Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing the Learning Experience: University Students Evaluate Videotapes

The introduction of CCTV has not always been accompanied by an innovation in educational method. All too often it has been used to spread traditional teaching. Furthermore, much research into the use of television has been ineffective. This article outlines a current project with the following aims: roman compare students’ perceptions with lecturers’ objectives roman design tests for evaluating learning roman develop guide‐lines for tertiary education.
Using social media to study the diversity of example usage among professional developers

Socio-professional websites such as LinkedIn use various mechanisms such as network of colleagues, groups and discussions to assist their users in maintaining their professional network and keeping up with relevant discussions. Software professionals post hundreds of thousands of comments each week in these group discussions regarding technological and methodological aspects of their work. Analyzing these comments enables us, the software community at large, to better understand the state of the practice of many aspects of software development. In this paper we describe a case study in which we use such LinkedIn group discussion to learn about developers' perception of using code examples.
Shared aetiology of risky sexual behaviour and adolescent misconduct: genetic and environmental influences

Risky sexual behaviour (RSB) is a major risk factor for serious diseases as well as unplanned pregnancy. It is not known if RSB has a genetic basis or if it is only influenced by social and cultural conditions. Adolescent conduct disorder has previously been linked to RSB and has been found to be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. In this study, we look at normal variation in a broad measure of RSB and in retrospectively reported adolescent misconduct in a large community sample of twins (n = 4904) to partition the variance and covariance between the traits into genetic and environmental components. We found that RSB is influenced to the same extent by genes, shared environment and unshared environment. Adolescent misconduct is moderately influenced by genetic factors and only modestly by shared environmental factors. Moreover, RSB is associated with adolescent misconduct (r = 0.5), primarily because of genetic correlation between the variables. The implications of our findings as well as possible sex differences are discussed.
New Copy Number Variations in Schizophrenia

Genome-wide screenings for copy number variations (CNVs) in patients with schizophrenia have demonstrated the presence of several CNVs that increase the risk of developing the disease and a growing number of large rare CNVs; the contribution of these rare CNVs to schizophrenia remains unknown. Using Affymetrix 6.0 arrays, we undertook a systematic search for CNVs in 172 patients with schizophrenia and 160 healthy controls, all of Italian origin, with the aim of confirming previously identified loci and identifying novel schizophrenia susceptibility genes. We found five patients with a CNV occurring in one of the regions most convincingly implicated as risk factors for schizophrenia: NRXN1 and the 16p13.1 regions were found to be deleted in single patients and 15q11.2 in 2 patients, whereas the 15q13.3 region was duplicated in one patient. Furthermore, we found three distinct patients with CNVs in 2q12.2, 3q29 and 17p12 loci, respectively. These loci were previously reported to be deleted or duplicated in patients with schizophrenia but were never formally associated with the disease. We found 5 large CNVs (>900 kb) in 4q32, 5q14.3, 8q23.3, 11q25 and 17q12 in five different patients that could include some new candidate schizophrenia susceptibility genes. In conclusion, the identification of previously reported CNVs and of new, rare, large CNVs further supports a model of schizophrenia that includes the effect of multiple, rare, highly penetrant variants.
Spider Monkeys in Human-Modified Landscapes

With the extant of tropical forest degradation, primates increasingly inhabit forest patches embedded in anthropogenic matrices. Such matrices are composed of different land cover types (e.g., agricultural lands and cattle pastures), but large uncertainty remains about the ability of primates to use these land covers. Here, we assessed the use of the landscape matrix by spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) in 13 forest sites from three countries (Mexico, Costa Rica, and El Salvador). Based on ad libitum records from >212 months of field observations, we found that spider monkeys used four types of land covers for feeding or traveling: secondary vegetation, isolated trees, tree crops, and vegetation corridors. Secondary vegetation was more frequently used than the other land covers. The number of land covers present in the matrix was positively related to the number of land covers used for traveling and feeding. Monkeys consumed 53 plant species in the matrix, mostly native and old-growth or late-successional forest species, although they also used three cultivated tree species. Most species were trees, especially from preferred food species, although monkeys also used palms, lianas, and shrubs. Monkeys fed principally from fruits, but they also used leaves, wood, and flowers. Most species were used from secondary vegetation and isolated trees. These findings suggest that the landscape matrix can provide supplementary food sources for this endangered primate and opportunities for traveling (i.e., spatial connectivity) in human-modified landscapes—information that can be used to improve conservation strategies, especially under the context of land-sharing management strategies (e.g., agroforestry).
Pet Possession and Well-Being in Elderly Women

The purpose of this article is to identify factors related to subjective well-being in the elderly. Structured interviews were conducted with 1073 white married women aged 65-75 living in Maryland in order to examine the role of pet ownership as an independent predictor of perceived happiness in elderly women. Controlling for sociodemographic, health status, and social interaction factors, the simple presence of pets in the households was not related to happiness. However, further multivariate analyses revealed that the relationship between pet ownership and happiness was complex, dependent upon the nature of the animal-human interaction as well as the social context in which the women lived. Preliminary findings indicate: (1) a larger percentage of women who are not very attached to their pets are unhappy, compared to women who are very attached to their pets or even those with no pets at all; and (2) the relationship between pet ownership and happiness is dependent on socioeconomic background, with pet ownership being associated with greater happiness among those of high SES but with less happiness among those of lower SES. The importance of specifying the conditions under which pet ownership is related to psychological well-being is emphasized.
News, Talk, Opinion, Participation: The Part Played by Conversation in Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy can be defined as a political system based on citizens' free discussion of public issues. While most scholars have discussed deliberative democracy normatively, this study attempts to test the validity of a model of deliberative democracy through examining the interrelationships among its four components: newsmedia use, political conversation, opinion formation, and political participation. Sufficient empirical evidence was found to support the hypotheses that (a) news-media use is closely associated with the frequency of political conversation in daily life both at general and issue-specific levels; (b) willingness to argue with those who have different opinions is influenced by majority perceptions and by news-media use and political talk; (c) news-media use and political conversation have positive effects on certain measures of the quality of opinions (argument quality, consideredness, and opinionation) and perhaps on opinion consistency; and (d) news-media use and political conv.
The Predicted Proteomic Network Associated with the Antiarthritic Action of Qingfu Guanjieshu in Collagen-II-Induced Arthritis in Rats

Qingfu Guanjieshu (QFGJS) is an herbal preparation for treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Previous studies revealed that QFGJS significantly inhibited experimental arthritis and acute inflammation, accompanied by reduction of proinflammatory cytokines and elevation of anti-inflammatory cytokines. This study aims to identify the targeted proteins and predict the proteomic network associated with the drug action of QFGJS by using 2D gel and MALDI-TOF-MS/MS techniques. Thirty female Wistar rats were evenly grouped as normal and vehicle- and QFGJS-treated CIA rats. The antiarthritic effect of QFGJS was examined with a 19-day treatment course, and the knee synovial tissues of animals from each group were obtained for 2D gel and MALDI-TOF-MS/MS analysis. Results showed that QFGJS significantly ameliorated collagen II-induced arthritis when administrated at 2.8 g/kg body weight for 19 days. 2D gel image analysis revealed 89 differentially expressed proteins in the synovial tissues among the normal and vehicle- and QFGJS-treated CIA rats from over 1000 proteins of which 63 proteins were identified by MALDI-TOF-MS/MS analysis, and 32 proteins were included for classification of functions using Gene Ontology (GO) method. Finally, 14 proteins were analyzed using bioinformatics, and a predicted proteomic network related to the anti-arthritic effect of QFGJS was established, and Pgk1 plays a central role.
AN ADVANCE ORGANIZER APPROACH TO DISTANCE LEARNING COURSE PRESENTATION

The idea of the advance organizer was suggested by Ausubel (1968) well before hypermedia, distance learning initiatives, etc., became pervasive. Ausubel suggests that advance organizers might foster meaningful learning by prompting the student regarding pre-existing superordinate concepts that are already in the student's cognitive structure, and by otherwise providing a context of general concepts into which the student can incorporate progressively differentiated details. Ausubel claims that by presenting a global representation of the knowledge to be learned, advance organizers might foster "integrative reconciliation" of the subdomains of knowledge the ability to understand interconnections among the basic concepts in the domain. This paper describes a new approach to distance learning course delivery based upon advance organizers.
Creativity and Stress

Involvement in an organizational change programme presented an opportunity to study relationships between stress and creativity in the organization. Levels of stress were close to population norms, whereas the scores from the Creative Climate Questionnaire indicated a stagnated (as opposed to innovative) organization. Strong negative correlations between stress and creative climate scores were found, especially for stress arising from relationships with others and from organizational structure and climate. In addition, differences in both stress and creativity scores were found between samples from five different levels in the organizations hierarchy. The higher the level, the less the stress and the better the perceived creative climate. It is suggested that this is a function of the type of culture pertaining in the organization. Keywords: Creative climate, occupational stress, organizational hierarchy.
Can Collective Sentiment Expressed on Twitter Predict Political Elections?

Research examining the predictive power of social media (especially Twitter) displays conflicting results, particularly in the domain of political elections. This paper applies methods used in studies that have shown a direct correlation between volume/sentiment of Twitter chatter and future electoral results in a new dataset about political elections. We show that these methods display a series of shortcomings that make them inadequate for determining whether social media messages can predict the outcome of elections.
The responsiveness of different APTT reagents to mild factor VIII, IX and XI deficiencies

Introduction: The sensitivity of APTT reagents to deficiencies of factors VIII, IX, XI and XII varies because of their composition. The APTT is used as a screening test for these factors, and a deficiency should manifest with a prolongation to the APTT, which may trigger the need for specific factor assays to be performed.
Double articulation analyzer for unsegmented human motion using Pitman-Yor language model and infinite hidden Markov model

We propose an unsupervised double articulation analyzer for human motion data. Double articulation is a two-layered hierarchical structure underlying in natural language, human motion and other natural data produced by human. A double articulation analyzer estimates the hidden structure of observed data by segmenting and chunking target data. We develop a double articulation analyzer by using a sticky hierarchical Dirichlet process HMM (sticky HDP-HMM), a nonparametric Bayesian model, and an unsupervised morphological analysis based on nested Pitman-Yor language model which can chunk given documents without any dictionaries. We conducted an experiment to evaluate this method. The proposed method could extract unit motions from unsegmented human motion data by analyzing hidden double articulation structure.
A Mixture Model for Clustering Ensembles

Clustering ensembles have emerged as a powerful method for improving both the robustness and the stability of unsupervised classification solutions. However, finding a consensus clustering from multiple partitions is a difficult problem that can be approached from graph-based, combinatorial or statistical perspectives. We offer a probabilistic model of consensus using a finite mixture of multinomial distributions in a space of clusterings. A combined partition is found as a solution to the corresponding maximum likelihood problem using the EM algorithm. The excellent scalability of this algorithm and comprehensible underlying model are particularly important for clustering of large datasets. This study compares the performance of the EM consensus algorithm with other fusion approaches for clustering ensembles. We also analyze clustering ensembles with incomplete information and the effect of missing cluster labels on the quality of overall consensus. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method on large real-world datasets. keywords: unsupervised learning, clustering ensemble, consensus function, mixture model, EM algorithm.
Copulatory Courtship Behavior and Sine Song as a Mate Recognition Cue in Drosophila lini and Its Sibling Species

Most Drosophila species sing species-specific pulse songs during their “precopulatory courtship. ” Three sibling species of the Drosophila montium species subgroup performed “copulatory courtship”: males generated courtship songs by vibrating either wing only after mounting and during copulation. In these three species, strong sexual isolation was detected between D. ohnishii and D. lini and between D. ohnishii and D. ogumai, but not between D. lini and D. ogumai. Female showed strong repelling behavior when they were mounted by a heterospecific male in the species combinations including D. ohnishii, resulting in failure of the copulation attempt of the male. Acoustic analyses of courtship songs revealed that the pulse song was irregular, without any species-specific parameters, but that the frequency of the sine song was different among the three species in accordance with the modes of sexual isolation between them; it was significantly lower in D. ohnishii (mean ± SE = 193.0 ± 1.7 Hz) but higher in D. lini (253.4 ± 2.7 Hz) and D. ogumai (246.7 ± 5.3 Hz). We suggest that this difference in the sine song frequency is a sexual signal in the Specific Mate Recognition System (SMRS) among these three Drosophila species.
VPS18 recruits VPS41 to the human HOPS complex via a RING–RING interaction

Eukaryotic cells use conserved multisubunit membrane tethering complexes, including CORVET and HOPS, to control the fusion of endomembranes. These complexes have been extensively studied in yeast, but to date there have been far fewer studies of metazoan CORVET and HOPS. Both of these complexes comprise six subunits: a common four-subunit core and two unique subunits. Once assembled, these complexes function to recognise specific endosomal membrane markers and facilitate SNARE-mediated membrane fusion. CORVET promotes the homotypic fusion of early endosomes, while HOPS promotes the fusion of lysosomes to late endosomes and autophagosomes. Many of the subunits of both CORVET and HOPS contain putative C-terminal zinc-finger domains. Here, the contribution of these domains to the assembly of the human CORVET and HOPS complexes has been examined. Using biochemical techniques, we demonstrate that the zinc-containing RING domains of human VPS18 and VPS41 interact directly to form a stable heterodimer. In cells, these RING domains are able to integrate into endogenous HOPS, showing that the VPS18 RING domain is required to recruit VPS41 to the core complex subunits. Importantly, this mechanism is not conserved throughout eukaryotes, as yeast Vps41 does not contain a C-terminal zinc-finger motif. The subunit analogous to VPS41 in human CORVET is VPS8, in which the RING domain has an additional C-terminal segment that is predicted to be disordered. Both the RING and disordered C-terminal domains are required for integration of VPS8 into endogenous CORVET complexes, suggesting that HOPS and CORVET recruit VPS41 and VPS8 via distinct molecular interactions.
Modelling Individual Globular Clusters

Abstract Astronomers have constructed models of globular clusters for over 100 years. These models mainly fall into two categories: (i) static models, such as King's model and its variants, and (ii) evolutionary models. Most attention has been given to static models, which are used to estimate mass-to-light ratios and mass segregation, and to combine data from proper motions and radial velocities. Evolutionary models have been developed for a few objects using the gaseous model, the Fokker-Planck model, Monte Carlo models and N-body models. These models have had a significant role in the search for massive black holes in globular clusters, for example. In this presentation the problems associated with these various techniques will be summarised, and then we shall describe new work with Giersz's Monte Carlo code, which has been enhanced recently to include the stellar evolution of single and binary stars. We describe in particular recent attempts to model the nearby globular cluster M4, including predictions on the spatial distribution of binary stars and their semi-major axis distribution, to illustrate the effects of about 12 Gyr of dynamical evolution. We also discuss work on an approximate way of predicting the “initial” conditions for such modelling.
Multiple Intelligences and Reading Achievement: An Examination of the Teele Inventory of Multiple Intelligences

With increased interest in the theory of multiple intelligences (MI), there is a need to identify and evaluate instruments designed to assess them. This study was designed to evaluate the reliability of the Teele Inventory of Multiple Intelligences (TIMI) and the relationship between intellectual preferences and reading achievement. The TIMI was administered to 288 urban 4th-grade students. Results suggest that the TIMI subscales, which examine preferences for linguistic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, spatial, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences, were found to have poor to moderate reliability. Students with higher scores on logical-mathematical intelligence were more likely to demonstrate at or above grade-level reading comprehension scores compared with students who scored lower on logical-mathematical intelligence, but none of the other MI scales was predictive of student achievement. Implications for test development and assessment of MI are discussed.
The Dynamics of Goal Congruency and Cognitive Busyness in Goal Detection

An experiment examined a theory explaining how people detect others’ goals. The framework maintains that because components or factors (e.g., context, tactic) of interaction increase the accessibility of inferable goals, goal detection is a product of the goals these cognitive linkages activate. In dyadic initial interactions, one participant was randomly assigned as the pursuer and the other as the detector; detectors sought a goal varying in congruency (i.e., identical, concord, and discord) with pursuers’ goal. Detectors’ cognitive busyness was also manipulated. The level of efficiency at which pursuers sought their goal and the accuracy and certainty of detectors’ inference of pursuers’ goal were measured. Results generally confirmed hypotheses. Efficiency and accuracy were positively correlated only when (a) not-busy detectors’ goal was concordant with pursuers’ goal and (b) busy detectors’ goal was discordant with pursuers’ goal, whereas efficiency and certainty were positively correlated only for not-busy detectors. Other results dealt with how detectors’ perspective taking promotes accuracy for inefficient goal pursuit and how accuracy yields favorable ratings of pursuers’ communication competence when goal inferences are certain. Results are discussed theoretically and methodologically.
Unbiased and Locally Efficient Estimation of Genetic Effect on Quantitative Trait in the Presence of Population Admixture

Summary Population admixture can be a confounding factor in genetic association studies. Family‐based methods ( Rabinowitz and Larid, 2000 , Human Heredity 50, 211–223) have been proposed in both testing and estimation settings to adjust for this confounding, especially in case‐only association studies. The family‐based methods rely on conditioning on the observed parental genotypes or on the minimal sufficient statistic for the genetic model under the null hypothesis. In some cases, these methods do not capture all the available information due to the conditioning strategy being too stringent. General efficient methods to adjust for population admixture that use all the available information have been proposed ( Rabinowitz, 2002 , Journal of the American Statistical Association 92, 742–758). However these approaches may not be easy to implement in some situations. A previously developed easy‐to‐compute approach adjusts for admixture by adding supplemental covariates to linear models ( Yang et al., 2000 , Human Heredity 50, 227–233). Here is shown that this augmenting linear model with appropriate covariates strategy can be combined with the general efficient methods in Rabinowitz (2002) to provide computationally tractable and locally efficient adjustment. After deriving the optimal covariates, the adjusted analysis can be carried out using standard statistical software packages such as SAS or R. The proposed methods enjoy a local efficiency in a neighborhood of the true model. The simulation studies show that nontrivial efficiency gains can be obtained by using information not accessible to the methods that rely on conditioning on the minimal sufficient statistics. The approaches are illustrated through an analysis of the influence of apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype on plasma low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) concentration in children.