Care Program in Rural Uganda

Background. The authors evaluated hematologic changes associated with zidovudine (ZDV) following single-drug substitution from stavudine (D4T) in HIV-infected persons in Uganda. Methods. From May 2003 through February 2007, the authors evaluated incidence rates (IR) of hematologic abnormalities from quarterly blood draws among adults prescribed highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) before and after single-drug substitution of D4T to ZDV. Results. A total of 1089 adults received D4T-containing HAART (median observation time, 35.9 months), and 290 (27%) had ZDV substituted for D4T. While taking D4T, IR for anemia was 0.35/100 person-months (PMs), leukopenia was 0.29/100 PM, and thrombocytopenia was 0.32/100 PM. While taking ZDV, IR for anemia was 0.44/100 PM, leukopenia was 1.05/100 PM, and thrombocytopenia was 0.30/100 PM. Conclusions. Patients had a higher incidence of anemia and leukopenia after substitution from D4T to ZDV, but hematologic toxicity was not a major complication in this population. Patients on ZDV-containing HAART regimens are still at risk for anemia and need close monitoring.
Leprosy in five human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients.

We present five cases of leprosy in five human immunodeficiency virus-positive individuals. The patients were five men between the ages of 18 and 45 years. The five patients presented with skin lesions; three patients with hypopigmented skin lesions, one with skin macules and a history of leprosy, and one with papular lesions. In one patient, there was bilateral "claw hands. " Histologically, two cases were categorized as lepromatous leprosy, two as borderline tuberculoid, and one as borderline lepromatous. Follow-up information obtained in the five patients showed one patient had died, and the remaining four patients were alive and receiving antileprosy treatment.
Assessing the accuracy and reliability of direct height measurement for use in adult neurological patients with contractures: a comparison with height from ulna length.

BACKGROUND It is not possible to measure the height of a patient with contractures in the normal way. On occasions, health professionals need to measure the height directly of patients with contractures because: (i) the patient is unable to report his/her height as a result of a lack of mental capacity and (ii) there is no-one available to report the height or the reported height is obviously inaccurate. Height derived from ulna length is an option but, in some individuals, it can be conspicuously inaccurate. Therefore, we have attempted to develop and validate a simple bedside method using a tape measure. METHODS Twenty-four normal healthy adult volunteers were recruited into the study. They were positioned on a hospital bed in three different standardised positions simulating patients with typical contractures. They were measured in each position by four measurers using blanked out tape measures. The participants were then measured standing giving a 'true' height. Ulna length was also measured. RESULTS The mean of the tape-measured heights was 2.3 cm taller than the 'true' height (95% confidence interval = 4.6-9.3). The measurement in all three positions gave an over-estimate of the height, whereas the ulna-derived height gave an under-estimate (2.2 cm). The estimated reliability between measurers (intraclass correlation coefficient) was 0.94 with a 95% confidence interval (0.91-0.96). CONCLUSIONS This new method is giving an acceptable estimate of the height of contracted patients with a good inter-rater reliability. It comprises a useful additional tool for measuring the height of people with contractures.
Topographic recordings of auditory evoked potentials to speech: subcortical and cortical responses.

Topographies of speech auditory brainstem response (speech ABR), a fine electrophysiological marker of speech encoding, have never been described. Yet, they could provide useful information to assess speech ABR generators and better characterize populations of interest (e.g., musicians, dyslexics). We present here a novel methodology of topographic speech ABR recording, using a 32-channel low sampling rate (5 kHz) EEG system. Quality of speech ABRs obtained with this conventional multichannel EEG system were compared to that of signals simultaneously recorded with a high sampling rate (13.3 kHz) EEG system. Correlations between speech ABRs recorded with the two systems revealed highly similar signals, without any significant difference between their signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Moreover, an advanced denoising method for multichannel data (denoising source separation) significantly improved SNR and allowed topography of speech ABR to be recovered.
[Situation of domestic violence and health outcomes among married migrant women at reproductive age].

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between domestic violence and mental/general health status among married migrant women at reproductive age. METHODS A total of 958 eligible married migrant women of reproductive age who were selected through community-based multiple-stage sampling method in one urban district in Shanghai and interviewed in April and May 2010. Chi-square test, Fisher's exact test and unconditional logistic regression model were used for data analysis. RESULTS The overall prevalence of domestic violence in husbands was 40.0%. Among 5 adverse outcomes related to general health and 6 adverse outcomes related to mental health, exposing to physical or sexual violence in the life time or in the previous year were associated with 2 adverse outcomes related to general health (including often in pain/discomfort and sleeping problems) and 4 adverse outcomes related to mental health (including often feeling nervous/tense/worry, easily getting frightened, crying more than usual, often feeling worthless on herself or being indifferent to the surroundings). Experience of control behavior was associated with 1 adverse outcome that related to general health (often in pain or discomfort) and 3 adverse outcomes related to mental health including easily get frightened, feeling worthless on herself or indifferent to the surroundings, Experience of emotional violence in the previous year was associated with pain or discomfort feelings. Compared with those who had never experienced any violence from husband after adjusting for potential influencing factors in logistic regression models, respondents who had ever experienced physical or sexual violence, control behavior or emotional violence, the numbers were respectively, presented 2.25-3.70 times, 1.94-4.75 times and 2.12 times, more likely to report the above-mentioned adverse health outcomes. CONCLUSION Domestic violence was associated with general and mental health among married migrant women at reproductive age, especially physical or sexual violence and control behaviors.
Online learning in episodic Markovian decision processes by relative entropy policy search

We study the problem of online learning in finite episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the loss function is allowed to change between episodes. The natural performance measure in this learning problem is the regret defined as the difference between the total loss of the best stationary policy and the total loss suffered by the learner. We assume that the learner is given access to a finite action space A and the state space X has a layered structure with L layers, so that state transitions are only possible between consecutive layers. We describe a variant of the recently proposed Relative Entropy Policy Search algorithm and show that its regret after T episodes is 2√L|X||A|T log (|X||A|/L) in the bandit setting and 2L √T log(|X||A|/L) in the full information setting, given that the learner has perfect knowledge of the transition probabilities of the underlying MDP. These guarantees largely improve previously known results under much milder assumptions and cannot be significantly improved under general assumptions.
Male victims, adolescents, adult outcomes and offender treatment

Part 1: assessment and protection of child victims - legal processing and value issues clinical and treatment issues family contexts of CSA mothers of victims medical assessments prevention education precention education - an integrative review theory in research and prevention of CSA - under-utilized and under-developed. Part 2: male victims adolescent victims and abusers long-term effects of CSA in college students prevalence and outcomes - community surveys adult survivors - outcomes and interventions offender profiles and processing treatment of abusers.
Implications of social support and culture in the context of work-related stress

IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL SUPPORT AND CULTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF WORK-RELATED STRESS by Maria Amren The goals of this cross-cultural study were (1) to examine levels of role stressors and social support across cultures, (2) to investigate the relationships between role stressors and favorable attitudes and between social support and favorable attitudes, and (3) to examine the extent to which social support moderates the relationship between role stressors and favorable attitudes. The sample consisted of 1,796 employees in an Human Resources consulting firm across nine cultural regions. Mean scores on the main study variables (i.e., role stressors, coworker social support, supervisor social support, organizational social support, and favorable attitudes) significantly differed between cultural regions. Organizational social support buffered the stressor-favorable attitude relationship in USA and Canada, whereas a reverse buffering effect was found in Germanic Europe for both supervisorand organizational-social support. Similarly, in Latin Europe, supervisor social support had a reverse buffering effect on the stressor-favorable attitude relationship. Implications of the study are discussed. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to genuinely recognize Dr. Glazer for her support, creativity, and motivation to challenge myself with this thesis. I have truly enjoyed working with her and learned from her expertise and appreciate her dedication to my development within the field of I/O Psychology. Dr. Hosoda has provided feedback and support from a different perspective, which helped me keep the thesis to a manageable span of control. Without Dr. Pila, I would not have been as objective in my view of work-related stress; she provided insight and knowledge from her experience on the job. I dedicate this manuscript to my family in Sweden who is always there for me. I also want to recognize my husband for his continued support, encouragement, and belief in my abilities. I could not have done this without him. Being pregnant helped me get going on the thesis as I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Ida once she arrived in November 2007. She is the sunshine in our lives.
IDEA Compliance: A View from Rural America

In the 30 years since the establishment of federal law mandating special education, the voices of school personnel (special education teachers, speech and language pathologists, and school psychologists) charged with implementing these laws and regulations have been largely silent in the national research. Yet, these front line school district personnel serve as “intermediaries” and have responsibility to implement special education policy. This is an exploratory study that provided a forum for rural special education teachers, speech and language pathologists, and school psychologists to share their experiences and ideas regarding implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) prior to the reauthorization in 2004. Recommendations regarding practice, research, and policy in the administration of rural special education programs are provided.
A method for assessing fidelity of delivery of telephone behavioral support for smoking cessation.

OBJECTIVES Behavioral support for smoking cessation is delivered through different modalities, often guided by treatment manuals. Recently developed methods for assessing fidelity of delivery have shown that face-to-face behavioral support is often not delivered as specified in the service treatment manual. This study aimed to extend this method to evaluate fidelity of telephone-delivered behavioral support. METHOD A treatment manual and transcripts of 75 audio-recorded behavioral support sessions were obtained from the United Kingdom's national Quitline service and coded into component behavior change techniques (BCTs) using a taxonomy of 45 smoking cessation BCTs. Interrater reliability was assessed using percentage agreement. Fidelity was assessed by comparing the number of BCTs identified in the manual with those delivered in telephone sessions by 4 counselors. Fidelity was assessed according to session type, duration, counselor, and BCT. Differences between self-reported and actual BCT use were examined. RESULTS Average coding reliability was high (81%). On average, 41.8% of manual-specified BCTs were delivered per session (SD = 16.2), with fidelity varying by counselor from 32% to 49%. Fidelity was highest in pre-quit sessions (46%) and for BCT "give options for additional support" (95%). Fidelity was lowest for quit-day sessions (35%) and BCT "set graded tasks" (0%). Session duration was positively correlated with fidelity (r = .585; p < .01). Significantly fewer BCTs were used than were reported as being used, t(15) = -5.52, p < . 001. CONCLUSIONS The content of telephone-delivered behavioral support can be reliably coded in terms of BCTs. This can be used to assess fidelity to treatment manuals and to in turn identify training needs. The observed low fidelity underlines the need to establish routine procedures for monitoring delivery of behavioral support.
100 Selected Poems

E.E. Cummings is without question one of the major poets of this century, and this volume, first published in 1959, is indispensable for every lover of modern lyrical verse. It contains one hundred of Cummings s wittiest and most profound poems, harvested from thirty-five of the most radically creative years in contemporary American poetry. These poems exhibit all the extraordinary lyricism, playfulness, technical ingenuity, and compassion for which Cummings is famous. They demonstrate beautifully his extrapolations from traditional poetic structures and his departures from them, as well as the unique synthesis of lavish imagery and acute artistic precision that has won him the adulation and respect of critics and poetry lovers everywhere. "
On the autonomy of the grammatical gender systems of the two languages of a bilingual

In five experiments highly-proficient bilinguals were asked to name two sets of pictures in their L2: a) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have the same grammatical gender value, and b) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have different gender values. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3 Croatian-Italian speakers were asked to name the pictures in Italian by means of NPs in various experimental contexts. In Experiment 4A, Spanish-Catalan and Catalan-Spanish bilinguals were asked to name the pictures in Spanish, and in Experiment 4B, Italian-French bilinguals did so in French. The results of these experiments revealed no differences between same- and different-gender pictures. Furthermore, the performance of Italian, Spanish, and French monolingual speakers parallels that of bilingual speakers. However, a robust frequency effect was observed across experiments. This pattern of results supports the notion that the gender value of the words in the non-response language does not affect processing in the response language, and suggests that the two gender systems of a bilingual are functionally autonomous.
An Internet-Based Virtual Coach to Promote Physical Activity Adherence in Overweight Adults: Randomized Controlled Trial

Background Addressing the obesity epidemic requires the development of effective, scalable interventions. Pedometers and Web-based programs are beneficial in increasing activity levels but might be enhanced by the addition of nonhuman coaching. Objectives We hypothesized that a virtual coach would increase activity levels, via step count, in overweight or obese individuals beyond the effect observed using a pedometer and website alone. Methods We recruited 70 participants with a body mass index (BMI) between 25 and 35 kg/m2 from the Boston metropolitan area. Participants were assigned to one of two study arms and asked to wear a pedometer and access a website to view step counts. Intervention participants also met with a virtual coach, an automated, animated computer agent that ran on their home computers, set goals, and provided personalized feedback. Data were collected and analyzed in 2008. The primary outcome measure was change in activity level (percentage change in step count) over the 12-week study, split into four 3-week time periods. Major secondary outcomes were change in BMI and participants’ satisfaction. Results The mean age of participants was 42 years; the majority of participants were female (59/70, 84%), white (53/70, 76%), and college educated (68/70, 97%). Of the initial 70 participants, 62 completed the study. Step counts were maintained in intervention participants but declined in controls. The percentage change in step count between those in the intervention and control arms, from the start to the end, did not reach the threshold for significance (2.9% vs –12.8% respectively, P = .07). However, repeated measures analysis showed a significant difference when comparing percentage changes in step counts between control and intervention participants over all time points (analysis of variance, P = .02). There were no significant changes in secondary outcome measures. Conclusions The virtual coach was beneficial in maintaining activity level. The long-term benefits and additional applications of this technology warrant further study. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00792207; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00792207 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/63sm9mXUD)
Ghosts of the Past and Dreams of the Future

The authors investigated the impact of temporal focus on group members’ responses to contextual ingroup devaluation. Four experimental studies demonstrated that following an induction of negative ingroup evaluation, participants primed with a past temporal focus reported behavioral intentions more consistent with this negative appraisal than participants primed with a future temporal focus. This effect was apparent only when a negative (but not a positive) evaluation was induced, and only among highly identified group members. Importantly, the interplay between temporal focus and group identification on relevant intentions was mediated by individual self-esteem, suggesting that focus on the future may be conducive to separating negative ingroup appraisals from individual self-evaluations. Taken together, the findings suggest that high identifiers’ responses to ingroup evaluations may be predicated on their temporal focus: A focus on the past may lock such individuals within their group’s history, whereas a vision of the future may open up opportunities for change.
VALUES AND CORPORATE SOCIAL INITIATIVE: AN APPROACH THROUGH SCHWARTZ THEORY

The success of corporate social initiatives of firms depends largely on the perception of these have from the outside. This perception is liked directly to the values that have developed individuals in the areas where they play their academic or occupational activities. In fact, people in different occupations and education environment develop different value system which influences their behavior and choices. The University environment in Social Sciences studies offered a value opportunity to explore the value structure and how this structure influences the attitudes (patterns/behavior) towards the social initiatives of a company. The current study has pursued to aims. First, basing on existing research, the current study explores whether Schwartz’s value theory is applicable to the Spanish Social Science students at the undergraduate level. Second, the research intend to bring new knowledge to the relationship between basic values and those patterns which determine the perception of the Spanish Social Science students under a social initiative carried out by a company. The quantitative data consisted of 1060 university students by using a structured self-completion questionnaire.