Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recognizing and Utilizing Expertise in Work Groups: A Status Characteristics Perspective

This paper develops and tests a theory of expertise recognition and utilization in groups that focuses on the critical role of members' status cues as indicators of task expertise. The theory draws on status characteristics theory and past research on groups to propose that while attributions of expertise in work groups will be informed by both specific (i.e., task-relevant) and diffuse (i.e., social category) status cues, the strength of this association will be contingent on the type of cue as well as on characteristics of the group context. So, whereas specific status cues will better predict attributions of expertise in decentralized, longer-tenured groups, diffuse status cues will better predict attributions of expertise in centralized, shorter-tenured groups. Further, attributions of expertise should fully mediate the relationship between members' status cues and intragroup influence. A multilevel test of these hypotheses in a sample of self-managed production teams in a Fortune 100 high-technology firm provides strong support. Group-level analyses confirm that the alignment of intragroup influence with specific status cues is positively associated with group performance.
Propagation of Action Potentials: An Active Participation Exercise

In this article, I describe an active participation exercise that demonstrates the propagation of action potentials along unmyelinated and myelinated axons. This activity helps students visualize processes involved in the generation and propagation of action potentials and demonstrates the advantages of myelination. Students may also use the exercise to review the ionic basis of neural signaling. Students in 2 courses perceived the exercise to be among the most helpful, interesting, and fun approaches to learning this material. Objective tests provided limited support for the efficacy of the exercise.
Multi-Scale Spatial Concatenations of Local Features in Natural Scenes and Scene Classification

How does the visual system encode natural scenes? What are the basic structures of natural scenes? In current models of scene perception, there are two broad feature representations, global and local representations. Both representations are useful and have some successes; however, many observations on human scene perception seem to point to an intermediate-level representation. In this paper, we proposed natural scene structures, i.e., multi-scale spatial concatenations of local features, as an intermediate-level representation of natural scenes. To compile the natural scene structures, we first sampled a large number of multi-scale circular scene patches in a hexagonal configuration. We then performed independent component analysis on the patches and classified the independent components into a set of clusters using the K-means method. Finally, we obtained a set of natural scene structures, each of which is characterized by a set of dominant clusters of independent components. We examined a range of statistics of the natural scene structures, compiled from two widely used datasets of natural scenes, and modeled their spatial arrangements at larger spatial scales using adjacency matrices. We found that the natural scene structures include a full range of concatenations of visual features in natural scenes, and can be used to encode spatial information at various scales. We then selected a set of natural scene structures with high information, and used the occurring frequencies and the eigenvalues of the adjacency matrices to classify scenes in the datasets. We found that the performance of this model is comparable to or better than the state-of-the-art models on the two datasets. These results suggest that the natural scene structures are a useful intermediate-level representation of visual scenes for our understanding of natural scene perception.
Identification of a gene set to evaluate the potential effects of loud sounds from seismic surveys on the ears of fishes: a study with Salmo salar

Functional genomic studies were carried out on the inner ear of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar following exposure to a seismic airgun. Microarray analyses revealed 79 unique transcripts (passing background threshold), with 42 reproducibly up-regulated and 37 reproducibly down-regulated in exposed v. control fish. Regarding the potential effects on cellular energetics and cellular respiration, altered transcripts included those with roles in oxygen transport, the glycolytic pathway, the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. Of these, a number of transcripts encoding haemoglobins that are important in oxygen transport were up-regulated and among the most highly expressed. Up-regulation of transcripts encoding nicotinamide riboside kinase 2, which is also important in energy production and linked to nerve cell damage, points to evidence of neuronal damage in the ear following noise exposure. Transcripts related to protein modification or degradation also indicated potential damaging effects of sound on ear tissues. Notable in this regard were transcripts associated with the proteasome–ubiquitin pathway, which is involved in protein degradation, with the transcript encoding ubiquitin family domain-containing protein 1 displaying the highest response to exposure. The differential expression of transcripts observed for some immune responses could potentially be linked to the rupture of cell membranes. Meanwhile, the altered expression of transcripts for cytoskeletal proteins that contribute to the structural integrity of the inner ear could point to repair or regeneration of ear tissues including auditory hair cells. Regarding potential effects on hormones and vitamins, the protein carrier for thyroxine and retinol (vitamin A), namely transthyretin, was altered at the transcript expression level and it has been suggested from studies in mammalian systems that retinoic acid may play a role in the regeneration of damaged hair cells. The microarray experiment identified the transcript encoding growth hormone I as up-regulated by loud sound, supporting previous evidence linking growth hormone to hair cell regeneration in fishes. Quantitative (q) reverse transcription (RT) polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analyses confirmed dysregulation of some microarray-identified transcripts and in some cases revealed a high level of biological variability in the exposed group. These results support the potential utility of molecular biomarkers to evaluate the effect of seismic surveys on fishes with studies on the ears being placed in a priority category for development of exposure–response relationships. Knowledge of such relationships is necessary for addressing the question of potential size of injury zones.
Brownian Sheet and Capacity

Summary. The main goal of this paper is to present an explicit capacity estimate for hitting probabilities of the Brownian sheet. As applications, we determine the escape rates of the Brownian sheet, and also obtain a local intersection equivalence between the Brownian sheet and the additive Brownian motion. Other applications concern quasi{sure properties in Wiener space.
Physical Similarity of and Disclosure of Menarcheal Status to Friends: Effects of Grade and Pubertal Status

This study explores the relationship of friendship characteristics, specifically perceived reciprocity and self-disclosure of menarcheal status, to physical similarity, pubertal status, and grade level. One hundred and twenty girls in fifth, sixth, and seventh grades were interviewed about their friendships. Each girl was asked to name her "best," "close," and ",other" friends, as well as whether the friendships were reciprocal, whether each friend would tell the subject when she began menstruating (or, if postmenarcheal, did tell), and vice-versa. Girls rated the similarity of each friends' physical development to their own physical development. A nurse rated the girls' physical development by the Tanner method.
Angāre and the Founding of the Progressive Writers' Association

The book Angāre, a collection of ten short stories by Sajjād Ẓahīr, Rashīd Jahān, Aḥmed 'Alī and Maḥmūduzẓafar published in Lucknow in December 1932, marks a major turning point in the history of Urdu literature. Acting as a powerful catalyst, it initiated a major change in the form and content of Urdu literature and helped to lay the basis for the establishment of the Progressive Writers Association, the most significant Urdu literary movement of the twentieth century.
Suburban drifts: mundane multiculturalism in outer London

Abstract This article explores the ethnicization of London suburbs to challenge the growing public and political discourse of the ‘failure of multiculturalism’ mobilized by politicians in the UK and Europe, and even worse, the more pernicious rhetoric that blames multiculturalist policies for a whole raft of social ills including social exclusion, terrorism and urban riots. Through reviving the concept of multicultural drift deployed by Stuart Hall over a decade ago to frame the experiences of three generations of Asians in two London suburbs, we reveal the much more subtle and ordinary ways in which multicultural diversity is simply a fact of life in London's erstwhile predominantly white suburbs, a fact that makes a nonsense of David Cameron's (and others') assertions.
Organizational Information, Organizational Commitment and Intention to Quit

This study examines an often-ignored area, namely the relationship between organizational information and organizational commitment, using a sample of employees from Trinidad and Tobago. Basing our arguments on research in Anglo cultures, we postulated that organization information would be positively related to organizational commitment and the latter mediates the relationship between organization information and job satisfaction. Furthermore, we also predicted that job satisfaction would mediate the relationship between organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Finally, it was hypothesized that job alternatives will moderate the relationship between job satisfaction and intention to quit. The hypothesized relationships yielded mostly significant results. The latter is not surprising given that Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural context is fairly similar to Anglo cultures. We discuss both theoretical and practical implications of our findings in the context of cross cultural management.
Voting with Their Feet: Inferring User Preferences from App Management Activities

Smartphone users have adopted an explosive number of mobile applications (a.k.a., apps) in the recent years. App marketplaces for iOS, Android and Windows Phone platforms host millions of apps which have been downloaded for more than 100 billion times. Investigating how people manage mobile apps in their everyday lives creates a unique opportunity to understand the behavior and preferences of mobile users, to infer the quality of apps, and to improve the user experience. Existing literature provides very limited knowledge about app management activities, due to the lack of user behavioral data at scale. This paper takes the initiative to analyze a very large app management log collected through a leading Android app marketplace. The data set covers five months of detailed downloading, updating, and uninstallation activities, involving 17 million anonymized users and one million apps. We present a surprising finding that the metrics commonly used by app stores to rank apps do not truly reflect the users' real attitudes towards the apps. We then identify useful patterns from the app management activities that much more accurately predict the user preferences of an app even when no user rating is available.
Gender and Distance Learning

This article examines distance learning from a gender perspective. In any new area of enterprise, expectations have an important effect on planning, implementation, and evaluation. When it comes to distance learning, a variety of images of what this exciting new technology will look like and what it can empower us to achieve will determine how we develop it. In a study about technological experts' expectations and desires for their own technologies, the fantasies articulated by women and men are different in important and predictable ways. Women wish for small, appealing objects that allow them to collaborate, to create, to share their work, and to integrate their work and home lives. Men wish for magic wands that give them enormous power, fabulous speed, and infinite wisdom. This culturally sanctioned difference in technological expectations has real implications for the future of distance learning. Both perspectives are needed if distance-learning technology is to be successfully integrated into our school system.
Assessing the Impact of Parental Expectations and Psychological Distress on Taiwanese College Students

Current research seems to underscore the impact of parental expectations on college students’ psychological distress. This study examined whether parental expectations or living up to parental expectations served as better predictors on Taiwanese college students’ psychological distress. Study 1 developed and validated a scale for measuring parental expectations and living up to parental expectations. Results supported the factorial validity and reliability of the scale. The results of Study 2 suggested that perceiving oneself as living up to parental expectations, rather than parental expectations per se, is a better predictor of psychological distress. Implications of the results for counseling interventions as well as further research are discussed.
Group cognitive–behavioral therapy in insomnia: a cross-sectional case-controlled study

Background Group cognitive–behavioral therapy (GCBT) might meet the considerable treatment demand of insomnia, but its effectiveness needs to be addressed. Participants This study recruited 27 insomnia patients treated with 16-weeks of zolpidem (zolpidem group), 26 patients treated with 4-weeks of zolpidem and also treated with 12-weeks of GCBT (GCBT group), and 31 healthy control volunteers. Methods Before treatment and 16 weeks after intervention, participants were evaluated using the Patient Health Questionnaires (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 [PHQ-9] and Patient Health Questionnaire-15 [PHQ-15]), the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep-16 (DBAS-16), and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Results Compared to the zolpidem and healthy control groups, the scale scores of PHQ-9, PHQ-15, DBAS-16 and PSQI were significantly reduced after intervention in the GCBT group. Regarding the score changes, there were correlations between PSQI, DBAS-16, PHQ-9, and PHQ-15 scales in the zolpidem group, but there were limited correlations between PSQI and some DBAS-16 scales in the GCBT group. Conclusion Our results indicate that GCBT is effective to treat insomnia by improving sleep quality and reducing emotional and somatic disturbances; thus, the study supports the advocacy of applying group psychotherapy to the disorder.
Current CD4 cell count and the short-term risk of AIDS and death before the availability of effective antiretroviral therapy in HIV-infected children and adults.

BACKGROUND Currently, there are no comparable estimates of the short-term risk of disease progression in the absence of effective antiretroviral therapy for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected adults and children. METHODS A joint analysis of 2 large studies of children with vertically acquired HIV infection (the HIV Paediatric Prognostic Markers Collaborative Study) and adults with seroconversion (the CASCADE [Concerted Action on Sero-Conversion to AIDS and Death in Europe] collaboration) was conducted. Follow-up was censored at the end of 1995, before the introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy. The incidence rates of death and AIDS or death (AIDS/death) were estimated on the basis of age and current CD4 cell count. RESULTS A total of 1260 deaths (over 20,500 person-years of follow-up) and 1894 initial AIDS events (over 17,200 person-years of follow-up) were observed among 6741 patients (3244 children [i.e., patients < or =15 years of age] and 3497 adults). Young children (age, <5 years) experienced high morbidity and mortality rates. After adjustment for the CD4 cell count, the effect of age on disease progression was not significant among older children, whereas the risk increased markedly in association with increasing age among adults. Death rates were similar among older children and adults aged approximately 20 years, as were the rates of progression to AIDS/death when cases of serious recurrent bacterial infection, which has a more restrictive case definition in adults, were excluded. CONCLUSIONS Similar CD4 cell count criteria for initiation of antiretroviral therapy can be applied to adults and children > or = 5 years of age.
Response to exercise after bed rest and after training.

T HE PROBLEM of oxygen transport from ambient air to the cell is central to an understanding of the mechanisms by means of which man adapts to muscular exercise. The mechanisms themselves include circulatory, respiratory, and metabolic factors which are interrelated in an extremely sensitive and complex manner. Most studies to date have been concerned with the interplay of mechanisms as it develops in the human subject over a relatively short period of time: minutes to hours. Other, more subtle, bio-
‘Uppity civilians’ and ‘cyber-vigilantes’: The role of the general public in policing cyber-crime

The distributed nature of the Internet requires that security issues be addressed through collaborative efforts within and across various sets of public and private actors. Drawing on nodal governance theory, this article explores one aspect of the role that the general public can and does play in the field of cyber-security: civilian policing of the Internet. In particular, we examine the motives and actions of regular citizens, who use their computer skills to identify, track and collect information on the activities of suspected criminal offenders. Whereas some groups use such information to engage in vigilante acts, the groups that we study work cooperatively with police, collecting information to pass onto criminal justice agencies. We suggest that these collectives and their members are a potentially useful, if under-valued, component of cyber-security networks.
Identification of multipotent progenitors in the embryonic mouse kidney by a novel colony-forming assay

Renal stem or progenitor cells with a multilineage differentiation potential remain to be isolated, and the differentiation mechanism of these cell types in kidney development or regeneration processes is unknown. In an attempt to resolve this issue, we set up an in vitro culture system using NIH3T3 cells stably expressing Wnt4 (3T3Wnt4) as a feeder layer, in which a single renal progenitor in the metanephric mesenchyme forms colonies consisting of several types of epithelial cells that exist in glomeruli and renal tubules. We found that only cells strongly expressing Sall1 (Sall1-GFPhigh cells), a zinc-finger nuclear factor essential for kidney development, form colonies, and that they reconstitute a three-dimensional kidney structure in an organ culture setting. We also found that Rac- and JNK-dependent planar cell polarity (PCP) pathways downstream of Wnt4 positively regulate the colony size, and that the JNK pathway is also involved in mesenchymal-to-epithelial transformation of colony-forming progenitors. Thus our colony-forming assay, which identifies multipotent progenitors in the embryonic mouse kidney, can be used for examining mechanisms of renal progenitor differentiation.
Opportunities and Presidential Uses of Force

Political vulnerability is thought to influence the opportunities available to the US president to engage in uses of force abroad. Conventional theories linking economic misfortune and partisan opposition to presidential uses of force detail the incentives and constraints facing the president in decisions to use force. In contrast, these theories’ strategic counterparts focus on the ability of US adversaries to respond to the president’s vulnerability through either avoidance or exploitation. The behavior of US adversaries is thought to critically affect the president’s opportunities to use force. Conventional and strategic accounts of the linkage between domestic political vulnerability and the use of force provide contradictory expectations. To assess these theories we identify hypotheses related to four dependent and selection variables corresponding to dispute initiation and reciprocation involving the US. These hypotheses are tested with a two-stage Heckman Probit model to account for selection effects due to strategic interaction. The results are most supportive of orthodox diversionary theory. Our findings challenge the other perspectives evaluated—the strategic conflict avoidance (SCA) perspective, Howell and Pevehouse’s party cover approach, and Schultz’s signaling model.
Public accountability and the politicization of science: The peculiar journey of Czech research assessment

In recent decades, research has undergone major changes, resulting in radical shifts in patterns of governance. In this process, external forms of research assessment have developed as a proxy for researchers' and research institutions' accountability to society. In this paper we focus on the developments of research assessment in the Czech Republic. First, we trace the trajectory of accountability measures in the socio-historical contexts of post-socialist science as a tool of not only evaluating but also de-politicizing and re-politicizing research. Second, we focus on the active participation of scientists in the introduction of research assessment into national research policy. Closely related is our third concern, namely the emergence of and clashes between two different accountability frameworks in/of science: (internal) professional accountability and (external) managerial accountability. Our findings underscore the ambiguous, messy and fluid nature of research assessment and the inability to totalize its effects. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.
The Relationship Between Attendance in Student‐centred Physics Tutorials and Performance in University Examinations

The School of Physics at the University of Sydney has introduced voluntary workshop tutorials in large first‐year courses. The tutorials are based on informal cooperative groupings with structured worksheets and short hands‐on activities. In this study we explore the relationship between attendance at the workshop tutorials and student performance in examinations. We show that about 80% of the students attend more than two‐thirds of the voluntary tutorials. Discounting the students who attend very few tutorials, on average, examination marks improve significantly with increased tutorial attendance. In particular, on average, students with poor senior high school scores have significantly better examination marks if they work in the same group for eight or more tutorials than those who do not work in the same groups. There is evidence that the improvement in examination performance is more pronounced in qualitative concept questions, most dramatically again for students who did poorly in senior high school.