Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tracking the gap: A closer look at student- and school-level characteristics

TRACKING THE GAP: A CLOSER LOOK AT STUDENTAND SCHOOL-LEVEL CHARACTERISTICS Aundrea R. J. Lane, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Northern Illinois University, 2015 Dr. Christine Malecki, Director The goals of this study were to evaluate achievement gaps between varying sub-group populations (i.e., ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status) as well as estimate which studentlevel and or school-level characteristics account for variance in reading growth over time. This longitudinal study followed a cohort of 2,077 students (1 – 5 grade) nested within one school district’s 21 elementary schools. The participant’s early literacy (Letter Sound Fluency), readingcurriculum based measure (R-CBM), and Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) scores were analyzed utilizing univariate and multivariate analyses of variance (ANOVAs and MANOVAs). School-level characteristics were entered into hierarchical linear models to evaluate variance in reading growth trends across time. Outcomes identified significant mean differences between varying ethnic, gender, and socio-economic (SES) groups; with Asian and White students scoring higher than their African American and Hispanic/Latino peers, females scoring higher than males, and high SES students scoring higher than their low SES peers. Follow-up analyses showed significant interactions between varying ethnic and SES group populations; with African American students eliminating the African American-White gap under high SES conditions. Finally, hierarchical models showed that on average Asian and White students scored higher on R-CBM and ISAT assessments than their African American and Hispanic/Latino peers across time; similar findings were shown between gender and SES groups. Models also revealed that Asian and African American students demonstrated significant decelerations in R-CBM growth across time in comparison to their White and Hispanic/Latino peers. These analyses provided little evidence to support the impact of school-level characteristics on existing differences in sub-group growth rates. The implications of this study expand achievement gap research and provide more evidence to deepen our understanding of the achievement gap. NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY DE KALB, ILLINOIS
Using the industry as a model for better learning experience in higher education

The aim of this study is to evaluate how industrial approaches to learning can be introduced into logistics/supply chain management (SCM) education programs in a university setting. This issue has been examined through two case studies. The first case study outlines the current state of a bachelor education program in logistics/SCM at the University of Boras in Sweden. The second case study illustrates two education programs for practitioners in an international electronics company from Sweden. The investigated university education program has several practical goals, but few practical learning situations. The industrial case study illustrates how practical learning situations can be incorporated into the education program and this may help to improve skills and confidence of the students. Practical learning situations seem positive, but need consideration to when they are to be included in the education program.
Event Files: Evidence for Automatic Integration of Stimulus-Response Episodes

One of the main functions that visual attention serves in perception and action is feature binding; that is, integrating all information that belongs to an object. The outcome of this integration has been called “object file”, a hypothetical memory structure coding episodic combinations of stimulus features. Action-oriented approaches to attention, however, suggest that such a purely perceptual or perceptually derived structure may be incomplete: If attention subserves action control, object files may include action-related information as well. That is, featurebinding may notbe restrictedto stimulus features butalso includefeatures of the responses made to the respective stimulus. In three experiments, subjects performed simple, already prepared left- or right-key responses (R1) to the mere presence of “Go” signals (S1) that varied randomly in form, colour and location. Shortly after the prepared response, a binary choice reaction (R2) to the form or colour of a second stimulus (S2) was made. The results .
What is happening to Brussels’ inner-city neighbourhoods? . Selective migration from areas undergoing gentrification

The accessibility of housing to low-income households in downtown Brussels has become much more complicated over the last decade. At the same time, there have been many clear signs of renewed investment in these neighbourhoods. This article proposes an interpretation of these ongoing changes in Brussels in terms of gentrification. The analysis is rooted in particular in a study of migratory statistics, that is to say, who is leaving the Brussels neighbourhoods that are becoming gentrified and where are they going (remaining in Brussels or leaving the city altogether)? Results indicate that, even if gentrification in Brussels is still marked by the gradual mutation of working-class areas into “trendy” rather than “chic” neighbourhoods, this process is already highly selective in social terms. Indeed, whilst various types of migrant are leaving the inner city, their destinations vary markedly, in line with their socio-economic profiles.
Joint-coupled compensation effects in visually servoed tracking

Humans have degrees-of-freedom (DOF) of varying bandwidths and one casually observes that we coordinate these DOF while visually tracking. This suggests that joint interplay aids tracking performance. In a control scheme we call partitioning, both image and kinematic data are used to visually-servo a 5-DOF robot by defining a joint-coupling among the rotational and translational DOF. Analysis of simulations and experiments reveal that a robot's fast bandwidth joints physically serve as lead compensators when coupled to slower joints thus reducing tracking lag.
The Fractal Nature of Inequality in Societies with Equal Opportunities ∗

In this paper we investigate wealth inequality/polarizati on properties related to the geometry of the support of the limit distribution of wealth in economi es characterized by equal opportunities and uninsurable individual risk. We work out two simple succ essive generation models, one with stochastic human capital accumulation and one with R&D, and prove that intense technological progress makes the support of the wealth distribution conve rge to a fractal Cantor-like set. Such limit distribution implies the disappearance of the middle class, with a “gap” between two wealth clusters that widens as the growth rate becomes higher. Henc e, we claim that in a highly meritocratic world in which the payoff of the successful individua ls is high enough, and in which social mobility is strong, societies tend to become unequal and pol arized. We also show that a redistribution scheme financed by proportional taxation does not help c ure society’s inequality/polarization – on the contrary, it might increase it – whereas random taxat ion may well succeed in filling the gap by giving rise to an artificial middle class, but it hardly makes such class sizeable enough. Finally, we investigate how disconnection, a typical featu re of Cantor-like sets, is related to inequality in the long run. JEL Classification Numbers: C61, O41
Board Member Monitoring Behaviors in Credit Unions: The Role of Conscientiousness and Identification with Shareholders

Manuscript Type Empirical Research Question/Issue This research investigates the antecedents of board members’ monitoring behaviors at the individual level. The main idea is that individuals who are both conscientious and identified with shareholders are those most likely to adopt monitoring behaviors. Research Findings /Insights The study was conducted using a survey of 166 board members of a large Canadian credit union corporation. Data about monitoring behaviors were collected directly from the chairmen of the boards they participate in. The results validate the hypothesized moderated mediation model in which perceived importance of monitoring by board members mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and actual monitoring behaviors, on the one hand, and identification with shareholders moderates the relationship between conscientiousness and the perception of the importance of monitoring, on the other hand. Theoretical/Academic Implications By investigating the mediating effect of the perceived importance of the monitoring role in the relationship between conscientiousness and monitoring behaviors, our study provides an empirical test of the attention-based view in the context of boards of directors and thus contributes to opening the ‘black box’ of board behaviors. Further, by looking at the interactive effect of conscientiousness and identification with shareholders, our study brings new insights into the motivational drivers of directors’ monitoring behaviors. Practitioner/Policy Implications This study invites practitioners in charge of board members’ recruitment and selection to reconsider their practices in order to target individuals demonstrating high levels of conscientiousness. It also highlights the importance of implementing board cultures that value conscientiousness and emphasize shareholders’ interests.
Conclusion: Time for Participatory Budgeting to Grow Up

Abstract Only a few years ago, participatory budgeting (PB) in the US was in its infancy, a tiny experiment in democracy. After a five-year growth spurt, PB has entered its awkward adolescence, full of bold achievements, flashes of potential, and some stumbles. PBNYC’s innovation has raised new questions for participatory democracy, as the contributors to this special issue highlight. In this article, I lift up the key impacts and challenges that they discuss, and their practical implications. I argue that for PBNYC and other PB processes to grow up, city leaders need to invest in equity, expand project eligibility and funding, and scale PB up to the city level.
Feedback-Controlled Sequential Lasso Screening

One way to solve lasso problems when the dictionary does not fit into available memory is to first screen the dictionary to remove unneeded features. Prior research has shown that sequential screening methods offer the greatest promise in this endeavor. Most existing work on sequential screening targets the context of tuning parameter selection, where one screens and solves a sequence of $N$ lasso problems with a fixed grid of geometrically spaced regularization parameters. In contrast, we focus on the scenario where a target regularization parameter has already been chosen via cross-validated model selection, and we then need to solve many lasso instances using this fixed value. In this context, we propose and explore a feedback controlled sequential screening scheme. Feedback is used at each iteration to select the next problem to be solved. This allows the sequence of problems to be adapted to the instance presented and the number of intermediate problems to be automatically selected. We demonstrate our feedback scheme using several datasets including a dictionary of approximate size 100,000 by 300,000.
A sentiment-enhanced personalized location recommendation system

Although online recommendation systems such as recommendation of movies or music have been systematically studied in the past decade, location recommendation in Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs) is not well investigated yet. In LBSNs, users can check in and leave tips commenting on a venue. These two heterogeneous data sources both describe users' preference of venues. However, in current research work, only users' check-in behavior is considered in users' location preference model, users' tips on venues are seldom investigated yet. Moreover, while existing work mainly considers social influence in recommendation, we argue that considering venue similarity can further improve the recommendation performance. In this research, we ameliorate location recommendation by enhancing not only the user location preference model but also recommendation algorithm. First, we propose a hybrid user location preference model by combining the preference extracted from check-ins and text-based tips which are processed using sentiment analysis techniques. Second, we develop a location based social matrix factorization algorithm that takes both user social influence and venue similarity influence into account in location recommendation. Using two datasets extracted from the location based social networks Foursquare, experiment results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid preference model can better characterize user preference by maintaining the preference consistency, and the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
Relative Clauses in English conversation Relativizers , frequency , and the notion of construction *

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Features and Properties of Coronal Mass Ejection/Flare Current Sheets

Solar eruptions occur when magnetic energy is suddenly converted into heat and kinetic energy by magnetic reconnection in a current sheet (CS). It is often assumed that CSs are too thin to be observable because the electric resistivity ηe in CSs is taken to be very small. In this work, we show the implications for the CS thickness d estimated from observations of three eruptions by the UVCS and the LASCO experiments on SOHO. We infer the effective ηe causing the rapid reconnection, which predicts much faster reconnection in a thick CS than that caused by the classical and anomalous resistivities. We find that in these events CSs are observable and have extremely large values of d and ηe, implying that large-scale turbulence is operating within CSs. We also discuss the properties of the so-called hyperresistivity caused by the tearing mode and the relation to our results.
Cooperation through self-similar social networks

We address the problem of cooperation in decentralized systems, specifically looking at interactions between independent pairs of peers where mutual exchange of resources (e.g., updating or sharing content) is required. In the absence of any enforcement mechanism or protocol, there is no incentive for one party to directly reciprocate during a transaction with another. Consequently, for such decentralized systems to function, protocols for self-organization need to explicitly promote cooperation in a manner where adherence to the protocol is incentivized. In this article we introduce a new generic model to achieve this. The model is based on peers repeatedly interacting to build up and maintain a dynamic social network of others that they can trust based on similarity of cooperation. This mechanism effectively incentivizes unselfish behavior, where peers with higher levels of cooperation gain higher payoff. We examine the model's behavior and robustness in detail. This includes the effect of peers self-adapting their cooperation level in response to maximizing their payoff, representing a Nash-equilibrium of the system. The study shows that the formation of a social network based on reflexive cooperation levels can be a highly effective and robust incentive mechanism for autonomous decentralized systems.
Relational Trajectories from Parent and Child to Grandparent and New Parent

ABSTRACT This qualitative study follows earlier research of new parents (Dun & Sangster, 2013) to explore grandparents’ understanding of communication with their adult children during the arrival of a new generation. In semistructured interviews, 29 grandparents described positive and negative interactions with a child (or child-in-law). Participants graphed changes in the intergenerational relationship with the first-time parents, from the moment the pregnancy was announced through their interview, when the grandchild was up to two years of age. Inductive analysis showed four trajectories, which we describe in detail using informants’ reports. Highlighting the volatility of the transition from a parent and child to grandparent and new parent, the most common patterns were Turbulent and Dipped, and the results include variants of these two trajectories. We compare grandparents’ retrospectively recalled experiences with the reports of new parents from previous research to facilitate a deeper understanding of intergenerational relationships during a highly unsettled transition.
Rethinking IT Governance for SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critically rethink the concepts and the theoretical foundations of IT governance in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on multiple case studies. In total, eight cases of outsourced information system projects where failures occurred were selected. An outsourced information system failure (OISF) is suggested as a failure of governance of the IT in a SME environment. A structure for stating propositions derived from two competing theories is proposed (Agency Theory and Theory of Trust). Findings – The results reveal that trust is slightly more important than control issues such as output‐based contracts and structured controls in the governance of IT in SMEs.Practical implications – The world of SMEs is significantly different from that of large companies, and therefore, the concept of IT governance in SMEs needs reconsideration. For researchers and practitioners, it would be more meaningful to focus on actual,.
Metabolomics spectral formatting, alignment and conversion tools (MSFACTs)

MOTIVATION The amplified interest in metabolic profiling has generated the need for additional tools to assist in the rapid analysis of complex data sets. RESULTS A new program; metabolomics spectral formatting, alignment and conversion tools, (MSFACTs) is described here for the automated import, reformatting, alignment, and export of large chromatographic data sets to allow more rapid visualization and interrogation of metabolomic data. MSFACTs incorporates two tools: one for the alignment of integrated chromatographic peak lists and another for extracting information from raw chromatographic ASCII formatted data files. MSFACTs is illustrated in the processing of GC/MS metabolomic data from different tissues of the model legume plant, Medicago truncatula. The results document that various tissues such as roots, stems, and leaves from the same plant can be easily differentiated based on metabolite profiles. Further, similar types of tissues within the same plant, such as the first to eleventh internodes of stems, could also be differentiated based on metabolite profiles. AVAILABILITY Freely available upon request for academic and non-commercial use. Commercial use is available through licensing agreement http://www.noble. org/PlantBio/MS/MSFACTs/MSFACTs.html.
Origin of non-unique deprojection of the Galactic bar

Non-uniqueness of deprojecting the integrated light distribution of a nearby or faraway triaxial body is reviewed in the context of deriving the volume density of the Galactic bar from the COBE/DIRBE maps of the Galactic plane. The exact origin of this non-uniqueness is studied. One can write down a sequence of triaxial bar models which appear identical in integrated light from the Sun's perspective, and the whole sequence is mapped out as a function of the Galactocentric distance of the observer from galactic to extragalactic distance scales. While mirror symmetries and perspective effects are compatible with any orientation of the bar in the sequence, weak upper and lower bounds can still be placed on the angles and axis ratios of the bar by positivity and other general requirements. Star count data of bulge giants are ideal for selecting a unique model from the sequence.
Numerical modelling of dam failure due to flow overtopping

Abstract A one-dimensional numerical model for dam failure due to flow overtopping is developed. The MacCormack explicit finite difference scheme is used to solve the one-dimensional equations of continuity and momentum for unsteady varied flow over steep bed slopes. In the computation of erosion process, sediment transport equations are considered and the modified Smart formula developed for steep bed slope is selected. The sliding stability of the overtopped dam is checked by modified ordinary method of slices. The model has been successfully calibrated and verified using laboratory experimental data. By comparing with the experimental results, it was found that the model accuracy depends largely on the sediment transport formula and pore water pressure coefficient. The model was found to predict actual breach outflow of the Buffalo Creek Dam reasonably well and closer than other existing numerical models.
Single-molecule manipulation reveals supercoiling-dependent modulation of lac repressor-mediated DNA looping

Gene expression regulation is a fundamental biological process which deploys specific sets of genomic information depending on physiological or environmental conditions. Several transcription factors (including lac repressor, LacI) are present in the cell at very low copy number and increase their local concentration by binding to multiple sites on DNA and looping the intervening sequence. In this work, we employ single-molecule manipulation to experimentally address the role of DNA supercoiling in the dynamics and stability of LacI-mediated DNA looping. We performed measurements over a range of degrees of supercoiling between −0.026 and +0.026, in the absence of axial stretching forces. A supercoiling-dependent modulation of the lifetimes of both the looped and unlooped states was observed. Our experiments also provide evidence for multiple structural conformations of the LacI–DNA complex, depending on torsional constraints. The supercoiling-dependent modulation demonstrated here adds an important element to the model of the lac operon. In fact, the complex network of proteins acting on the DNA in a living cell constantly modifies its topological and mechanical properties: our observations demonstrate the possibility of establishing a signaling pathway from factors affecting DNA supercoiling to transcription factors responsible for the regulation of specific sets of genes.