Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting Institutional Adjustment and Recidivism With the Psychopathy Checklist Factor Scores

This study explored the validity of the PCL/PCL-R factor scores in predicting institutional adjustment and recidivism in forensic clients and prison inmates. Forty-two studies in which institutional adjustment, release outcome (recidivism), or both were assessed prospectively with the PCL/PCL-R yielded 50 effect size estimates between the PCL/PCL-R factor scores and measures of institutional adjustment/recidivism. A meta-analysis of these findings disclosed that Factor 2 (Antisocial/Unstable Lifestyle) correlated moderately well with institutional adjustment and recidivism, whereas Factor 1 (Affective/Interpersonal Traits) was less robustly associated with these outcomes. Direct comparisons of the mean effect sizes attained by Factors 1 and 2 revealed that Factor 2 was significantly more predictive of total outcomes, general recidivism, violent recidivism, and outcomes from the 12 most methodological sound studies than Factor 1. There was less differentiation between Factors 1 and 2 on measures of institutional adjustment.
Teaching Writing With Tumblr In Senior High School

Abstract: This research aims to investigate the use of Tumblr at the eleventh grade students of SMAN 3 Pontianak. Tumblr was used as the media of teaching and learning writing. Based on the preliminary research, class XI IPA 2 was chosen as the participants of this research in order to find out whether or not using Tumblr can improve students’ writing skill. Two cycles of classroom action research were conducted to help the researcher achieve the objective. The data were collected and analyzed in qualitative and quantitative form. The findings showed that there were positive improvements in students’ writing competence which could be seen from the mean score of the tests conducted before and after the action. The use of Tumblr was also beneficial in increasing students’ motivation, helping the students have more spaces to practice writing in unlimited time and place, and making them become more independent learners. Overall, many students excelled and their writing skills improved after using Tumblr as the new writing platform. Keywords: Tumblr, Teaching Writing, Writing Skill, Blog Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki bagaimana penggunaan Tumblr pada siswa kelas sebelas di SMAN 3 Pontianak. Tumblr digunakan sebagai media mengajar dan belajar menulis. Berdasarkan pada pra-penelitian, kelas XI IPA 2 dipilih sebagai subjek dari penelitian ini untuk mengetahui apakah Tumblr dapat meningkatkan kemampuan menulis siswa atau tidak. Dua siklus Penelitian Tindakan Kelas dilakukan untuk membantu peneliti dalam mencapai tujuan penelitian ini. Data-data penelitian dikumpulkan dan dianalisa dalam bentuk kualitatif dan kuantitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan adanya peningkatan positif pada kemampuan menulis siswa yang dapat dilihat dari nilai rata-rata tes pada sebelum dan sesudah masing-masing siklus. Penggunaan Tumblr juga diketahui bermanfaat untuk meningkatkan motivasi siswa, menyediakan ruang bagi mereka dalam berlatih menulis pada waktu dan tempat yang tidak terbatas dan menjadikan mereka pembelajar yang lebih mandiri. Secara keseluruhan, banyak siswa menjadi mahir dan kemampuan menulis mereka meningkat setelah menggunakan Tumblr sebagai media baru dalam menulis. Kata Kunci: Tumblr, Mengajar Menulis, Kemampuan Menulis, Blog
How Does Leader Other-Emotion Appraisal Influence Employees? The Multilevel Dual Affective Mechanisms

This research explores the multilevel dual-mediation processes related to how leader other-emotion appraisal impacts employee turnover intention. Using a Taiwanese sample of 197 employees and their leaders in 64 work teams, the results revealed that leader other-emotion appraisal was positively related to leader positive emotion display and employee satisfaction with the leader. Moreover, employee satisfaction with the leader significantly mediated the relationship between leader other-emotion appraisal and employee turnover intention. Implications for theory and practice were outlined, and limitations and directions for future research were discussed.
Forthcoming in European Economic Review Incentive Systems in a Real Effort Experiment

In the reported experiment different payment schemes are examined on their incentive effects. Payment based on individual, team and relative performance are compared. Subjects conducted computerized tasks that required substantial effort. The results show that individual and team payment induced the same effort levels. In team production free-riding occurred, but it was compensated by many subjects providing more effort than in case of individual pay. Effort was higher, but more variable in tournaments, while in case of varying abilities workers with relatively low ability worked very hard and drove up effort of the others. Finally, attitudes towards work and other workers differed strongly between conditions.
A synthetic system for expression of components of a bacterial microcompartment

In general, prokaryotes are considered to be single-celled organisms that lack internal membrane-bound organelles. However, many bacteria produce proteinaceous microcompartments that serve a similar purpose, i.e. to concentrate specific enzymic reactions together or to shield the wider cytoplasm from toxic metabolic intermediates. In this paper, a synthetic operon encoding the key structural components of a microcompartment was designed based on the genes for the Salmonella propanediol utilization (Pdu) microcompartment. The genes chosen included pduA, -B, -J, -K, -N, -T and -U, and each was shown to produce protein in an Escherichia coli chassis. In parallel, a set of compatible vectors designed to express non-native cargo proteins was also designed and tested. Engineered hexa-His tags allowed isolation of the components of the microcompartments together with co-expressed, untagged, cargo proteins. Finally, an in vivo protease accessibility assay suggested that a PduD–GFP fusion could be protected from proteolysis when co-expressed with the synthetic microcompartment operon. This work gives encouragement that it may be possible to harness the genes encoding a non-native microcompartment for future biotechnological applications.
Learning Control Composition in a Complex Environment

In this paper, reinforcement learning algorithms are applied to a foraging task, expressed as a control composition problem. The domain used is a simulated world in which a variety of creatures (agents) live and interact, reacting to stimuli and to each other. In such dynamic, uncertain environments , fast adaptation is important, and there is a need for new architectures that facilitate on-line learning. Recently, control composition has shown its potential in reducing the complexity of learning in many domains, permitting more complex tasks to be addressed. Results presented here restate the above claim and also show that the use of a modiied version of the Q-learning algorithm performs better in the non-Markovian sequential decision task proposed. In addition, it is shown that shaping can be successfully used to improve the performance of these learning algorithms in complex environments.
Comprehension Monitoring Abilities Effect of Think-Aloud Instruction on Elementary Students'

This study investigated the effectiveness of explicit instruction in think aloud as a means to promote elementary students' comprehension monitoring abilities. Sixty-six fourth-grade students were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups: (a) a Think-Aloud (TA) group, in which students were taught various comprehension monitoring strategies for reading stories (e.g., selfquestioning, prediction, retelling, rereading) through the medium of thinking aloud; (b) a Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA) group, in which students were taught a predict-verify strategy for reading and responding to stories; or (c) a Directed Reading Activity (DRA) group, an instructed control, in which students engaged in a noninteractive, guided reading of stories. The primary quantitative analyses involved two planned orthogonal contrasts—effect of instruction (TA + DRTA vs. 2 x DRA) and intensity of instruction (TA vs. DRTA)—for three whole-sample dependent measures: (a) an error detection test, (b) a comprehension monitoring questionnaire, and (c) a modified cloze test. Results of effect of instruction contrasts revealed that TA and DRTA students were more skillful at comprehension monitoring than DRA students (TA + DRTA>DRA for all three measures). Results of intensity of instruction contrasts indicated that although TA-trained students had greater awareness of comprehension monitoring abilities (TA>DRTA for the questionnaire), DRTA students' performance equaled (TA = DRTA for the cloze test) or exceeded (TA<DRTA for the error detection test) that of the TA students. Qualitative data from student interviews, however, revealed that TA students both reported and demonstrated using a greater depth
“We Didn’t Know You Were a Negro”: Fredric Wertham and the Ironies of Race, Comic Books, and Juvenile Delinquency in the 1950s

Abstract:In our collective memory of the 1950s, Frederic Wertham often appears as the spearhead of the conservative anti–comic book campaign. Yet in recent historiography, scholars have championed him as an antiracist who made mental health care more available to African Americans at Harlem’s Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic. Named for Karl Marx’s son-in-law, its volunteers provided low-cost care regardless of race from 1946 to 1959. How did someone who might otherwise have been branded a Communist attract white conservative allies at the repressive outset of the Cold War? This paper contends that this leftist was able to keep his subversive clinic open for thirteen years because that white public was unaware its patients and staff were black. The Lafargue Clinic relied on mass media to generate donations. In the 1950s, the clinic’s public image was linked to the anti-comics movement. Because Wertham represented the work he did there with children and comics in a race-neutral fashion, white parents thought the clinic was white, flooding it with donations and requests for speakers. Ironically, this radical clinic was forced to close once the anticomics crusade ended, eroding its conservative base. The history of the Lafargue Clinic’s public image highlights the ironies of a postwar United States united by mass media. A carefully crafted public image enabled some subversive institutions to avoid the blacklist and pursue their missions. By generating allies ignorant of their actual activities and ideology, places such as the Lafargue Clinic managed to survive the 1950s—hidden in plain sight.
Object Recognition Using Three-Dimensional Information

This paper describes an approach to the recognition of stacked objects with planar and curved surfaces. The system works in two phases. In the learning phase, a scene containing a single object is shown one at a time. The range data of a scene are obtained by a range finder. The description of each scene is built in terms of properties of regions and relations between them. This description is stored as an object model. In the recognition phase, an unknown scene is described in the same way as in the learning phase. Then the description is matched to the object models so that the stacked objects are recognized sequentially. Efficient matching is achieved by a combination of data-driven and model-driven search processes. Experimental results for blocks and machine parts are shown.
Object Detection Without Scanning – A Biologically Motivated Computational Approach

We introduce a framework for invariant object recognition. It constitutes an alternative approach to the standard image scanning in computer vision. Our approach relies on intuitions derived from visual processing in cortex and provides computational foundations to a class of feedforward view-based models of object recognition in cortex. The main contributions of our work include: 1) An object recognition method that conforms with most of the biological constraints. 2) A simple feedforward implementation, that can achieve invariance in merely three layers. 3) A significant reduction in complexity in the multiple object settings when implemented on a sequential machine.
Variability in subpopulation formation propagates into biocatalytic variability of engineered Pseudomonas putida strains

Pivotal challenges in industrial biotechnology are the identification and overcoming of cell-to-cell heterogeneity in microbial processes. While the development of subpopulations of isogenic cells in bioprocesses is well described (intra-population variability), a possible variability between genetically identical cultures growing under macroscopically identical conditions (clonal variability) is not. A high such clonal variability has been found for the recombinant expression of the styrene monooxygenase genes styAB from Pseudomonas taiwanensis VLB120 in solvent-tolerant Pseudomonas putida DOT-T1E using the alk-regulatory system from P. putida GPo1. In this study, the oxygenase subunit StyA fused to eGFP was used as readout tool to characterize the population structure in P. putida DOT-T1E regarding recombinant protein content. Flow cytometric analyses revealed that in individual cultures, at least two subpopulations with highly differing recombinant StyA-eGFP protein contents appeared (intra-population variability). Interestingly, subpopulation sizes varied from culture-to-culture correlating with the specific styrene epoxidation activity of cells derived from respective cultures (clonal variability). In addition, flow cytometric cell sorting coupled to plasmid copy number (PCN) determination revealed that detected clonal variations cannot be correlated to the PCN, but depend on the combination of the regulatory system and the host strain employed. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first work reporting that intra-population variability (with differing protein contents in the presented case study) causes clonal variability of genetically identical cultures. Respective impacts on bioprocess reliability and performance and strategies to overcome respective reliability issues are discussed.
Aggregation Without the Aggravation? Nonparametric Analysis of the Representative Consumer

In the tradition of Afriat (1967), Diewert (1973) and Varian (1982), we provide a revealed preference characterisation of the representative consumer. Our results are simple and complement those of Gorman (1953, 1961), Samuelson (1956) and others. They can also be applied to data very readily and without the need for auxilliary parametric or statistical assumptions. We investigate the application of our characterisation by means of a balanced microdata panel survey. Our findings provide robust evidence against the existence of a representative consumer for our data.
Changes in renal angiotensin II receptors in spontaneously hypertensive rats by early treatment with the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor captopril.

We tested the hypothesis that in utero treatment with the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor captopril could change the affinity, density, and/or subtypes of angiotensin II (Ang II) receptors in the kidneys of spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Newborn, 7-day-old, and 4-month-old SHR and Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats were used. SHR and WKY rat breeders were treated with captopril (0.4 mg/mL, 100 mg/kg per day) in drinking water, and their pups were maintained on captopril treatment until experimentation. Control groups were untreated, age-matched SHR and WKY rats. The density, affinity, and subtypes of renal Ang II receptors were determined using radioligand binding techniques and receptor antagonists specific for Ang II receptor subtypes 1 and 2 (losartan, an AT1-specific antagonist, and CGP 42112B, an AT2-specific antagonist). AT1 receptor density in kidneys was higher than AT2 receptor density in both neonatal and adult rats. AT1 receptor density in kidneys increased approximately twofold from birth to 7 days of age in all groups. Newborn and 7-day-old SHR showed significantly greater Ang II receptor densities in kidneys than other rat groups because of significantly greater densities of both AT1 and AT2 receptors. At 4 months of age, there were no significant differences in Ang II receptor densities in kidneys between captopril-treated and control SHR. Our data indicate that the expression of AT1 and AT2 receptors in kidneys is differentially regulated during development. Enhanced activity of the renal renin-Ang II system in newborn and probably fetal SHR may be involved in the pathogenesis of hypertension. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Symmetry breaking in few layer graphene films

Recently, it was demonstrated that the quasiparticle dynamics, the layer-dependent charge and potential, and the c-axis screening coefficient could be extracted from measurements of the spectral function of few layer graphene films grown epitaxially on SiC using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). In this paper we review these findings, and present detailed methodology for extracting such parameters from ARPES. We also present detailed arguments against the possibility of an energy gap at the Dirac crossing ED.
Straight walking and turning on a slippery surface

SUMMARY In stick insects, walking is the result of the co-action of different pattern generators for the single legs and coordinating inter-leg influences. We have used a slippery surface setup to understand the role the local neuronal processing in the thoracic ganglia plays in the ability of the animal to show turning movements. To achieve this, we removed the influence of mechanical coupling through the ground by using the slippery surface and removed sensory input by the successive amputation of neighboring legs. We analyzed the walking pattern of the front, middle and hind legs of tethered animals mounted above the surface and compared the kinematics of the straight walking legs with those of the curve walking inside and outside legs. The walking pattern was monitored both electrically through tarsal contact measurement and optically by using synchronized high-speed video. The vectors of leg movement are presented for the intact and a reduced preparation. Animals showed the ability to walk in a coordinated fashion on the slippery surface. Upon change from straight to curve walking, the stride length for the inside legs shortens and the vector of movement of the inner legs changes to pull the animal into the curve, while the outer legs act to pull and push it into the turn. In the reduced two-leg and in the single-leg preparation the behavior of the legs remained largely unchanged in the behavioral contexts of straight walking or turning with only small changes in the extreme positions. This suggests that the single stepping legs perform given motor programs on the slippery surface in a fashion that is highly independent not only of mechanical coupling between but also of the presence of the other legs.
Deletion of Two-Component Regulatory Systems Increases the Virulence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

ABSTRACT Two-component regulatory signal transduction systems are widely distributed among bacteria and enable the organisms to make coordinated changes in gene expression in response to a variety of environmental stimuli. The genome sequence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis contains 11 complete two-component systems, four isolated homologous regulators, and three isolated homologous sensors. We have constructed defined mutations in six of these genes and measured virulence in a SCID mouse model. Mice infected with four of the mutants (deletions of devR, tcrXY, trcS, and kdpDE) died more rapidly than those infected with wild-type bacteria. The other two mutants (narL and Rv3220c) showed no change compared to the wild-type H37Rv strain. The most hypervirulent mutant (devRΔ) also grew more rapidly in the acute stage of infection in immunocompetent mice and in gamma interferon-activated macrophages. These results define a novel class of genes in this pathogen whose presence slows down its multiplication in vivo or increases its susceptibility to host killing mechanisms. Thus, M. tuberculosis actively maintains a balance between its own survival and that of the host.
Avoiding a compromise between sexual selection and species recognition: female swordtail fish assess multiple species-specific cues

Females increase their risk of mating with heterospecifics when they prefer the traits of conspecifics that overlap with traits found in heterospecifics. Xiphophorus pygmaeus females have a strong preference for larger males, which could lead to females preferring to mate with heterospecific males; almost all sympatric X. cortezi males are larger than X. pygmaeus males. In this study, we show that X. pygmaeus females preferred the chemical cues from conspecifics over those of X. cortezi males. However, preference for the chemical cues of conspecifics could not reverse the preference for larger heterospecific males. Only when females were presented with two species-specific cues (vertical bars and chemical cues) did more females spend more time on average with the smaller conspecific males. These results support the "backup signal" hypothesis for the evolution of multiple preferences; together, the two species-specific cues increased the accuracy with which females were able to avoid heterospecific males. In addition, the results suggest that in those situations in which the traits of conspecifics overlap with traits found in heterospecifics, females can use the assessment of multiple cues to avoid mating with heterospecifics without compromising their preference for the highest-quality conspecific. Copyright 2003.
Sex Discrimination in the Labor Market Joni Hersch

This paper examines sources of gender pay disparity and the factors that contribute to this pay gap. Many researchers question the role of discrimination and instead attribute the residual pay gap to gender differences in preferences. The main issue considered in this paper is whether gender differences in choices, especially with respect to the family and household, are indeed responsible for the gender pay gap, or whether discrimination plays a role. On balance, the evidence indicates that sex discrimination remains a possible explanation of the unexplained gender pay gap. This is consistent with the continuing high profile sex discrimination litigation suggestive of on-going inferior treatment on the basis of sex.