Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of a Creative Problem-Solving Curriculum on Students of Varying Ability Levels

This study investigated the effects of a creative problem solving curriculum on students of varying ability. Subjects were 267 middle school students in six schools who had previously been designated as gifted, honors, or average. To assess problem solving, treatment and companson students responded to a hypothetical problem before and after the treatment, with results scored by two independent judges for problem fluency, solution fluency, flexibility, originatity, and use of criteria. Teachers rated the creativity, ability to work in groups, and potential giftedness of all students before and-after the treatment. Treatment students showed significant gains in problem-solving ability compared with comparisons, with no significant differences among ability levels. Teacher ratings for gifted comparison students increased compared to those for gifted treatment students; ratings for treatment honors students generally increased. Teacher ratings for average students did not change, despite signficant increases in their problem-solving ability.
Middle School Students' Perceptions of and Responses to Cyber Bullying

This study explored the nature and extent of middle school students' (n = 665) experiences with cyber bullying. Approximately one in five students reported being cyber bullied in the past year, with 55% of those students being repeatedly victimized within the past 30 days. Female students were more likely to be involved in cyber bullying (victim, bully, and witness) compared to male students. One aspect of this study involved an examination of student disclosure and the consequences to victims and witnesses when informing others when they were affected by cyber bullying. Approximately 64% of youth reported the incident when they were cyber bullied and 60% reported when they witnessed cyber bullying. Peers and parents were told most frequently, while teachers were rarely informed. The likelihood of the cyber bullying behavior terminating was not influenced by the group informed of the incident. Overall, neither peers nor adults were very effective in assisting youth to reduce the cyber bullying behavior. These results suggest that peers, parents, and school personnel need to be prepared to offer more helpful strategies to youth who are involved in cyber bullying as victims, perpetrators, and witnesses. The common suggestion that youth report bullying behavior loses some of its credibility when those who do report do not receive helpful advice.
Using Facebook to Connect Alumni, Current Students, and Faculty

Maintaining contact with alumni can result in a number of benefits for psychology departments. For example, alumni may give feedback useful for curriculum assessment and departmental planning, assist with recruiting, and provide current students with information about jobs and graduate school. The authors describe a Facebook group they created for their department to connect alumni, current students, and faculty. A year later, members evaluated the site. Respondents agreed that it was a valuable resource, but current students rated it higher than did alumni. The authors discuss features the members enjoyed and ideas for improving the site.
Genetic and phenotypic effects of phonological short‐term memory and grammatical morphology in specific language impairment

Deficits in phonological short‐term memory and aspects of verb grammar morphology have been proposed as phenotypic markers of specific language impairment (SLI) with the suggestion that these traits are likely to be under different genetic influences. This investigation in 300 first‐degree relatives of 93 probands with SLI examined familial aggregation and genetic linkage of two measures thought to index these two traits, non‐word repetition and tense marking. In particular, the involvement of chromosomes 16q and 19q was examined as previous studies found these two regions to be related to SLI. Results showed a strong association between relatives’ and probands’ scores on non‐word repetition. In contrast, no association was found for tense marking when examined as a continuous measure. However, significant familial aggregation was found when tense marking was treated as a binary measure with a cut‐off point of −1.5 SD, suggestive of the possibility that qualitative distinctions in the trait may be familial while quantitative variability may be more a consequence of non‐familial factors. Linkage analyses supported previous findings of the SLI Consortium of linkage to chromosome 16q for phonological short‐term memory and to chromosome 19q for expressive language. In addition, we report new findings that relate to the past tense phenotype. For the continuous measure, linkage was found on both chromosomes, but evidence was stronger on chromosome 19. For the binary measure, linkage was observed on chromosome 19 but not on chromosome 16.
Application of X-Y separable 2-D array beamforming for increased frame rate and energy efficiency in handheld devices

Two-dimensional arrays present significant beamforming computational challenges because of their high channel count and data rate. These challenges are even more stringent when incorporating a 2-D transducer array into a battery-powered hand-held device, placing significant demands on power efficiency. Previous work in sonar and ultrasound indicates that 2-D array beamforming can be decomposed into two separable line-array beamforming operations. This has been used in conjunction with frequency-domain phase-based focusing to achieve fast volume imaging. In this paper, we analyze the imaging and computational performance of approximate near-field separable beamforming for high-quality delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming and for a low-cost, phase-rotation-only beamforming method known as direct-sampled in-phase quadrature (DSIQ) beamforming. We show that when high-quality time-delay interpolation is used, separable DAS focusing introduces no noticeable imaging degradation under practical conditions. Similar results for DSIQ focusing are observed. In addition, a slight modification to the DSIQ focusing method greatly increases imaging contrast, making it comparable to that of DAS, despite having a wider main lobe and higher side lobes resulting from the limitations of phase-only time-delay interpolation. Compared with non-separable 2-D imaging, up to a 20-fold increase in frame rate is possible with the separable method. When implemented on a smart-phone-oriented processor to focus data from a 60 × 60 channel array using a 40 × 40 aperture, the frame rate per C-mode volume slice increases from 16 to 255 Hz for DAS, and from 11 to 193 Hz for DSIQ. Energy usage per frame is similarly reduced from 75 to 4.8 mJ/frame for DAS, and from 107 to 6.3 mJ/frame for DSIQ. We also show that the separable method outperforms 2-D FFT-based focusing by a factor of 1.64 at these data sizes. This data indicates that with the optimal design choices, separable 2-D beamforming can significantly improve frame rate and battery life for hand-held devices with 2-D arrays.
Gordon-Haus timing jitter reduction in dispersion-managed soliton communications

An analytic theory is presented which demonstrates that the noise induced Gordon-Haus timing jitter in arbitrary dispersion-managed transmission systems is reduced by the power-enhancement factor required to support a dispersion-managed solitons provided the path-average soliton period is much greater than the dispersion-map period. The analysis further predicts the behaviour of the amplitude, width, and quadratic chirp fluctuations due to the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise.
Identification and Characterization ofvanB2 Glycopeptide Resistance Elements in Enterococci Isolated in Scotland

ABSTRACT Thirty-two vanB glycopeptide-resistant enterococci (28Enterococcus faecium and 4 Enterococcus faecalis) were collected from hospitalized patients in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen, Scotland, and the vanBelement in each was compared to vanB1 of E. faecalis strain ATCC 51299. HhaI digestion of PCR fragments of the vanB ligase gene was used to identifyvanB subtypes. All E. faecium isolates werevanB2, and all E. faecalis isolates werevanB1. Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of a 5,180-bp vanSB-vanXB long-PCR fragment of the vanB cluster showed the loss ofHaeII restriction sites in vanSB,vanW, and vanXB in strains containing a vanB2 ligase gene. Partial sequences of genes in the vanB2 cluster for two genomically distinct Scottish isolates were >99.8% identical to each other.vanSB2, vanXB2, andvanB2 sequences differed at the nucleotide level from those of vanSB, vanXB, andvanB by 4.2, 4.6, and 4.8%, respectively. ThevanB2 resistance element appears to be widespread among VanB glycopeptide-resistant E. faecium strains isolated in Scottish hospitals.
Fusion of multi-modality volumetric medical imagery

Ongoing efforts at our laboratory have targeted the development of techniques for fusing medical imagery of various modalities (i.e. MRI, CT, PET, SPECT, etc.) into single image products. Past results have demonstrated the potential for user performance improvements and workload reduction. While these are positive results, a need exists to address the three-dimensional nature of most medical image data sets. In particular, image fusion of three-dimensional imagery (e.g. MRI slices) must account for information content not only within a given slice but also across adjacent slices. In this paper, we describe extensions made to our 2D image fusion system that utilize 3D convolution kernels to determine locally relevant fusion parameters. , Representative examples are presented for fusion of MRI and SPECT imagery. We also present these examples in the context of a GUI platform under development aimed at improving user-computer interaction for exploration and mining of medical data.
Elephants in the rooms where publics encounter “science”?: A response to Darrin Durant, “Accounting for expertise: Wynne and the autonomy of the lay public”

Brian Wynne1. IntroductionFlattered vanities aside, it is slightly alarming to be invited to respond to a hitherto unknownanalysis of my work over many years on publics and science. While the public and itsmysterious doings and imaginations relating to science have become the intense focus ofinterest in recent times, I feel that we have not yet approached the central questions. In thissense I feel almost as if I have involuntarily distracted Darrin Durant into paying my work toomuch attention. Here, two programmatic opening points are worth making.Firstly, our field should draw more fully on wider and more historical work in politicalphilosophy, not only but including Deweys ([1927] 1991) response to Lippmans ([1927]2002) dismissal of the public as merely a phantom. However,this would be much more thanjust a (constipated) political philosophy of risk which is how some scholars have imaginedit (e.g. Kusch, 2007).
Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, self-esteem, and job stress as determinants of job satisfaction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of teaching self-efficacy, perceived stress, self-esteem, and demographic characteristics (age, gender, education, and years of teaching experience) in predicting job satisfaction within a sample of 121 Irish primary school teachers. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected from teachers from eight primary schools. Hypotheses were tested using a comparison of means, correlations, and multiple regression. Findings – Results indicated that the predictor variables accounted for 22 per cent of variance in teachers’ job satisfaction. However, only perceived stress was found to explain unique predictive variance, with high levels of occupations stress related to low levels of job satisfaction. Practical implications – Perceived stress should be targeted in efforts to improve teachers’ job satisfaction. Originality/value – The results make an additional contribution to the literature by providing important information on the factors contr.
Interaction and Mutual Activation of Different Innate Immune Cells Is Necessary to Kill and Clear Hepatitis C Virus-Infected Cells

Innate immune cells can sense hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected cells and respond with anti-viral actions including secretion of interferons (IFNs). In previous studies, the response of individual innate immune cells against HCV was analyzed in detail. We hypothesized that interaction of multiple innate immune cells increases the magnitude of the immune response and eventually leads to clearance of HCV-infected cells. To investigate this, we co-cultured Huh-7 HCV subgenomic replicon (SGR) cells with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). We confirm secretion of IFNα by plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) and IFNγ by natural killer (NK) cells in the co-culture setup. Moreover, we observed that also monocytes contribute to the anti-viral response. Flow cytometry and ImageStream analysis demonstrated that monocytes take up material from HCV SGR cells in co-culture with PBMCs. Preceding the uptake, PBMCs caused apoptosis of HCV SGR cells by tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) expression on NK cells. We observed that only the interplay of monocytes, pDCs, and NK cells resulted in efficient clearance of HCV SGR cells, while these cell populations alone did not kill HCV SGR cells. Despite similar TRAIL receptor expression on Huh-7 control cells and HCV SGR cells, HCV activated PBMCs specifically killed HCV SGR cells and did not target Huh-7 control cells. Finally, we showed that HCV replicating cells per se are sensitive toward TRAIL-induced apoptosis. Our results highlight the importance of the interplay of different innate immune cells to initiate an efficient, rapid, and specific response against HCV-infected cells.
RCV1: A New Benchmark Collection for Text Categorization Research

Reuters Corpus Volume I (RCV1) is an archive of over 800,000 manually categorized newswire stories recently made available by Reuters, Ltd. for research purposes. Use of this data for research on text categorization requires a detailed understanding of the real world constraints under which the data was produced. Drawing on interviews with Reuters personnel and access to Reuters documentation, we describe the coding policy and quality control procedures used in producing the RCV1 data, the intended semantics of the hierarchical category taxonomies, and the corrections necessary to remove errorful data. We refer to the original data as RCV1-v1, and the corrected data as RCV1-v2. We benchmark several widely used supervised learning methods on RCV1-v2, illustrating the collection's properties, suggesting new directions for research, and providing baseline results for future studies. We make available detailed, per-category experimental results, as well as corrected versions of the category assignments and taxonomy structures, via online appendices.
Responses to Critiques on Machine Learning of Criminality Perceptions (Addendum of arXiv:1611.04135)

We study, for the ﬁrst time, automated inference on crim-inality based solely on still face images, which is free of any biases of subjective judgments of human observers. Via supervised machine learning, we build four classiﬁers (logistic regression, KNN, SVM, CNN) using facial images of 1856 real persons controlled for race, gender, age and facial expressions, nearly half of whom were convicted criminals, for discriminating between criminals and non-criminals. All four classiﬁers perform consistently well and empirically establish the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding this line of enquiry. Also, some discriminating structural features for predicting criminality have been found by machine learning. Above all, the most important discovery of this research is that criminal and non-criminal face images populate two quite distinctive manifolds. The variation among criminal faces is signiﬁcantly greater than that of the non-criminal faces. The two manifolds consisting of criminal and non-criminal faces appear to be concentric, with the non-criminal manifold lying in the kernel with a smaller span, exhibiting a law of ”normality” for faces of non-criminals. In other words, the faces of general law-biding public have a greater degree of resemblance compared with the faces of criminals, or criminals have a higher degree of dissimilarity in facial appearance than non-criminals.
Promoting the persistence of Indigenous students through teaching at the Cultural Interface

The promise of higher education remains elusive for many Indigenous students in Australia. To date, institutional efforts to improve the persistence and retention of Indigenous students have been largely piecemeal, poorly integrated and designed to remediate skill deficits. Yet, market-led expansion of Australian higher education is driving curricular reform and demands for accountability and quality. Despite this, very little is known about how teaching and pedagogy can be used to support the learning and persistence of Indigenous students. In this context, the paper provides a reconceptualization of current debates and positions that are currently bound up within the limitations of questionable binary divides and oppositions, for example, educational psychology/sociology, transmission/critical or decolonial pedagogies and Indigenous/Western Knowledge. Nakata's concept of the Cultural Interface is mobilized to acknowledge some of the nuances and complexities that emerge when Indigenous and Western knowledge systems come into convergence within the higher education classroom.
AN EXAMINATION OF TEACHER ACCEPTANCE OF HANDHELD COMPUTERS

As states and federal legislation have invested in integration of new technologies into education, the teacher’s role as the user of such technologies in the classroom becomes more prominent (Telecommunications Act of 1996). However, relevant prior research suggests that teacher resistance to new technologies remains high. This study explores teachers’ acceptance of handheld computer use, and identifies key intention determinants for using this technology based on a modified version of the technology acceptance model. The new model with five constructs—(1) perceived ease of use, (2) perceived usefulness, (3) subjective norms, (4) intention to use, and (5) dependability— was tested using the handheld computer acceptance survey responses from 45 special education teachers grouped into four groups by experience of using technology for data collection. The results showed that the direct effect of two constructs, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, on intention to use a handheld computer was statistically significant. The dependability factor, which was not included in any prior technology acceptance literature, had a statistically significant effect on perceived ease of use and usefulness, and intention to use a handheld computer, respectively. Groups of participants differed on only subjective norm. Theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.
Parental estimates of five types of intelligence

British adults (N = 239) provided estimates of their own and their children's general, emotional, analytic, creative, and practical intelligence. Men (fathers) rated their own levels of analytic and practical intelligence significantly higher than women (mothers) rated theirs. In contrast, women rated their emotional intelligence significantly higher than men. Two-way ANOVAs (gender of parent by gender of child) on the estimates of the five types of intelligence showed that fathers tended to give higher estimates than mothers for their first child's general, analytic, and creative intelligence. There were no significant effects for second-born children. The ANOVAs indicated that parents rated their third-born female children higher than their third-born male children on emotional, analytic, and practical intelligence. Explanations for these findings are discussed.
Forearm composition contributes to differences in reactive hyperaemia between healthy men and women

Post‐ischaemic reactive hyperaemia in the forearm has been suggested as a marker of resistance vessel function. The contribution of forearm composition to the kinetics of reactive hyperaemia is largely unknown. The body composition of men and women differs in that women have a higher body fat content and less lean body mass.
Union commitment: An examination of antecedent and outcome factors

This research examined antecedent and outcome models for all four factors of union commitment (loyalty to the union, responsibility to the union, willingness to work for the union and belief in unionism). A hypothesis that union commitment would act as an intervening variable between the antecedents and outcomes was also tested. Unionized employees (n = 481) from a large mid-western communications company completed a survey. Antecedents of loyalty to the union included national and local union mission fulfilment, and chief steward and officer accessibility. Chief steward accessibility and sex were identified as antecedents of responsibility to the union. Belief in unionism was predicted by local union mission fulfilment. Both national and local union mission fulfilment were significant antecedents of willingness to work for the union. All of the outcomes in the study, both behavioural (attendance at union meetings, union activity and member voting behaviour) and attitudinal (cognitive consideration in voting, member support for political action), were related to at least one of the four factors. Support was also found for establishing union commitment as an intervening variable between the hypothesized antecedents and outcomes.
Serum and exhaled breath condensate leptin levels in asthmatic and obesity children: a pilot study

Background: Recent studies have highlighted the possible involvement of leptin in inflammation. The leptin receptor is also expressed by alveolar macrophages, T lymphocytes and bronchial epitelial cells, suggesting a possible role in the cascade of airway inflammation. Objectives: The aim of the study was to evaluate the levels of leptin in exhaled breath condensate (EBC) from asthmatic, normal- and overweight children, in relationship with airway inflammation. Methods: 15 asthmatic non-obese children, 15 healthy non-asthmatic non-obese children, 11 obese children with asthma (OA) and 20 obese children without asthma (ONA) were enrolled. Body impedance of body weight, EBC collection, FeNO, spirometry and a blood sampling for serum leptin were assessed. Results: Leptin EBC levels were significantly higher (3.9 ng ml−1 ± 1.3) in overweight children than those obese with asthma (3.6 ng ml−1 ± 1.6; p = 0.97), non-owerweight asthmatics (2.2 ng ml−1 ± 1.2; p < 0.0001) and in healthy children (0.9 ng ml−1 ± 0.6; p < 0.001). Leptin EBC levels in asthmatic children were significantly higher than in healthy children (p = 0.05). Leptin serum levels were significantly higher in the overweight children compared with the asthmatics (12.7 ng ml−1 ± 13.2; p < 0.001) and the healthy group (11.1 ng ml−1 ± 11.2; p < 0.001). We observed a significant correlation between EBC-leptin levels and the serum-leptin levels (p = 0.001). No correlations were found between EBC-leptin levels, FeNO and lung function. Conclusions: This study shows that leptin is measurable in EBC in children and that EBC-leptin levels are significantly higher in the obese subjects and in asthmatic ones compared with healthy subjects. Leptin may therefore represent a non-invasive marker of non-specific airway inflammation in children.