Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Computer anxiety, self-efficacy, computer experience: an investigation throughout a computer science degree

Considerable research has focused on the relationship between computer experience, computer anxiety and self-efficacy. These factors have been used both individually and in combination as predictors in the social sciences and business studies [1, 7, 17]. However, very few studies investigate their effects in the area of computer science. This study focuses on capturing these factors across the four years of a computer science course at Trinity College, Dublin. It shows that as computer experience increases self-efficacy also increases while computer anxiety decreases with increasing experience
Generation of Functional Radial Glial Cells by Embryonic and Adult Forebrain Neural Stem Cells

Radial glial cells (RGCs), a transient cell population present only in the developing CNS, function both as precursor cells and as scaffolds to support neuron migration. Their cellular origin, however, is not understood. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that functional RGCs can be generated by multipotent neural stem cells. Embryonic forebrain neural stem cells were studied in vitro to identify putative signals that promote the generation and differentiation of functional RGCs, determined by their ability to support neuronal migration. Epidermal growth factor receptor signaling was sufficient to regulate both the generation and differentiation of morphologically, antigenically, and functionally defined RGCs. In contrast, fibroblast growth factor-2 promoted the generation of RGCs but was unable to support their differentiation. Although RGCs are not normally present in the adult brain, epidermal growth factor stimulated adult forebrain neural stem cells to generate RGCs in vitro and functional RGCs within the adult forebrain subependyma in vivo. Surprisingly, epidermal growth factor receptor signaling also promoted adult forebrain ependymal cells to dedifferentiate and adopt a radial morphology in vivo. These results suggest that neural stem cells can give rise to RGCs and that RGC-guided neuronal migration can be recapitulated in the adult CNS.
Faster training of very deep networks via p-norm gates

A major contributing factor to the recent advances in deep neural networks is structural units that let sensory information and gradients to propagate easily. Gating is one such structure that acts as a flow control. Gates are employed in many recent state-of-the-art recurrent models such as LSTM and GRU, and feedforward models such as Residual Nets and Highway Networks. This enables learning in very deep networks with hundred layers and helps achieve record-breaking results in vision (e.g., ImageNet with Residual Nets) and NLP (e.g., machine translation with GRU). However, there is limited work in analysing the role of gating in the learning process. In this paper, we propose a flexible p-norm gating scheme, which allows user-controllable flow and as a consequence, improve the learning speed. This scheme subsumes other existing gating schemes, including those in GRU, Highway Networks and Residual Nets as special cases. Experiments on large sequence and vector datasets demonstrate that the proposed gating scheme helps improve the learning speed significantly without extra overhead.
Hierarchical relational binding in the medial temporal lobe: The strong get stronger

Controversy exists over the functional role of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in episodic memory. Some have suggested that the hippocampus plays a unique and qualitatively different role than other MTL regions, whereas others suggest that the entire MTL has one functional role, which is to support the consolidation of declarative memories. Hierarchical relational binding theory (hRBT) purports that the functional role of the entire MTL is the binding of features associated with an episodic experience. As the hippocampus sits at the top of this hierarchy, binding at this level is particularly efficient in reinstating event features at the time of retrieval. Thus, this theory offers a unified account of MTL that yields outcomes similar to theories that suggest a special role of the hippocampus. In this way, hRBT captures features of both single‐ and dual‐process models of MTL and reconciles controversies about the nature of episodic recollection. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
By How Much Does GDP Rise If the Government Buys More Output?

During World War II and the Korean War, real GDP grew by about half the increase in government purchases. With allowance for other factors holding back GDP growth during those wars, the multiplier linking government purchases to GDP may be in the range of 0.7 to 1.0, a range generally supported by research based on vector autoregressions that control for other determinants, but higher values are not ruled out. New Keynesian macroeconomic models yield multipliers in that range as well. Neoclassical models produce much lower multipliers, because they predict that consumption falls when government purchases rise. Models that deliver higher multipliers feature a decline in the markup ratio of price over cost when output rises, and an elastic response of employment to increased demand. These characteristics are complementary to another Keynesian feature, the linkage of consumption to current income. The GDP multiplier is higher—perhaps around 1.7—when the nominal interest rate is at its lower bound of zero.
Terrorism from within: an economic model of terrorism

In this paper, we develop and explore the implications of an economic model that links the incidence of terrorism in a country to the economic circumstances facing that country. We briefly sketch out a theory, in the spirit of Tornell (1998), that describes terrorist activities as being initiated by groups that are unhappy with the current economic status quo, yet unable to bring about drastic political and institutional changes that can improve their situation. Such groups with limited access to opportunity may find it rational to engage in terrorist activities. The result is then a pattern of reduced economic activity and increased terrorism. In contrast, an alternative environment can emerge where access to economic resources is more abundant and terrorism is reduced. Our empirical results are consistent with the theory. We find that for democratic, high income countries, economic contractions (i.e. recessions) can provide the spark for increased probabilities of terrorist activities.
Over‐extraction from shallow bedrock versus deep alluvial aquifers: Reliability versus sustainability considerations for India's groundwater irrigation

The excessive exploitation of groundwater aquifers is emerging as a worldwide problem, but it is nowhere as dramatic and consequential as it is in India, the world's largest consumer, where hundreds of millions of people depend on it. Usually the problem is framed in terms of a long‐term decline in water tables and its consequence for extraction costs, resource depletion, and the sustainability of irrigated agriculture. Here a comparative analysis is provided of coupled groundwater, energy, and irrigation dynamics in two groundwater intensive regions in India that differ in their underlying hydrogeology—the Indian Punjab with its deep alluvial aquifers and the Telangana region in south‐central India with its shallow hard rock aquifers. Using a simple modeling framework and piezometric and agricultural time series, we show that in shallow aquifers the sense in which extraction is excessive is different, and is related to the short‐term reliability of water supply rather than long‐term sustainability. This has important repercussions for irrigated agricultural economies.
The paradoxical finding of mitral valve incompetence and cor triatriatum: a mechanism revealed?

Magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated features of cor triatriatum in a 27 year old woman (upper panel). In the absence of associated congenital anomalies, obstructive cor triatriatum due to a small, flow limiting fenestration will present in a similar manner to mitral stenosis. However, this woman presented with exertional breathlessness, paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnoea, and prominent murmur of mitral incompetence. Echo confirmed significant mitral regurgitation with an enlarged but contractile left ventricle. (End diastolic dimension 7 cm …
Student demographics and success in online learning environments

Understanding the role of student demographics in the online learning environment can assist institutions to make decisions regarding online programs. These decisions go beyond the initial question of whether to invest in online programs or whether to increase or decrease online course availability. This article discusses the relationship between student demographics and success in online learning environments as it relates to academic performance and the possession of self-regulated learning characteristics. Understanding the role of student demographics in the online learning environment also would help institutions understand what resources need to be allocated toward support of online learning programs in the form of online advising and technical support for students, course development support for faculty, and investing in learning-management software or collaboration software.
The Distance Function in Consumer Behaviour with Applications to Index Numbers and Optimal Taxation

The use of duality concepts has now become widespread in production and consumption theory. In both of these areas, one of the central and most useful concepts is the cost or expenditure function which represents tastes or technology through the minimum cost to consumer or producer of reaching a particular utility or output level at given prices. Under utility maximizing or cost minimizing assumptions, the value of this function is actual outlay, so that the cost function defines the relation between expenditure, prices and utility or production as the case may be. For many problems, prices and outlay are the natural variables with which to work, and it is this that makes the cost function such a convenient representation of preferences. Even so, the mathematical properties of the cost function, particularly its homogeneity and concavity, give it decisive advantages over either direct or indirect utility functions even in situations where quantities are the more natural variables. For this reason, it is useful to consider the dual of the cost function itself, retaining its mathematical properties, but defined on primal, rather than dual variables. This dual is the distance function, sometimes also referred to as the transformation function, the gauge function, or the direct cost function. This function has made a number of distinguished but infrequent appearances in the literature. Wold (1943) uses it to relate quantity bundles to a given reference vector and thus to define a utility function. Debreu (1951) defines a " coefficient of resource utilization" through the distance function while Malmquist (1953) develops a systematic theory of quantity indices based upon it. In production theory, the distance function is discussed by Shephard (1953) and more recently is systematically and extensively used in the forthcoming monograph by Fuss and McFadden (1978), especially in the contributions by McFadden and by Hanoch. In the demand context, the function is briefly discussed by Diewert (1974), but the main contributions are in an unpublished paper by Gorman (1970) and, more briefly, in Gorman (1976). The function is used in a number of recent publications, notably by Blackorby and Russell (1975), Hanoch (1975), Blackorby and Donaldson (1976), Blackorby, Lovell and Thursby (1976) and Diewert (1976a) and (1976b). The aim of the present paper is to present a reasonably systematic, if informal presentation of the distance function in the context of consumer behaviour. Much of what follows is derived from one or more of the contributions listed above. However, none of these provides anything like a complete treatment, and in view of the wide range of potential applications of the analysis, in particular to demand studies, to rationing theory and to welfare economics generally, a synthesis of such useful material is overdue. Section 1 of the paper defines the distance function and discusses its properties. Particular attention is focused on the duality between the distance and cost functions and
Characteristics and evolution of content popularity and user relations in social networks

Social networks have changed the characteristics of the traditional Web and these changes are still ongoing. Nowadays, it is impossible to design valid strategies for content management, information dissemination and marketing in the context of a social network system without considering the popularity of its content and the characteristics of the relations among its users. By analyzing two popular social networks and comparing current results with studies dating back to 2007, we confirm some previous results and we identify novel trends that can be utilized as a basis for designing appropriate content and system management strategies. Our analyses confirm the growth of the two social networks in terms of quantity of contents and numbers of social links among the users. The social navigation is having an increasing influence on the content popularity because the social links are representing a primary method through which the users search and find contents. An interesting novel trend emerging from our study is that subsets of users have major impact on the content popularity with respect to previous analyses, with evident consequences on the possibility of implementing content dissemination strategies, such as viral marketing1.
Efficient calculation of 1-D periodic Green's functions for leaky-wave applications

In this paper an approach is described for the efficient computation of the mixed-potential scalar and dyadic Green's functions for a one-dimensional periodic (periodic along x direction) array of point sources embedded in a planar stratified structure. Suitable asymptotic extractions are performed on the slowly converging spectral series. The extracted terms are summed back through the Ewald method, modified and optimized to efficiently deal with all the different terms. The accelerated Green's functions allow for complex wavenumbers, and are thus suitable for application to leaky-wave antennas analysis. Suitable choices of the spectral integration paths are made in order to account for leakage effects and the proper/improper nature of the various space harmonics that form the 1-D periodic Green's function.
Hyperplane Arrangements and Diagonal Harmonics

In 2003, Haglund's bounce statistic gave the first combinatorial interpretation of the q,t-Catalan numbers and the Hilbert series of diagonal harmonics. In this paper we propose a new combinatorial interpretation in terms of the affine Weyl group of type A. In particular, we define two statistics on affine permutations; one in terms of the Shi hyperplane arrangement, and one in terms of a new arrangement — which we call the Ish arrangement. We prove that our statistics are equivalent to the area' and bounce statistics of Haglund and Loehr. In this setting, we observe that bounce is naturally expressed as a statistic on the root lattice. We extend our statistics in two directions: to "extended'' Shi arrangements and to the bounded chambers of these arrangements. This leads to a (conjectural) combinatorial interpretation for all integral powers of the Bergeron-Garsia nabla operator applied to elementary symmetric functions.
Unit Root Tests for Panels in the Presence of Short-run and Long-run Dependencies: Nonlinear IV Approach with Fixed N and Large T

An IV approach, using as instruments nonlinear transformations of the lagged levels, is explored to test for unit roots in panels with general dependency and heterogeneity across cross-sectional units. We allow not only for the cross-sectional dependencies of innovations, but also for the presence of cointegration across cross-sectional levels. Unbalanced panels and panels with differing individual short-run dynamics and cross-sectionally related dynamics are also permitted. Panels with such cross-sectional dependencies and heterogeneities appear to be quite commonly observed in practical applications. Yet, none of the currently available tests can be used to test for unit roots in such general panels. We also more carefully formulate the unit root hypotheses in panels. In particular, using order statistics we make it possible to test for and against the presence of unit roots in some of the individual units for a given panel. The individual IV t-ratios, which are the bases of our tests, are asymptotically normally distributed and cross-sectionally independent. Therefore, the critical values of the order statistics as well as the usual average statistic can be easily obtained from simple elementary probability computations. We show via a set of simulations that our tests work well, while other existing tests fail to perform properly. As an illustration, we apply our tests to the panels of real exchange rates, and find no evidence for the purchasing power parity hypothesis, which is in sharp contrast with the previous studies.
The Sooner, the Better

As reading to children plays an important role in language development, primary caregivers are often encouraged to read to their children from a very young age. However, little is known about the age at which such reading should start. The linguistic skills of 104 children were assessed shortly before school entry. Their parents were asked how old their children were when they first read to them and how often they had read to their children. Almost half of the study children were read to before they were 6 months old. The age at which children were first read to was closely associated with family characteristics such as socioeconomic status, the frequency with which children were read to as preschoolers, and with children’s linguistic and cognitive competencies. The findings imply that reading books to very young children indeed contributes meaningfully to a favorable home literacy environment and supports children’s language development.
Ambiguity Reduction for Machine Translation: Human-Computer Collaboration

Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) accuracy degrades when there is only a limited amount of training, or when the training is not from the same domain or genre of text as the target application. However, cross-domain applications are typical of many real world tasks. We demonstrate that SMT accuracy can be improved in a cross-domain application by using a controlled language (CL) interface to help reduce lexical ambiguity in the input text. Our system, CL-MT, presents a monolingual user with a choice of word senses for each content word in the input text. CL-MT temporarily adjusts the underlying SMT system's phrase table, boosting the scores of translations that include the word senses preferred by the user and lowering scores for disfavored translations. We demonstrate that this improves translation adequacy in 33.8% of the sentences in Spanish to English translation of news stories, where the SMT system was trained on proceedings of the European Parliament.
The Impact of Program Structure on the Performance of Scheduling Policies in Multiprocessor Systems

A simple fork and join type of job structure has been extensively used for performance evaluation of processor scheduling policies in multiprocessor systems. However, parallel programs often exhibit a more complicated structure. It is not clear how the program structure affects the performance of processor scheduling policies. This paper studies the impact of the program structure on the performance of processor scheduling policies that are appropriate for uniform memory access (UMA) shared-memory systems. We consider four types of parallel program structures that are frequently employed in parallel applications. These are the fork-and-join, divide-and-conquer, Gaussian elimination, and state space search programs. The impact of these four job structures on the performance of four processor scheduling policies is considered. These are the job-based round robin (RRJob), coscheduling, dynamic (Dynamic), and the preemptive smallest cumulative demand first (PSCDF) policies. These policies cover a variety of policies − preemptive vs. non-preemptive, space-sharing vs. timesharing, a priori job knowledge vs. no job knowledge. The PSCDF policy is not implementable but is included for comparison purposes only. The results presented here show that the time-sharing processor scheduling policy RRJob performs as well as or better than the space-sharing Dynamic policy. This result contradicts the results of some previous studies and we clearly identify the problems associated with these previous studies. Thus, the major contribution of this paper is to correct the prevailing intuition that dynamic space-sharing outperforms time-sharing and show that, for the workloads considered here, time-sharing policies are useful for multiprocessor systems.
Injuries among disabled children: a study from Greece

Objective: To compare the differential implications of sociodemographic and situational factors on the risk of injury among disabled and non-disabled children. Design: Data from the Emergency Department Injury Surveillance System (EDISS) were used to compare, in a quasi case-control approach, injured children with or without disability with respect to sociodemographic, event and injury variables, and to estimate adjusted odds ratios for the injury in a disabled rather than a non-disabled child. Setting: Two teaching hospitals in Athens and two district hospitals in the countryside that participate in the EDISS. Patients: In the five year period 1996–2000, 110 066 children were recorded with injuries; 251 among them were identified as having a motor/psychomotor or sensory disability before the injury event. Interventions: None. Main outcome measures: Mechanism of injury, type of injury, risk-predisposing socioeconomic and environmental variables, odds ratio for injury occurrence. Results: Falls and brain concussion are proportionally more common among disabled children, whereas upper limb and overexertion injuries are less common among them. Urban environment, migrant status, and cold months are also associated with increased odds for injuries to occur among disabled rather than non-disabled children. The odds ratio for the occurrence of an injury among disabled children increases with increasing age. Conclusions: The results of the study provide the information for the targeting of trials of preventive measure in disabled children at increased risk of severe injuries.
FAKTOR – FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI NIAT BERWIRAUSAHA MAHASISWA

Socio-economic issues such as poverty, unemployment productive age are a major challenge for Indonesia when entering the free market and global competition. As one of the leading Human Resources, college needs to know the factors that influence students in entrepreneurship. Various factors that influence entrepreneurial intentions in students, especially the attitude and contextual factors. Population is Economic Education Student in Universtas Kanjuruhan Malang. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. The results of this study indicate that the attitude positive effect on entrepreneurial intention of students, while the contextual factors positively affects student entrepreneurial intention.