Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intercultural competence – a gendered issue?! Analysis of differences in intercultural competence in a Danish and Norwegian sample of upper secondary school students.. ECPR Joint session; 2016-04-24 - 2016-04-28.: Interkulturel kompetence som et kønsspørgsmål

National and cultural diversification accompanies the pluralization of European societies. This pluralization and difference call for several needs like communication and understanding in order to achieve, recognition, equality and justice, self-determination and identification with others. This paper responds to the increasing diversity and pluralization of identities by exploring antecedents of the intercultural competence between young people in a selection of in Norwegian and Danish schools. Although the sample is Scandinavian we believe that the issue of communication, recognition and understanding is on most people’s lips in times of migration and immigration throughout Europe. The diversity, difference and pluralization call for experiences of inclusiveness and we apply Kabeer’s (2005) framework of Inclusive citizenship. This framework mentions issues of justice, recognition of uniqueness and difference, self-determination, identify with others and participatory parity to make friend s and show solidarity as important issues in feeling included. A selection of 895 students in seven schools (two Danish and five Norwegian) was asked a variety of questions on intercultural competence and relations in questionnaires. Data were analysed in IBM SPSS using standard procedures in quantitative methodology. Although more variables seem to influence intercultural competence we focus on differences between females and males. We find that females display more positive attitudes and competences throughout six scales on intercultural empathy and competence. On some scales the differences is unexpectedly large. The gender differences are therefore focused, discussed and theorized.
Dysfunctional High-Density Lipoprotein: An Innovative Target for Proteomics and Lipidomics

High-Density Lipoprotein-Cholesterol (HDL-C) is regarded as an important protective factor against cardiovascular disease, with abundant evidence of an inverse relationship between its serum levels and risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as various antiatherogenic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties. Nevertheless, observations of hereditary syndromes featuring scant HDL-C concentration in absence of premature atherosclerotic disease suggest HDL-C levels may not be the best predictor of cardiovascular disease. Indeed, the beneficial effects of HDL may not depend solely on their concentration, but also on their quality. Distinct subfractions of this lipoprotein appear to be constituted by specific protein-lipid conglomerates necessary for different physiologic and pathophysiologic functions. However, in a chronic inflammatory microenvironment, diverse components of the HDL proteome and lipid core suffer alterations, which propel a shift towards a dysfunctional state, where HDL-C becomes proatherogenic, prooxidant, and proinflammatory. This heterogeneity highlights the need for further specialized molecular studies in this aspect, in order to achieve a better understanding of this dysfunctional state; with an emphasis on the potential role for proteomics and lipidomics as valuable methods in the search of novel therapeutic approaches for cardiovascular disease.
An empirical analysis of Relationship Commitment and Trust in Virtual Programmer Community

Virtual Communities (VCs) have become a forum for programmer seeking knowledge to resolve problems and communicate with each other. The Internet makes participant relatively easy to switch for one VC to another VC that provides similar content or services. However, many VCs have failed due to the reluctance of members to continue their participation in these VCs. In volatile cyberspaces, VCs without specific domain knowledge may face challenges such as large populations, unstable memberships, and imperfect information and memory, which also affect knowledge flows within members. The most important aspect of VCs from the members’ perspective is the increase satisfaction, and engage behavioral intention to use VCs, but satisfaction does not always predict continuous usage. This study proposes a conceptual model based on commitment-trust theory (CTT) and investigates the continuance intention in VC. It seeks to theorize the antecedents and consequence of relationship commitment in the VCs and identify how CTT can be adapted in a knowledge sharing environment. The members of Programmer Club, a representative professional community in Taiwan, were chosen to participate in the survey, and 488 usable responses were collected in three months. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used to test the model, the findings show that relationship commitment and trust is the strongest predictor of members’ continuance intention. Implications are proposed in the final section.
Scientific Mobility and Economic Assumptions: From the Allocation of Scientists to the Socioeconomics of Network Transformation

Abstract This paper addresses the different interpretations of scientific mobility that derive from two very different sets of economic assumptions: evolutionary economic assumptions and neoclassical economic assumptions. The neoclassical model builds on an understanding of embodied scientific knowledge as ‘human capital’ which underpins a conceptualization of scientific mobility as a knowledge (re)allocation mechanism and therefore as a ‘drain-gain’ dynamics. In contrast, evolutionary economic assumptions lead to a conception of the value of embodied scientific knowledge as necessarily networked, and to understanding scientific mobility as a reconfiguration process transforming economic and science systems in uncertain ways that need to be specifically investigated.
The Effects of Revenue and Social Capital on Collective Governance: Implications for Political Complexity

We evaluate two models that may explain variation in the inclusiveness of governments and their ability to provision public goods. The revenue model predicts that a government’s source of revenue determines whether elites invest in effective bureaucracy and the provision of public goods that benefit wide swaths of society or the extraction of resources from society to benefit a limited network. In this model, a cooperative society with high social capital is an outcome of effective, collective government. The combined model predicts that social capital has a semi-independent causal effect, in addition to revenue, on the inclusiveness of governments. Our results indicate that the combined model of collective governance fits the data on U.S. states better than the revenue model alone. The combined model of governance predicts that revenue and social capital moderate the population size–political complexity relationship, and data from the U.S. states are consistent with these predictions.
Improving the Energy-Efficiency of Buildings: The Impact of Environmental Policy on Technological Innovation

This paper investigates the impact of alternative environmental policy instruments on technological innovations aiming to improve energy-efficiency in buildings. The empirical analysis focuses on three main types of policy instruments, namely regulatory energy standards in buildings codes, energy taxes as captured by energy prices and specific governmental energy R&D expenditures. Technological innovation is measured using patent counts for specific technologies related to energy-efficiency in buildings (e.g. insulation, high-efficiency boilers, energy-saving lightings). The estimates for seven European countries over the 1989-2004 period imply that a strengthening of 10% of the minimum insulation standards for walls would increase the likelihood to file additional patents by about 3%. In contrast, energy prices have no significant effect on the likelihood to patent. Governmental energy R&D support has a small positive significant effect on patenting activities.
Heating of the IGM

Using the cosmic virial theorem, Press-Schechter analysis and numerical simulations, we compute the expected X-ray background (XRB) from the diﬀuse IGM with the clumping factor expected from gravitational shock heating. The predicted ﬂuxes and temperatures are excluded from the observed XRB. The predicted clumping can be reduced by entropy injection. The required energy is computed from the two-point correlation function, as well as from Press-Schechter formalisms. The minimal energy injection of 1 keV/nucleon excludes radiative or gravitational heating as a primary energy source. We argue that the intergalactic medium (IGM) must have been heated through violent processes such as massive supernova bursts. If the heating proceeded through supernova explosions, it likely proceeded in bursts which may be observable in high redshift supernova searches. Within our model we reproduce the observed cluster luminosity-temperature relation with energy injection of 1 keV/nucleon if this injection is assumed to be uncorrelated with the local density. These parameters predict that the diﬀuse IGM soft XRB has a temperature of ∼ 1 keV with a ﬂux near 10 keV/cm 2 s str keV, which may be detectable in the near future.
Resource and Revenue Management in Nonprofit Operations

Nonprofit firms sometimes engage in for-profit activities for the purpose of generating revenue to subsidize their mission activities. The organization is then confronted with a consumption versus investment trade-off, where investment corresponds to providing capacity for revenue customers, and consumption corresponds to serving mission customers. Exemplary of this approach are the Aravind Eye Hospitals in India, where profitable paying hospitals are used to subsidize care at free hospitals. We model this problem as a multiperiod stochastic dynamic program. In each period, the organization must decide how much of the current assets should be invested in revenue-customer service capacity, and at what price the service should be sold. We provide sufficient conditions under which the optimal capacity and pricing decisions are of threshold type. Similar results are derived when the selling price is fixed, but the banking of assets from one period to the next is allowed. We compare the performance of the optimal threshold policy with heuristics that may be more appealing to managers of nonprofit organizations, and we assess the value of banking and of dynamic pricing through numerical experiments.
Improving nursing home care for dementia: is the environment the answer?

In the past decades, there has been an increasing awareness that the physical and psychosocial environment is essential for the quality of life of people with dementia, their family members and the well-being of care staff. New care models arose from the idea that people with dementia first need a safe and familiar environment. The assumption was that an environment, with a normal daily routine and a normal household, would suit people with dementia best. This small, homelike care was diametrically opposed to traditional nursing home care, which was provided according to a medical, hospital like model. In traditional nursing home care, people with dementia shared their room with several other residents and wards with 30 residents were not unusual. In line with the antipsychiatry movement, awareness arose that residents with dementia were above all human beings, not patients. The ‘Cantou’ in France was identified by Verbeek, van Rossum, Zwakhalen, Kempen, and Hamers, (2009), as the first small, homelike care concept for people with dementia. In addition, similar concepts appeared in Sweden (Group Living Homes: Annerstedt, 1997), followed for example by countries such as Great Britain (Domuses: Lindesay, Briggs, Lawes, MacDonald, & Herzberg, 1992), Japan (Group homes: Funaki, Kaneko, & Okamura, 2005) and the Netherlands (Group Living Homes/ Small-Scale Care: te Boekhorst, Depla, de Lange, Pot, & Eefsting, 2007). Along with the Eden alternative, Green Houses and other new models for nursing homes in the USA (Rabiq, Thomas, Kane, Cutler, & McAlilly, 2006). Although a standard definition is lacking, all those care concepts have in common the focus on a homelike household and meaningful activities for the residents with dementia (Verbeek et al., 2009).
Glycomacropeptide Attenuates Inflammation, Pruritus, and Th2 Response Associated with Atopic Dermatitis Induced by 2,4-Dinitrochlorobenzene in Rat

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is one of the most common skin diseases, whose incidence is increasing in industrialized countries. The epicutaneous application of a hapten, such as 2,4-dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB), evokes an experimental murine AD-like reaction. Glycomacropeptide (GMP) is a dairy bioactive peptide derived from hydrolysis of κ-casein by chymosin action. It has anti-inflammatory, prebiotic, and immunomodulatory effects. The present study was aimed to investigate the effect of GMP administration on DNCB-induced AD in rats. The severity of inflammatory process, pruritus, production of cytokines, and total immunoglobulin E (IgE) content were measured, and the histopathological features were analyzed. GMP reduced the intensity of inflammatory process and edema of DNCB-induced dermatitis, with a significant decrease in eosinophils recruitment and mast cells hyperplasia. In addition GMP suppressed the serum levels of total IgE and IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13 expression in AD-lesions. Besides, the levels of IL-10 were significantly increased. Remarkably, GMP administration before AD-induction abolished pruritus in dermatitis-like reactions in the rats. Taken together, these results indicate that GMP has an inhibitory effect on AD by downregulating Th2 dominant immune response, suggesting GMP as a potential effective alternative therapy for the prevention and management of AD.
Real-time Quadrifocal Visual Odometry

In this paper we describe a new image-based approach to tracking the six-degree-of-freedom trajectory of a stereo camera pair. The proposed technique estimates the pose and subsequently the dense pixel matching between temporal image pairs in a sequence by performing dense spatial matching between images of a stereo reference pair. In this way a minimization approach is employed which directly uses all grayscale information available within the stereo pair (or stereo region) leading to very robust and precise results. Metric 3D structure constraints are imposed by consistently warping corresponding stereo images to generate novel viewpoints at each stereo acquisition. An iterative non-linear trajectory estimation approach is formulated based on a quadrifocal relationship between the image intensities within adjacent views of the stereo pair. A robust M-estimation technique is used to reject outliers corresponding to moving objects within the scene or other outliers such as occlusions and illumination changes. The technique is applied to recovering the trajectory of a moving vehicle in long and difficult sequences of images.
Building and sustaining work engagement – a participatory action intervention to increase work engagement in nursing staff

ABSTRACT This study evaluated whether a participatory action research intervention with nursing staff on acute care older people National Health Service wards in the United Kingdom was effective for increasing work engagement. Mediation analyses between job resources (social support, influence in decision-making), job demands, work-related needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness), and work engagement explored the presumed psychological mechanisms underlying the intervention. A non-randomized, matched control group, pretest, post-test design involved three intervention and five control wards. A significant decrease in relatedness, and a borderline significant decrease in competence, was observed in the intervention group compared to the control group, with no effect on work engagement (N = 45). Work-related needs mediated between resources and work engagement, supporting the job demands-resources model and self-determination theory as an underlying explanatory theory. Intervention implementation was difficult, highlighting the need for participant and organizational readiness for change, and strong management support. This is the first known study to apply participatory techniques to increase work engagement in nursing staff and explore the underlying explanatory psychological mechanisms, offering a novel means of taking work engagement research forward. Crucially, it highlights the challenges involved in intervention research and the importance of including evaluations of intervention implementation alongside statistical evaluations to avoid erroneous conclusions.
Thermal Model Extraction of GaN HEMTs for Large-Signal Modeling

Self-heating has a large effect on electrical performance of RF power devices. In the past, several methods were developed to estimate the average channel temperature of FETs. Some of these are based on approximate closed form expressions. These techniques give acceptable results under limited conditions and only for specific device layouts. In this proposed work, we present an accurate method for the extraction of the thermal profile of large-size AlGaN/GaN HEMTs using both Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation and measurement techniques. The thermal investigation of the complete structure of the device permits an accurate calculation of the distributed device temperature taking into account the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivities. This analysis also helps device designers tuning physical and geometrical parameters of the structure. The thermal resistances and the thermal time constants under each finger and of the whole FET structure are calculated from static and transient FEM thermal simulations, respectively. Alternatively, the thermal time constant is also determined from drain current transient measurements. Using this procedure, we obtained detailed thermal profile for AlGaN/GaN HEMT and implemented the resulting thermal sub-circuit in the large-signal model of GaN HEMTs. The simulated static and transient I(V) characteristics of the large-signal model are in good agreement with the measured data.
Network Connectivity under Probabilistic Communication Models in Sensor Networks

Several previous works have experimentally shown that communication ranges of sensors are not regular disks. Rather, they follow probabilistic models. Yet, many current connectivity maintenance protocols assume the disk communication model for convenience and ease of analysis. In addition, current protocols do not provide any assessment of the quality of communication between nodes. In this paper, we take a first step in designing connectivity maintenance pr otocols for more realistic communication models. We propose a distributed connectivity maintenance protocol that explicitly accounts for the probabilistic nature of communication links and achieves a given target communication quality between nodes. Our protocol is simple to implement, and we demonstrate its robustness against random node failures, inaccuracy of node locations, and imperfect time synchronization of node clocks using extensive simulations. We compare our protocol against others in the literature and show that it activates fewer number of nodes, consumes much less energy, and significantl y prolongs the network lifetime. We extend our connectivity protocol to provide probabilistic covera ge as well, where the sensing ranges of sensors follow probabilistic models.
Peningkatan Keterampilan berpikir Kritis Siswa dengan menggunakan model inkuiri terbimbing bervisi SETS

The process of teaching and learning in the schools only emphasized on the knowledge and understanding aspects and lack develop the skill of critical thinking of students so that they are poorly trained to develop reasoning power in responding and solving problem or applied the concept of science in life. The objective of this study was to improve the critical thinking skill of student using guided inquiry model with SETS (Science, Environment, Technology and Social) vision. This research was conducted in Senior High School (SMAN) 1 Kampar, class of XI IPA-1 and XI IPA-3. Improvement of critical thinking skill of student is measured using pre-test and post-test. The score of pre-test and post-test was analyzed using the N-Gain tested. The result of this study showed that skill to basic explanation, constructing of basic practice, generalization, and hypothesis making as the indicator of thinking ability of student were catagorized as moderate, meanwhile indicator of applied the concept was high with 0.834 of N-Gain value. The critical thinking of students for each indicator were increased that reflected from average value of pre-test and post-test of students. The finding of this study was guided inquiry model with SETS vision able to improve the critical thinking of student of SMAN 1 Kampar.
Overriding plate thickness control on subducting plate curvature

Subducting plate (SP) curvature exerts a key control on the amount of bending dissipation associated with subduction, and the magnitude of the subduction‐resisting bending force. However, the factors controlling the development of SP curvature are not well understood. We use numerical models to quantify the role of SP rheology on the minimum radius of curvature, Rmin. We find that Rmin depends strongly on the SP thickness when the rheology is viscous. This dependence is substantially reduced when the SP behaves plastically, in line with the lack of correlation between Rmin and SP thickness on Earth. In contrast, plasticity leads to a strong positive correlation between Rmin and the overriding plate (OP) thickness. Using an analysis of Rmin versus OP thickness, we show that such a positive correlation exists on Earth. This suggests that OP structure, in conjunction with SP plasticity, is crucial in generating slab curvature systematics on Earth.
Investigating Workplace Bullying in India: Psychometric Properties, Validity, and Cutoff Scores of Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised

Workplace bullying is a universal threat with statistics available at global level prominently suggesting that this phenomenon is thriving like a pandemic worldwide. Limited literature on workplace bullying from Indian perspective can be attributed to the paucity of standardized tools for investigating its prevalence. This study reports validation, psychometric properties, and cutoff scores for Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised (NAQ-R) in Indian sample (N = 1,053). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed a best fit three-factor model of work-related bullying, person-related bullying, and physically intimidating bullying NAQ-R demonstrated high reliability and validity using CFA and Pearson’s correlation with measures of burnout, work engagement, and perceived victimization. Two cutoff points for NAQ-R were formulated using receiver operating characteristic curve for categorizing respondents as “never bullied” (scores below 40), “occasionally bullied” (scores between 40 and 56), and “severely bullied” (scores above 56). Based on these scores, 46% of the employees were found being bullied at work, either occasionally or frequently. NAQ-R is a valid and psychometrically sound measure to examine workplace bullying in India. Clear cutoff scores may help practitioners in designing prevention and intervention strategies. As NAQ-R is the most extensively tried and tested measure of workplace bullying worldwide, the findings of the study may facilitate cross-cultural comparisons.