Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Online and Offline Performance Gains Following Motor Imagery Practice: A Comprehensive Review of Behavioral and Neuroimaging Studies

There is now compelling evidence that motor imagery (MI) promotes motor learning. While MI has been shown to influence the early stages of the learning process, recent data revealed that sleep also contributes to the consolidation of the memory trace. How such “online” and “offline” processes take place and how they interact to impact the neural underpinnings of movements has received little attention. The aim of the present review is twofold: (i) providing an overview of recent applied and fundamental studies investigating the effects of MI practice (MIP) on motor learning; and (ii) detangling applied and fundamental findings in support of a sleep contribution to motor consolidation after MIP. We conclude with an integrative approach of online and offline learning resulting from intense MIP in healthy participants, and underline research avenues in the motor learning/clinical domains.
Using Personal and Social Responsibility Model for Gaining Leadership Behavior in Students

In the research, it was aimed to teach responsibility to the students, ensure and develop awareness of leadership behavior using a leadership program, and also examine the effectiveness of the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model in terms of forming a leadership behavior. The study group consisted of 55 students in high school 1st grade attending Ankara Turkish Volleyball Federation Sports High School. In the study, mixed methods pattern with embedded semi-experimental pretest-posttest control group was used. While a 32-hour leadership program was being applied to the students in the experimental group, the current curriculum was continued to be taught for the students in the control group. As data collection tools, the Personal and Social Responsibility Behavior Scale, the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire, a semi-structured individual interview form, and field notes were used. For findings; descriptive statistics and One-way Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used in the analysis of quantitative data, and content analysis method was used in the analysis of qualitative data. As a result, the leadership program including 16 lectures delivered during eight weeks was effective in terms of teaching responsibility to the students of Sports High School and forming and developing leadership behaviors.
On Horizontal Decomposition of the Operating System

As previous OS abstractions and structures fail to explicitly consider the separation between resource users and providers, the shift toward server-side computing poses serious challenges to OS structures, which is aggravated by the increasing many-core scale and workload diversity. This paper presents the horizontal OS model. We propose a new OS abstraction, subOS, an independent OS instance owning physical resources that can be created, destroyed, and resized swiftly. We horizontally decompose the OS into the supervisor for the resource provider and several subOSes for resource users. The supervisor discovers, monitors, and provisions resources for subOSes, while each subOS independently runs applications. We confine state sharing among subOSes, but allow on-demand state sharing if necessary. We present the first implementation, RainForest, which supports unmodified Linux applications binaries. Our comprehensive evaluations using six benchmark suites quantitatively show RainForest outperforms Linux with three different kernels, LXC, and XEN. The RainForest source code is soon available.
Who are Industry Specialist Auditors?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of using several definitions and several measurements of auditor industry specialization in the empirical audit research. Industry specialist auditors are supposed to be able to provide better quality audits therefore, auditor industry specialization measures have been developed and used in the empirical audit research. In a first step, we empirically test whether different definitions of auditor industry specialist result in consistent designations of audit firms as specialists of a given industry and find that inconsistent industry specialist definitions lead to inconsistent designation of audit firms as industry specialists. In a second step, we test and demonstrate that these different auditor industry designations lead to inconsistent results in terms of magnitude and significance regarding the fee premium paid to auditor industry specialists. Such evidence raises an issue of whether the findings in prior studies are subject to measurement errors of audit industry specialists
Série Scientifique Scientific Series Stock Exchange Markets for New Ventures Stock Exchange Markets for New Ventures Executive Summary

Reproduction partielle permise avec citation du document source, incluant la notice ©. Short sections may be quoted without explicit permission, if full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. CIRANO Le CIRANO est un organisme sans but lucratif constitué en vertu de la Loi des compagnies du Québec. Le financement de son infrastructure et de ses activités de recherche provient des cotisations de ses organisations-membres, d'une subvention d'infrastructure du Ministère du Développement économique et régional et de la Recherche, de même que des subventions et mandats obtenus par ses équipes de recherche. CIRANO is a private non-profit organization incorporated under the Québec Companies Act. Its infrastructure and research activities are funded through fees paid by member organizations, an infrastructure grant from the Ministère du Développement économique et régional et de la Recherche, and grants and research mandates obtained by its research teams. Le CIRANO collabore avec de nombreux centres et chaires de recherche universitaires dont on peut consulter la liste sur son site web. Les cahiers de la série scientifique (CS) visent à rendre accessibles des résultats de recherche effectuée au CIRANO afin de susciter échanges et commentaires. Ces cahiers sont écrits dans le style des publications scientifiques. Les idées et les opinions émises sont sous l'unique responsabilité des auteurs et ne représentent pas nécessairement les positions du CIRANO ou de ses partenaires. This paper presents research carried out at CIRANO and aims at encouraging discussion and comment. The observations and viewpoints expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent positions of CIRANO or its partners. Résumé / Abstract Au Canada, un marché boursier de capital de risque inscrit des entreprises à très faible capitalisation, avant même qu'elles ne rapportent des revenus. Ce marché est en concurrence directe avec le capital de risque institutionnel et informel. Le taux de rendement de ce marché boursier est supérieur à celui du capital de risque, et ce marché amène sept fois plus d'entreprises au marché principal, par « graduation », que ne le fait le capital de risque à la suite d'émissions initiales. Nous n'observons aucune performance anormale négative à la suite des graduations. Nos résultats indiquent que le capital de risque canadien ne semble pas disposer des avantages que la théorie attribue généralement à ce type d'investisseurs en matière de sélection des projets, de supervision ou encore de capacité de disposition des placements. In Canada, …
Network Structures in Industrial Pricing: The Effect of Emergent Roles in Tokyo Supplier-Chain Hierarchies

Given data on supplier chains in a Tokyo industrial district, we show how network structures such as monopsony (uniqueness of buyers) may affect noncompetitive pricing. To address the distribution of these biases we show how two types of emergent roles in hierarchically organized production chains affect noncompetitive price diffusion both horizontally and vertically in the industrial hierarchy. More concretely our model addresses such questions as how it is that, as in the case of this specific industrial hierarchy, processing activities and parts and components manufacturing organized by the “elite” buyers for the top manufacturers, while executed by numerous smaller enterprises lower in Ohta hierarchy, leave so many low-level suppliers subject to monopsony. Monopsony and monopoly (and to a lesser extent, duopoly and duopsony) are structures that may severely reduce profit margins. We use two complementary frameworks to pose and address such questions. One is network economics where monopsony and duopsony and their potential effects on pricing are well defined, like those of monopoly and duopoly. The other is network sociology, where we can define more fundamental concepts of the network construction of social and economic processes and institutions and the effects of network structure in transactional situations. We regard both frameworks as necessary to modeling elements of global and regional economies.
Haemodynamic comparison of a novel flow-divider Optiflo geometry and a traditional total cavopulmonary connection.

OBJECTIVES The total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC), the current palliation of choice for single-ventricle heart defects, is typically created with a single cylindrical tunnel or conduit routing inferior vena caval (IVC) flow to the pulmonary arteries. Previous studies have shown the haemodynamic efficiency of the TCPC to be sub-optimal due to the collision of vena caval flow, thus placing an extra energy burden on the single ventricle. The use of a bifurcated graft as the Fontan baffle (i.e. the 'Optiflo') has previously been proposed on the basis of theoretically improved flow efficiency; however, anatomical constraints may limit its effectiveness in some patients. METHODS In this study, an alternative approach to flow bifurcation is proposed, where a triangular insert is placed at the distal end of the IVC graft. The proof of concept for this design is demonstrated in two steps: first, determining the optimal insert size at a fixed Fontan graft size through a parametric study; then, characterizing the efficiency as a function of graft size when compared with a TCPC control. TCPC power loss and IVC flow distribution were the primary metrics of interest and were evaluated under both resting and simulated exercise conditions using an in-house computational fluid dynamics solver. RESULTS Results demonstrated that there was an optimal insert size that improved efficiency compared with the TCPC. For an 18-mm Fontan baffle, TCPC power loss was 4.1 vs 3.7 mW with the optimal flow-divider. The optimal insert was then scaled up for a 20-mm graft, with a similar reduction in power loss observed. Flow distribution results were inconsistent, based on sensitivity to the placement of the insert within the baffle. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated proof of concept that the flow-divider has the potential to reduce power loss and streamline IVC flow through the TCPC. An appropriate size for the insert in proportion to the Fontan baffle size was identified that reduced losses compared with a TCPC control under both resting and simulated exercise flow conditions.
EASTERN HEMLOCK RECOVERY FROM HEMLOCK WOOLLY ADELGID DAMAGE FOLLOWING IMIDACLOPRID THERAPY

Hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) is a serious pest of hemlocks (Tsuga spp.) in the eastern United States. A variety of insecticides are capable of controlling hemlock woolly adelgid. The use of a systemic insecticide, imidacloprid, has gained widespread acceptance and use in the plant care industry. While several studies demonstrate the efficacy of imidacloprid in reducing adelgid populations, none have examined how hemlocks recover following imidacloprid therapy. Using specimen Tsuga canadensis trees in a residential landscape, we found that hemlocks recovered dramatically with new growth once the pressure of the adelgids was reduced following an application of imidacloprid. Most important, the response of trees to imidacloprid therapy differed in relation to their condition at the onset of the experiment. Trees with the healthiest, most foliated canopy improved the least following the reduction in adelgid populations. Trees with little new growth but no dieback recovered the quickest and most densely. Trees in the poorest condition at the onset recovered impressively but more slowly. Trees left untreated remained sparsely foliated, with dieback. These results confirm the value of imidacloprid therapy in improving the quality of hemlocks under attack by the hemlock woolly adelgid in urban forests.
An Operating System level data migration scheme in hybrid DRAM-NVM memory architecture

With the emergence of Non-Volatile Memories (NVMs) and their shortcomings such as limited endurance and high power consumption in write requests, several studies have suggested hybrid memory architecture employing both Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) and NVM in a memory system. By conducting a comprehensive experiments, we have observed that such studies lack to consider very important aspects of hybrid memories including the effect of: a) data migrations on performance, b) data migrations on power, and c) the granularity of data migration. This paper presents an efficient data migration scheme at the Operating System level in a hybrid DRAM-NVM memory architecture. In the proposed scheme, two Least Recently Used (LRU) queues, one for DRAM section and one for NVM section, are used for the sake of data migration. With careful characterization of the workloads obtained from PARSEC benchmark suite, the proposed scheme prevents unnecessary migrations and only allows migrations which benefits the system in terms of power and performance. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can reduce the power consumption up to 79% compared to DRAM-only memory and up to 48% compared to the state-of-the art techniques.
Language as symbolic action : essays on life, literature, and method

From the Preface: The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gist of these various pieces. For all of them are explicitly concerned with the attempt to define and track down the implications of the term "symbolic action," and to show how the marvels of literature and language look when considered form that point of view.
On routing demand and congestion estimation for FPGAs

Interconnection planning is becoming an important design issue for ASICs and large FPGAs. As the technology shrinks and the design density increases, proper planning of routing resources becomes all the more important to ensure rapid and feasible design convergence. One of the most important issues for planning interconnection is the ability to predict the routability of a given placed design. This paper provides insight into the workings of recently proposed method by Lou et al. (2001) and compares it with our proposed methodology, fGREP (2001). We have implemented the two methods for a generic FPGA architecture and compare the performance, accuracy and usability of their estimates. We use the well known FPGA physical design suite VPR (1997), as a common comparison tool. Our experiments show that fGREP produces far better routing estimates but at larger execution times than Lou's method. Insight into what makes the methods work and where they falter are also discussed in detail.
Accurate fundamental parameters for lower main‐sequence stars

We derive an empirical effective temperature and bolometric luminosity calibration for G and K dwarfs, by applying our own implementation of the Infrared Flux Method to multiband photometry. Our study is based on 104 stars for which we have excellent BV(RI)CJHKS photometry, excellent parallaxes and good metallicities. Colours computed from the most recent synthetic libraries (ATLAS9 and MARCS) are found to be in good agreement with the empirical colours in the optical bands, but some discrepancies still remain in the infrared. Synthetic and empirical bolometric corrections also show fair agreement. A careful comparison to temperatures, luminosities and angular diameters obtained with other methods in the literature shows that systematic effects still exist in the calibrations at the level of a few per cent. Our Infrared Flux Method temperature scale is 100-K hotter than recent analogous determinations in the literature, but is in agreement with spectroscopically calibrated temperature scales and fits well the colours of the Sun. Our angular diameters are typically 3 per cent smaller when compared to other (indirect) determinations of angular diameter for such stars, but are consistent with the limb-darkening corrected predictions of the latest 3D model atmospheres and also with the results of asteroseismology. Very tight empirical relations are derived for bolometric luminosity, effective temperature and angular diameter from photometric indices. We find that much of the discrepancy with other temperature scales and the uncertainties in the infrared synthetic colours arise from the uncertainties in the use of Vega as the flux calibrator. Angular diameter measurements for a well-chosen set of G and K dwarfs would go a long way to addressing this problem.
Electricity Forward Prices: A High-Frequency Empirical Analysis

We conduct an empirical analysis of forward prices in the PJM electricity market using a high-frequency data set of hourly spot and day-ahead forward prices. We find that there are significant risk premia in electricity forward prices. These premia vary systematically throughout the day and are directly related to economic risk factors, such as the volatility of unexpected changes in demand, spot prices, and total revenues. These results support the hypothesis that electricity forward prices in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland market are determined rationally by risk-averse economic agents. Copyright 2004 by The American Finance Association.
Reliability, Validity, Factor Structure, and Measurement Invariance of the Japanese Conners’ Adult ADHD Rating Scales (CAARS)

To examine reliability, validity, factor structure, and measurement invariance (i.e., configural, metric, and scalar invariance) of the Japanese Conners’ Adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) Rating Scales (CAARS), Japanese nonclinical adults (N = 786) completed the CAARS Self-Report (CAARS-S). Each participant was also rated by one observer using the CAARS Observer Form (CAARS-O). For the test of measurement invariance, excerpts from the original (North American) CAARS norming data (N = 500) were used. Dimensional structure was examined by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Test–retest reliability, internal consistency, and concurrent validity were satisfactory. Based on the DSM-IV model and Japanese four-factor model, configural and metric invariance were established for the CAARS-S/O across Japanese and North American populations. Scalar invariance was established for the CAARS-O based on the Japanese model. The use of the Japanese CAARS for diagnostic purposes in Japan was supported; however, it should be used with caution for cross-cultural comparison research.
Attenuated Modulation of the N170 ERP by Facial Expressions in Schizophrenia

In psychiatrically-well subjects the modulation of event related potentials (ERPs) by emotional facial expressions is found in several ERPs from −100 ms and later. A face-related EPR, the N170, is abnormally reduced in schizophrenia to faces relative to other complex objects and research suggests emotional modulation of N170 may be reduced as well. To further examine facial emotion modulation of N170, subjects detected neutral facial expressions from among five emotional expressions (happy, sad, fearful, angry, and disgusted). Over occipitotemporal sites, psychiatrically-well subjects showed bilateral differences in N170 amplitude among expressions (P=0.014). Schizophrenia subjects failed to show this modulation (P = 0.551). Accuracy on the task did not differ between groups, nor did the pattern of errors. However, in patients, greater positive and negative symptom ratings were associated with increased failure to button press to neutral faces, suggesting misattribution of emotion to neutral expressions in the more ill patients. Because the N170 is largely specific to faces, these results suggest that an impairment specific to the visual processing of facial expressions contributes to the well-known behavioral abnormalities in facial emotion tasks in schizophrenia.
Predicting the decrease of engagement indicators in a MOOC

Predicting the decrease of students' engagement in typical MOOC tasks such as watching lecture videos or submitting assignments is key to trigger timely interventions in order to try to avoid the disengagement before it takes place. This paper proposes an approach to build the necessary predictive models using students' data that becomes available during a course. The approach was employed in an experimental study to predict the decrease of three different engagement indicators in a MOOC. The results suggest its feasibility with values of area under the curve for different predictors ranging from 0.718 to 0.914.
Outsourcing: A descriptive study of the outsourcing of non-educational services in the Bergen and Passaic County public schools

Due to a diminishing level ofavailable funds, school leaders are faced with difficult decisions associated with reducing budget expenditures. The only way to prevent losing more programs and services is to reduce spending. An area which is quickly gaining popularity in reducing expenditures is outsourcing. Many schools have turned to outside companies to provide an array of services in a more economical and efficient way than the schools can provide using internal personnel. As these "outsiders" enter our schools, there are implications. Currently, an acute shortage of reliable research exists in this area. This qualitative study is an extension of Heinz Retzlaff's research titled Outsourcing: A Description ofEducational Operations and Performance. The function of this undertaking is to provide a better I understanding of the perceptions and opinions regarding outsourcing of those stakeholders who are part of the decision-making process from Passaic and Bergen County public schools. I Four focus groups participated in the study. The number ofparticipants in the focus groups was as follows: Group 1 -6; Group 2 -6; Group 3 -5; and Group 4 -7. Constituents I included superintendents, school board members, business officials and building principals. The question route was designed to investigate whether participants feel outsourcing is available and necessary, their perceptions regarding the impact of outsourcing non-instructional education services on operating efficiency and school funding, the current policies and procedures currently being utilized to evaluate outsourcing effectiveness and the perceived obstacles and critical issues related to outsourcing. Clustering and grouping methods were utilized to analyze the content of the focus group sessions and provided many interesting findings which should prove useful for those districts either involved with or considering outsourcing. The findings reveal that cost savings, operating
Mechanisms of Analogical Learning.

Abstract : It is widely agreed that similarity and analogy are important in transfer of learning. Recent research suggests that different kinds of similarity enter into different parts of the transfer process. For example, access to long-term memory is more influenced by surface similarity than is analogical inference once an analogy is present. In this paper I decompose similarity-based transfer into separate subprocesses and compare how different kinds of similarity affect each of these processes. Keywords: Similarity, Transfer, Analogical mapping, Analogical soundness, Access.