Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Economic Strain and and Subjective Well-Being in Married Couples With Children: A Dyadic Analysis

The aim of this dyadic study was to investigate whether the economic strain (i.e., perceived deterioration of the financial situation and difficulty to respond to family obligations) experienced by married couples with children relates to their satisfaction with life, and whether marital satisfaction and parental self-efficacy mediate this relationship. To this end, we took both actor (i.e., partners' economic strain was expected to relate to their own life satisfaction via their own marital satisfaction and parental self-agency), as well as partner (i.e., partners' economic strain was expected to relate to their spouses' life satisfaction via their spouse's marital satisfaction and parental self-agency) effects into account. A total of 134 married couples with children participated in the study. Dyadic analyses revealed that wives’ perceived difficulty to respond to family obligations related to their husbands’ life satisfaction, via their husbands’ parental self-agency. Moreover, annual family income related negatively to wives’ life satisfaction, via wives’ difficulty to respond to their family obligations. In addition, husbands’ deterioration of their financial situation related negatively to their life satisfaction, via their marital satisfaction. Last but not least, husbands’ deterioration of their financial situation related negatively to their wives’ marital satisfaction and parental self-agency. These findings have important implications for counseling because they suggest that married couples' subjective well-being suffers in times of financial turmoil, while gender differences determine the psychological processes through which economic strain relates to husbands' and wives' life satisfaction.
Gaining by giving? Peer research into service user and carer perceptions of inclusivity in Higher Education

Abstract Service users and carers (SUAC) have made significant contributions to professional training in social work courses in Higher Education (HE) over the past decade in the UK. Such participation has been championed by government, academics and SUAC groups from a range of theoretical and political perspectives. Most research into the effectiveness of SUAC involvement at HE has come from the perspectives of academics and very little SUAC-led research exists. This qualitative peer research was led by two members of the University of Worcester’s SUAC group. Findings were that SUAC perceived their involvement brought benefits to students, staff, the University and the local community. Significant personal benefits such as finding a new support network, increased self-development and greater confidence to manage their own care were identified in ways that suggested that the benefits that can flow from SUAC involvement at HE are perhaps more far-reaching than previously recognised. Barriers to inclusion were less than previously reported in the literature and the humanising effects of SUAC involvement are presented as a partial antidote to an increasingly marketised HE culture.
Young Syrian Consumer Styles

This paper aims to explore the decision-making styles of Syrian young adults, and to examine the cross-cultural applicability of the Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) to an Arab population. Its aim is to advance understanding of contemporary consumer behaviour in the Arab world. Participants in the study described were undergraduate students at Damascus University and the results confirmed a six-factor consumer decision-making style. Social motivation was found to be an important factor for consumption. Syrians were more likely to relate to a brand or product to the extent where a cognitive match existed between an individual's self-concept and a positive value-expressive attribute. In addition, brand names formed cognitive reflections of product quality rather than formal assessments of quality in products. The results of this study could help in generalising theories developed in western societies to Arab populations, as well as in the better understanding of Arab consumer decision-making styles. Practical implications for practitioners and international marketers are also proposed.
Engaging Student Singers: Developing Reflection and Collaboration in a Technology-Enhanced Learning Environment

This thesis explores the integration of a wiki technology tool to support collaboration and reflection in a secondary school music context. The wiki intervention also allows the examination of students’ development of self-regulated learning processes, as well as the impact of such an approach on the role of the teacher within the classroom. The vocal wiki was integrated in a school setting, analyzed, and developed using a design-based methodology. The study began with a pilot phase, followed by two iteration cycles. At the end of each cycle, data was collected and analyzed to inform changes to the design of the wiki tool for the following iteration. Study participants involved 50 secondary music students as well as the teacher/researcher. The student-created content of the vocal wiki, which encompassed individual reflections, collaborative discussion, vocal recordings, and student-selected photos, as well as focus group interviews and the teacher/researcher journal, provided data for the design evaluation. Data analysis included coding and descriptive summaries of student wiki contributions in the various design iterations, as well as three case studies intended to provide a deeper narrative exploration into individual student experiences of engaging with the vocal wiki tool. The data
Learning Bounds for Kernel Regression Using Effective Data Dimensionality

Kernel methods can embed finite-dimensional data into infinite-dimensional feature spaces. In spite of the large underlying feature dimensionality, kernel methods can achieve good generalization ability. This observation is often wrongly interpreted, and it has been used to argue that kernel learning can magically avoid the curse-of-dimensionality phenomenon encountered in statistical estimation problems. This letter shows that although using kernel representation, one can embed data into an infinite-dimensional feature space; the effective dimensionality of this embedding, which determines the learning complexity of the underlying kernel machine, is usually small. In particular, we introduce an algebraic definition of a scale-sensitive effective dimension associated with a kernel representation. Based on this quantity, we derive upper bounds on the generalization performance of some kernel regression methods. Moreover, we show that the resulting convergent rates are optimal under various circumstances.
An Investigation of the Effectiveness of an Orton-Gillingham Based Reading Intervention in Kindergarten and First Grade Using a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design

Author(s): Patterson, Daniel | Advisor(s): Palardy, Gregory | Abstract: Delays in the development of early literacy skills are associated with a wrath of negative educational outcomes and so addressing such delays is one of the most pressing challenges in education. This study examines the effectiveness of the Orton-Gillingham (OG) Method, a multisensory reading program where instruction utilizes two or more senses simultaneously. Originally developed in the 1930s as a program for dyslexic students, OG has seen continual use since its creation and is endorsed by the American Dyslexic Foundation and the International Dyslexic Foundation. Over the past two decades OG has increasingly been incorporated into general education settings in the primary grades as a reading intervention for struggling readers regardless of whether they have dyslexia. However, there is a dearth of research demonstrating its causal effect as a reading intervention for children with dyslexia or who are experiencing reading delays for other reasons. Two quasi-experimental methods, Regression Discontinuity Design and Nonequivalent Comparison Group Design with propensity scores, are used to test the efficacy of an OG-based, general education reading intervention on a sample of over 700 kindergarten and first grade students who are experiencing reading delays from a large district in California. The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessments were used to assign students to the intervention and measure their end-of-year reading outcomes. The results of both analyses revealed no effect for students enrolled in the intervention in either kindergarten or first grade. Within the year that students received the intervention, a small but non-significant gain on end-of-year DIBELS composite scores was found. Long-term outcomes showed that over half of the students in the intervention were still not meeting reading targets by the end of second grade. Moreover, while the treatment effect was found to vary significantly across classrooms and across schools, no available measures classroom or school characteristics where associated with that variation. These findings suggest that certain applications of the OG methodologies may not be effective in general education settings.
Ecocultural Perspective in Learning Disability: Family Support Resources, Values, Child Problem Behaviors

The present study aimed to assess the interaction between familial and cultural factors on child problem behaviors of learning disabled children aged between 7 and 14 within the perspective of ecocultural theory (N = 90). Mothers completed the Family Support Scale, Portrait Values Questionnaire, and Social-Demographical Form, and teachers completed Specific Learning Disability Symptom Checklist and Child Behavior Problem Scale. Pearson correlation, regression analysis, and Hayes’ moderation analysis were conducted. After testing the relationship between support resources and problem behaviors, support analyses were repeated after including learning disability (LD) level. Finally, the effect of cultural values on perceived support resources and child problem behaviors after controlling child LD level was investigated. The findings of this study revealed that ideas about child development depend on cultural and individual factors, and a culturally sensitive understanding of child behaviors can guide researchers in developing more effective intervention programs, particularly for children with LD.
Multilevel Intergroup Contact and Antigay Prejudice (Explicit and Implicit)

Intergroup contact at the individual level is robustly associated with lower prejudice, but intergroup contact occurs within a greater regional context. Multilevel examinations thus far have focused on interethnic contact, where both individual- and contextual-level contact are associated with lower explicit prejudice. Given that ethnicity is visible, two lingering questions concern whether (a) contextual contact effects only apply to visible outgroups and (b) contextual contact effects predict implicit prejudice in addition to explicit prejudice. In two studies, we tested these questions in the domain of sexual orientation. Individual- and contextual-level contact were simultaneously (uniquely) associated with lower implicit and explicit prejudice: Individuals having more contact with gay men/lesbians were less prejudiced toward gay men and lesbians, and individuals living in areas with greater contact with gay men/lesbians were less prejudiced toward gay men/lesbians. It seems that people need not directly witness intergroup contact in their region for contextual contact effects to occur.
Testing subdivision-freeness: property testing meets structural graph theory

Testing a property P of graphs in the bounded-degree model deals with the following problem: given a graph G of bounded degree d, we should distinguish (with probability 2/3, say) between the case that G satisfies P and the case that one should add/remove at least ε dn edges of $G$ to make it satisfy P. In sharp contrast to property testing of dense graphs, which is relatively well understood, only few properties are known to be testable with a constant number of queries in the bounded-degree model. In particular, no global monotone (i.e,~closed under edge deletions) property that expander graphs can satisfy has been shown to be testable in constant time so far. In this paper, we identify for the first time a natural family of global monotone property that expander graphs can satisfy and can be efficiently tested in the bounded degree model. Specifically, we show that, for any integer t ≥ 1, Kt-subdivision-freeness is testable with a constant number of queries in the bounded-degree model. This property was not previously known to be testable even with o(n) queries. Note that an expander graph with all degree less than t-1 does not have a Kt-subdivision. The proof is based on a novel combination of some results that develop the framework of partitioning oracles, together with structural graph theory results that develop the seminal graph minor theory by Robertson and Seymour. As far as we aware, this is the first result that bridges property testing and structural graph theory. Although we know a rough structure for graphs without H-minors from the famous graph minor theory by Robertson and Seymour, there is no corresponding structure theorem for graphs without H-subdivisions so far, even K5-subdivision-free graphs. Therefore, subdivisions and minors are very different in a graph structural sense.
Separation of Reflectance Components and 1 1 Illumination Color Estimation : A Vector-space 2 2 Approach

In this paper, we address the problem of separating the dif6 6 fuse and specular reflectance components of complex textured surfaces 7 7 from a single color image. Unlike most previous approaches that assume 8 8 known illumination source color for this task, we develop a Hough trans9 9 form based approach for automatic estimation of illumination source 10 10 color from the image. Using the estimated source color, the diffuse and 11 11 specular components of a color pixel are separated by projecting the RGB 12 12 vector along the corresponding diffuse color direction and illumination 13 13 source color direction respectively. In the absence of purely diffuse pixels, 14 14 the proposed algorithm returns a more diffuse version of the input image. 15 15 The approach is completely automatic and does not need explicit color 16 16 segmentation or color boundary detection as required by most existing 17 17 methods. Results on complex textured images show the effectiveness of 18 18 the proposed vector-space analysis for both illumination color estimation 19 19 and reflectance component separation. 20 20
The Prevalence of Vaginal Microorganisms in Pregnant Women with Preterm Labor and Preterm Birth

Background To investigate the risk factors for vaginal infections and antimicrobial susceptibilities of vaginal microorganisms among women who experienced preterm birth (PTB), we compared the prevalence of vaginal microorganisms between women who experienced preterm labor (PTL) without preterm delivery and spontaneous PTB. Methods Vaginal swab specimens from 126 pregnant women who experienced PTL were tested for group B streptococcus (GBS), Mycoplasma hominis, Mycoplasma genitalium, Ureaplasma urealyticum, Chlamydia trachomatis, Trichomonas vaginalis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Treponema pallidum, herpes simplex virus (HSV) I and II, and bacterial vaginosis. A control group of 91 pregnant women was tested for GBS. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests were performed for GBS, M. hominis, and U. urealyticum. Results The overall detection rates for each microorganism were: U. urealyticum, 62.7%; M. hominis, 12.7%; GBS, 7.9%; C. trachomatis, 2.4%; and HSV type II, 0.8%. The colonization rate of GBS in control group was 17.6%. The prevalence of GBS, M. hominis, and U. urealyticum in PTL without preterm delivery and spontaneous PTB were 3.8% and 8.7% (relative risk [RR], 2.26), 3.8% and 17.3% (RR, 4.52), and 53.8% and 60.9% (RR, 1.13), respectively, showing no significant difference between the 2 groups. The detection rate of M. hominis by PCR was higher than that by culture method (11.1% vs. 4.0%, P=0.010). The detection rates of U. urealyticum by PCR and culture method were 16.7% and 57.1%, respectively. Conclusions There was no significant difference in the prevalence of GBS, M. hominis, and U. urealyticum between the spontaneous PTB and PTL without preterm delivery groups.
Transcriptomic Analysis of the Endangered Neritid Species Clithon retropictus: De Novo Assembly, Functional Annotation, and Marker Discovery

An aquatic gastropod belonging to the family Neritidae, Clithon retropictus is listed as an endangered class II species in South Korea. The lack of information on its genomic background limits the ability to obtain functional data resources and inhibits informed conservation planning for this species. In the present study, the transcriptomic sequencing and de novo assembly of C. retropictus generated a total of 241,696,750 high-quality reads. These assembled to 282,838 unigenes with mean and N50 lengths of 736.9 and 1201 base pairs, respectively. Of these, 125,616 unigenes were subjected to annotation analysis with known proteins in Protostome DB, COG, GO, and KEGG protein databases (BLASTX; E ≤ 0.00001) and with known nucleotides in the Unigene database (BLASTN; E ≤ 0.00001). The GO analysis indicated that cellular process, cell, and catalytic activity are the predominant GO terms in the biological process, cellular component, and molecular function categories, respectively. In addition, 2093 unigenes were distributed in 107 different KEGG pathways. Furthermore, 49,280 simple sequence repeats were identified in the unigenes (>1 kilobase sequences). This is the first report on the identification of transcriptomic and microsatellite resources for C. retropictus, which opens up the possibility of exploring traits related to the adaptation and acclimatization of this species.
Evaluating Spatial-Temporal Dynamics of Net Primary Productivity of Different Forest Types in Northeastern China Based on Improved FORCCHN

An improved individual-based forest ecosystem carbon budget model for China (FORCCHN) was applied to investigate the spatial-temporal dynamics of net primary productivity of different forest types in northeastern China. In this study, the forests of northeastern China were categorized into four ecological types according to their habitats and generic characteristics (evergreen broadleaf forest, deciduous broadleaf forest, evergreen needleleaf forest and deciduous needleleaf forest). The results showed that distribution and change of forest NPP in northeastern China were related to the different forest types. From 1981 to 2002, among the forest types in northeastern China, per unit area NPP and total NPP of deciduous broadleaf forest were the highest, with the values of 729.4 gC/(m2•yr) and 106.0 TgC/yr, respectively, followed by mixed broadleaf- needleleaf forest, deciduous needleleaf forest and evergreen needleleaf forest. From 1981 to 2002, per unit area NPP and total NPP of different forest types in northeastern China exhibited significant trends of interannual increase, and rapid increase was found between the 1980s and 1990s. The contribution of the different forest type’s NPP to total NPP in northeastern China was clearly different. The greatest was deciduous broadleaf forest, followed by mixed broadleaf- needleleaf forest and deciduous needleleaf forest. The smallest was evergreen needleleaf forest. Spatial difference in NPP between different forest types was remarkable. High NPP values of deciduous needleleaf forest, mixed broadleaf- needleleaf forest and deciduous broadleaf forest were found in the Daxing’anling region, the southeastern of Xiaoxing’anling and Jilin province, and the Changbai Mountain, respectively. However, no regional differences were found for evergreen needleleaf NPP. This study provided not only an estimation NPP of different forest types in northeastern China but also a useful methodology for estimating forest carbon storage at regional and global levels.
Maximal Sparsity Representation via l 1 Minimization

Finding a sparse representation of signals is desired in many applications. For a representation dictionary D and a given signal S 2 spanfDg, we are interested in nding the sparsest vector such that D = S. Previous results have shown that if D is composed of a pair of unitary matrices, then under some restrictions dictated by the nature of the matrices involved, one can nd the sparsest representation using an l1 minimization rather than using the l0 norm of the required composition. Obviously, such a result is highly desired since it leads to a convex Linear Programming form. In this paper we extend previous results and prove a similar relationship for the most general dictionary D. We also show that previous results are emerging as special cases of the new extended theory. In addition, we show that the above results can be markedly improved if an ensemble of such signals is given, and higher order moments are used.
Physiological mechanisms of vascular response induced by shear stress and effect of exercise in systemic and placental circulation

Physiological vascular function regulation is essential for cardiovascular health and depends on adequate control of molecular mechanisms triggered by endothelial cells in response to mechanical and chemical stimuli induced by blood flow. Endothelial dysfunction is one of the main risk factors of cardiovascular pathology, where the imbalance between the synthesis of vasodilator and vasoconstrictor molecules is common in the development of vascular disorders in systemic and placental circulation. In the placenta, an organ without autonomic innervations, the local control of vascular tone is critical for maintenance of fetal growth and mechanisms that underlie shear stress response induced by blood flow are essential during pregnancy. In this field, shear stress induced by moderate exercise is one of the most important mechanisms to improve vascular function through nitric oxide synthesis and stimulation of mechanical response of endothelial cells triggered by ion channels, caveolae, endothelial NO synthase, and vascular endothelial growth factor, among others. The demand for oxygen and nutrients by tissues and organs, especially in placentation and pregnancy, determines blood flow parameters, and physiological adaptations of vascular beds for covering metabolic requirements. In this regard, moderate exercise versus sedentarism shows potential benefits for improving vascular function associated with the enhancement of molecular mechanisms induced by shear stress. In this review, we collect evidence about molecular bases of physiological response to shear stress in order to highlight the relevance of moderate exercise-training for vascular health in adult and fetal life.
Costs of Sovereign Default

Over the past quarter of a century, emerging market economies (EMEs) have defaulted on their sovereign debts frequently. This article assesses the size and types of costs that have been associated with these defaults. It emphasises that costs, measured by the fall in output, are particularly large when default is combined with banking and/or currency crises. Output losses also seem to increase the longer that countries stay in arrears or take to restructure their debts. The paper concludes with a number of policy suggestions to improve debt crisis prevention and management and the role played by the IMF.