Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Joerg Wittenbrinck Which Hammer Breaks the Glass Ceiling ? 2 The question arises : what then explains the variation in the number of women in highest positions of decision-making ?

1 Introduction: Women in Decision-Making – Empirical and Normative Considerations The notorious under-representation of women in positions of decision-making across all forms of organizations has been an issue of both political science scholarship and real world activism for some thirty years now. In the United States, non-discrimination laws have been in place since the 1960s and affirmative action programs were enacted in the early 1970s (Naff 2001, 17-9). In Europe, second-wave feminists have particularly used the European Union 1 as an opportunity structure to advance women's legal and substantive status (Mazey 2001, 19). However despite efforts by governments and societal groups to increase the career prospects of women, many organizations seem to have a glass ceiling built into their organizational structure. The expansion of formal rules has opened organizations to women and allowed for their subsequent advancement within them, but only to a certain point on the career ladder. Beyond this informal barrier (the glass ceiling), the number of women entering positions of decision-making seems to be less a matter of structural change in organizations than a matter of tokenism. As Elisabeth Gidengil and Richard Vengroff (1997) show, this general phenomenon cannot be explained by either the supply thesis, which supposes that not enough qualified women are available for highest positions of decision-making, nor by the socialization thesis, which holds that not as many women actually desire these positions. Their study of department heads of municipal governments in Quebec between 1985 and 1995 shows that while affirmative action programs did help to increase the overall number of women employees, they had no significant impact on the number of women department heads (471).
Robustness and accuracy of cell division in Escherichia coli in diverse cell shapes

Cell division in typical rod-shaped bacteria such as Escherichia coli shows a remarkable plasticity in being able to adapt to a variety of irregular cell shapes. Here, we investigate the roles of the Min system and the nucleoid-occlusion factor SlmA in supporting this adaptation. We study “squeezed” E. coli in narrow nanofabricated channels where these bacteria exhibit highly irregular shapes and large volumes. Despite the severely anomalous morphologies we find that most of these bacteria maintain their ability to divide into two equally sized daughters with an accuracy comparable to that of normal rod-shaped cells (about 4%). Deletion of either slmA or minC shows that the molecular systems associated with these genes are largely dispensable for accurate cell division in these irregular cell shapes. Using fluorescence time-lapse microscopy, we determine that the functionality of the Min system is affected by the cell shape, whereas the localization of a nucleoid relative to the cell division proteins (the divisome) remains unperturbed in a broad spectrum of morphologies, consistent with nucleoid occlusion. The observed positioning of the nucleoid relative to the divisome appears not to be affected by the nucleoid-occlusion factor SlmA. The current study underscores the importance of nucleoid occlusion in positioning the divisome and shows that it is robust against shape irregularities.
Revealing Beta-Diversity Patterns of Breeding Bird and Lizard Communities on Inundated Land-Bridge Islands by Separating the Turnover and Nestedness Components

Beta diversity describes changes in species composition among sites in a region and has particular relevance for explaining ecological patterns in fragmented habitats. However, it is difficult to reveal the mechanisms if broad sense beta-diversity indices (i.e. yielding identical values under nestedness and species replacement) are used. Partitioning beta diversity into turnover (caused by species replacement from site to site) and nestedness-resultant components (caused by nested species losses) could provide a unique way to understand the variation of species composition in fragmented habitats. Here, we collected occupancy data of breeding birds and lizards on land-bridge islands in an inundated lake in eastern China. We decomposed beta diversity of breeding bird and lizard communities into spatial turnover and nestedness-resultant components to assess their relative contributions and respective relationships to differences in island area, isolation, and habitat richness. Our results showed that spatial turnover contributed more to beta diversity than the nestedness-resultant component. The degree of isolation had no significant effect on overall beta diversity or its components, neither for breeding birds nor for lizards. In turn, in both groups the nestedness-resultant component increased with larger differences in island area and habitat richness, respectively, while turnover component decreased with them. The major difference among birds and lizards was a higher relevance of nestedness-resultant dissimilarity in lizards, suggesting that they are more prone to local extinctions derived from habitat fragmentation. The dominance of the spatial turnover component of beta diversity suggests that all islands have potential conservation value for breeding bird and lizard communities.
Internationalization of multi-source feedback systems: a six-country exploratory analysis of 360-degree feedback

In the past few years, few human resource practices have received as much attention as multi-source feedback systems (MSFSs). In the US and Canada, it is estimated that over one-third of organizations are using some form of MSFS and recent surveys show that this practice is still gaining popularity. Concurrently, a substantial amount of literature has focused on the effectiveness of this performance management practice. However, while few would dispute the popularity of MSFS, relatively little has been published on the use of these systems outside North America and thus little is known about their form and effectiveness in international contexts. This paper outlines the results of an international survey of MSFS. Interview data from HR managers and consultants from Argentina, Australia, China, Slovakia, Spain and the UK demonstrate that MSFS are being implemented, in slightly different ways, in each of these six countries. The main challenges in the application of MSFS in these various countries are the communication efforts necessary before and after implementation, and the inherent difficulty in giving and receiving feedback. The results of this study also provide data as to the perceived future of MSFS in each of the countries surveyed.
Motivational Factors Across Three Generations of Women Committed to Religious Life

ABSTRACT This interdisciplinary (spirituality/psychology/sociology) study explores the motivation of women entering and remaining in religious life from 1,116 Roman Catholic Sisters who responded to an open-ended questionnaire. A noteworthy pattern was the tendency to cite inner call, which increased in recent generations while the tendency to cite Sisters example decreased. The vast majority of Sisters cited their commitment to God and their religious community as motivation to remain in religious life. The results indicate the importance for Sisters to live out their mission (nationally/internationally) through public service, faith formation, and as advocates by providing role models and inspiration for future Sisters.
Threat is in the Sex of the Beholder: Men Find Weapons Faster than do Women

In visual displays, people locate potentially threatening stimuli, such as snakes, spiders, and weapons, more quickly than similar benign stimuli, such as beetles and gadgets. Such biases are likely adaptive, facilitating fast responses to potential threats. Currently, and historically, men have engaged in more weapons-related activities (fighting and hunting) than women. If biases of visual attention for weapons result from selection pressures related to these activities, then we would predict such biases to be stronger in men than in women. The current study reports the results of two visual search experiments, in which men showed a stronger bias of attention toward guns and knives than did women, whether the weapons were depicted wielded or not. When the weapons were depicted wielded, both sexes searched for them with more caution than when they were not. Neither of these effects extended reliably to syringes, a non-weapon—yet potentially threatening—object. The findings are discussed with respect to the “weapons effect” and social coercion theory.
Functional plasticity of language-related brain areas after cochlear implantation.

Using PET, the cerebral network engaged by heard language processing in normal hearing subjects was compared with that in patients who received a cochlear implant after a period of profound deafness. The experimental conditions were words, syllables and environmental sounds, each controlled by a noise baseline. Four categories of effect were observed: (i) regions that were recruited by patients and controls under identical task conditions: the left and right superior temporal cortices and the left insula were activated in both groups in all conditions; (ii) new regions, which were recruited by patients only: the left dorsal occipital cortex showed systematic activation in all conditions versus noise baselines; (iii) regions that were recruited by both groups with a different functional specificity; e.g. Wernicke's area responded specifically to speech sounds in controls but was not specialized in patients; and (iv) regions that were activated in one group more than the other: the precuneus and parahippocampal gyrus (patients more than controls) and the left inferior frontal, left posterior inferior temporal and left and right temporoparietal junction regions (controls more than patients). These data provide evidence for altered functional specificity of the superior temporal cortex, flexible recruitment of brain regions located within and outside the classical language areas and automatic contribution of visual regions to sound recognition in implant patients.
Development of Simple Asphalt Test for Determination of RAP Blending Charts

There are two main reasons why the use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) as a construction material is profitable. First, the use of RAP is economical and can reduce material and disposal problems. Second, using RAP conserves natural resources. According to Federal Highway Administration nearly 30 million tons of RAP are recycled into Hot Mix Asphalt pavements every year and thus RAP is the most recycled material in the United States. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of developing a simple test that could be used to obtain asphalt binder properties that are required in developing blending charts to select the appropriate percentage of RAP. Based on the laboratory testing and data analysis it was found that bending beam rheometer tests performed on thin beams of asphalt mixture can be successfully applied into derivation of the creep compliance (and stiffness) of asphalt mixtures. It was shown that recently proposed Hirsch model can be then used to back-calculate the binder stiffness. The detailed procedure that leads to constructing blending charts and obtaining the critical temperatures was proposed. It was concluded that additional research is needed to further investigate Hirsch model and refine it to obtain reasonable stiffness values and binder m-values. It is recommended to employ the proposed procedure only in low temperature grading since the addition of RAP affects mostly the low temperature performance grade limit.
Acute Maternal Infection and Risk of Pre-Eclampsia: A Population-Based Case-Control Study

Background Infection in pregnancy may be involved in the aetiology of pre-eclampsia. However, a clear association between acute maternal infection and pre-eclampsia has not been established. We assessed whether acute urinary tract infection, respiratory tract infection, and antibiotic drug prescriptions in pregnancy (a likely proxy for maternal infection) are associated with an increased risk of pre-eclampsia. Methods and Findings We used a matched nested case-control design and data from the UK General Practice Research Database to examine the association between maternal infection and pre-eclampsia. Primiparous women aged at least 13 years and registered with a participating practice between January 1987 and October 2007 were eligible for inclusion. We selected all cases of pre-eclampsia and a random sample of primiparous women without pre-eclampsia (controls). Cases (n = 1533) were individually matched with up to ten controls (n = 14236) on practice and year of delivery. We calculated odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for pre-eclampsia comparing women exposed and unexposed to infection using multivariable conditional logistic regression. After adjusting for maternal age, pre-gestational hypertension, diabetes, renal disease and multifetal gestation, the odds of pre-eclampsia were increased in women prescribed antibiotic drugs (adjusted odds ratio 1.28;1.14–1.44) and in women with urinary tract infection (adjusted odds ratio 1.22;1.03–1.45). We found no association with maternal respiratory tract infection (adjusted odds ratio 0.91;0.72–1.16). Further adjustment for maternal smoking and pre-pregnancy body mass index made no difference to our findings. Conclusions Women who acquire a urinary infection during pregnancy, but not those who have a respiratory infection, are at an increased risk of pre-eclampsia. Maternal antibiotic prescriptions are also associated with an increased risk. Further research is required to elucidate the underlying mechanism of this association and to determine whether, among women who acquire infections in pregnancy, prompt treatment or prophylaxis against infection might reduce the risk of pre-eclampsia.
Mirage pattern from the heterotic string

We provide a simple example of dilaton stabilization in the framework of heterotic string theory. It requires a gaugino condensate and an uplifting sector similar to the one postulated in type IIB string theory. Its signature is a hybrid mediation of supersymmetry breakdown with a variant of a mirage pattern for the soft breaking terms. The setup is suited for the discussion of heterotic minimal supersymmetric standard model candidates.
Exploring Latent Features for Memory-Based QoS Prediction in Cloud Computing

With the increasing popularity of cloud computing as a solution for building high-quality applications on distributed components, efficiently evaluating user-side quality of cloud components becomes an urgent and crucial research problem. However, invoking all the available cloud components from user-side for evaluation purpose is expensive and impractical. To address this critical challenge, we propose a neighborhood-based approach, called CloudPred, for collaborative and personalized quality prediction of cloud components. CloudPred is enhanced by feature modeling on both users and components. Our approach CloudPred requires no additional invocation of cloud components on behalf of the cloud application designers. The extensive experimental results show that CloudPred achieves higher QoS prediction accuracy than other competing methods. We also publicly release our large-scale QoS dataset for future related research in cloud computing.
Documenting the Experiences of Special Education Advocates

Many parents struggle to advocate for their children with disabilities to obtain services at school. Subsequently, parents may turn to special education advocates to help ensure that their children receive appropriate services. However, it is unclear how special education advocates support families and secure services for children with disabilities. Before determining whether special education advocacy is effective, the advocacy process used by special education advocates needs to be understood. In this study, 33 special education advocates participated in individual interviews about advocacy. Participants reported that they used an advocacy process with five main stages: developing rapport with the parent, establishing clear expectations, learning about the child and the family, educating and empowering the parent, and participating in Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings. Details about the advocacy process are provided, and implications for future research, policy, and practice are discussed.
On the Existence and Characterization of Markovian Equilibrium in Models with Simple Non-Paternalistic Altruism

This paper provides sufficient conditions for existence of Markovian equilibrium in models with non-paternalistic altruism extending to one generation ahead. When utility is non-separable, we show that each equilibrium savings policy correspondence is increasing everywhere and single-valued, except perhaps on a countable number of points. It is also upper hemi-continuous where it is single valued. When utility is separable, we show that the equilibrium is unique, increasing, and continuous, and we provide an algorithm converging uniformly to the equilibrium.
BPS: a learning algorithm for capturing the dynamic nature of speech

A novel backpropagation learning algorithm for a particular class of dynamic neural networks in which some units have a local feedback is proposed. Hence these networks can be trained to respond to sequences of input patterns. This algorithm has the same order of space and time requirements as backpropagation applied to feedforward networks. The authors present experimental results and comparisons with a speech recognition problem. <<ETX>>
Exploring Chinese English Learners' Development in the Depth of Vocabulary:on Meaning and Collocation

This paper studies 157 English majors' development in meanings and collocations of eight high-frequency words.The results show that different types of vocabulary knowledge are not developed in the same pattern.To be more specific,the development of knowledge about word meaning is much slower,while that of collocational knowledge can be divided into stages.Additionally,the mother tongue has negative influences on the acquisition of word meaning and collocation.
Ozone , NO 2 and PM 10 are associated with the occurrence of multiple sclerosis relapses . Evidence from seasonal multi-2 pollutant analyses

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Ozone, NO 2 and PM 10 are associated with the occurrence of multiple sclerosis relapses. Evidence from seasonal multi2 pollutant analyses Maxime Jeanjean, Marie-Abele Bind, Jonathan Roux, Jean-Claude Ongagna, Jérôme De Sèze, Denis Bard, Emmanuelle Leray
Effects of source and level of copper on performance and liver copper stores in weanling pigs.

Five 28- to 33-d experiments involving 460 crossbred pigs weaned at 28 +/- 2 d of age (initial weight, 6.7 to 8.1 kg) were conducted to determine the effects of feeding high dietary levels of Cu sulfate (CuSO4) or Cu oxide (CuO) on rate and efficiency of gain and liver Cu stores of weanling pigs. The pigs were housed in groups of five to six/pen and fed a fortified, unmedicated, corn-soybean meal-dried whey basal diet (1.1% lysine, 30 ppm Cu). In Exp. 1 and 2, pigs (eight replicates) were fed the basal or the basal plus 125 or 250 ppm Cu from CuSO4 or CuO for 28 d. In Exp. 3 and 4, four replications were fed the same diets as in Exp. 1 and 2 plus two additional diets (500 ppm Cu from CuSO4 or CuO). In Exp. 5, dietary levels of 0, 125, 250, 375 or 500 ppm Cu from CuSO4 were evaluated using four replications. At the end of each experiment, the liver from one pig in each pen was collected for Cu analysis. Overall, rate and efficiency of gain were improved (P less than .01) by feeding 125 or 250 ppm Cu as CuSO4, with the 125 ppm dietary level being about 75% as effective in stimulating growth as 250 ppm. Performance of pigs was not different from controls when the highest (500 ppm) level of Cu (from CuSO4) was fed. Liver Cu increased 10- to 70-fold when 250 to 550 ppm Cu from CuSO4 was included in the feed. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Moving Toward “Laboratory-Supported” Criteria for Psychogenic Tremor

A confident clinical diagnosis of psychogenic tremor is often possible, but, in some cases, a “laboratory‐supported” level of certainty would aid in early positive diagnosis. Various electrophysiological tests have been suggested to identify patients with psychogenic tremor, but their diagnostic reliability has never been assessed “head to head” nor compared to forms of organic tremor other than essential tremor or PD. We compared baseline tremor characteristics (e.g., frequency and amplitude) as well as electrophysiological tests previously reported to distinguish psychogenic and organic tremor in a cohort of 13 patients with psychogenic tremor and 25 patients with organic tremor, the latter including PD, essential‐, dystonic‐, and neuropathic tremors. We assessed between‐group differences and calculated sensitivity and specificity for each test. A number of tests, including entrainment or frequency changes with tapping, pause of tremor during contralateral ballistic movements, increase in tremor amplitude with loading, presence of coherence, and tonic coactivation at tremor onset, revealed significant differences on a group level, but there was no single test with adequate sensitivity and specificity for separating the groups (33%–77% and 84%–100%, respectively). However, a combination of electrophysiological tests was able to distinguish psychogenic and organic tremor with excellent sensitivity and specificity. A laboratory‐supported level of diagnostic certainty in psychogenic tremor is likely to require a battery of electrophysiological tests to provide sufficient specificity and sensitivity. Our data suggest such a battery that, if supported in a prospective study, may form the basis of laboratory‐supported criteria for the diagnosis of psychogenic tremor. © 2011 Movement Disorder Society
Orbital, precessional and flaring variability of Cygnus X-1

We present the results of a 2.5-yr multiwavelength monitoring programme of Cygnus X-l, making use of hard and soft X-ray data, optical spectroscopy, UBVJHK photometry and radio data. In particular, we confirm that the 5.6-d orbital period is apparent in all wavebands, and note the existence of a wavelength dependence to the modulation, in the sense that higher energies reach minimum first. We also find a strong modulation at a period of 142 +/- 7 d, which we suggest is caused by precession and/or radiative warping of the accretion disc. Strong modulation of the hard and soft X-lay flux at this long period may not be compatible with simple models of an optically thin accretion flow and corona in the low state. We present the basic components required for more detailed future modelling of the system - including a partially optically thick jet, quasi-continuous in the low state, the base of which acts as the Comptonizing corona. In addition, we find that there are a number of flares that appear to be correlated in at least two wavebands and generally in more. We choose two of these flares to study in further detail, and find that the hard and soft X-rays are well correlated in the first, and that the soft X-rays and radio are correlated in the second. In general, the optical and infrared show similar behaviour to each other, but are not correlated with the X-rays or radio.