Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
More insights into the pharmacological effects of artemisinin

Artemisinin is one of the most widely prescribed drugs against malaria and has recently received increased attention because of its other potential biological effects. The aim of this review is to summarize recent discoveries of the pharmaceutical effects of artemisinin in basic science along with its mechanistic action, as well as the intriguing results of recent clinical studies, with a focus on its antitumor activity. Scientific evidence indicates that artemisinin exerts its biological activity by generating reactive oxygen species that damage the DNA, mitochondrial depolarization, and cell death. In the present article review, scientific evidence suggests that artemisinin is a potential therapeutic agent for various diseases. Thus, this review is expected to encourage interested scientists to conduct further preclinical and clinical studies to evaluate these biological activities.
Professors’ Beauty, Ability, and Teaching Evaluations in Italy

Abstract Using data from an Italian University, we relate student evaluations of teaching quality to the physical attractiveness of instructors (as evaluated by external raters using photos), controlling for a number of teacher and course characteristics. We first show that teachers’ beauty significantly affects evaluations of their teaching. We carry out a number of checks to tackle threats to internal validity: course fixed effects and individual research productivity are controlled for; an IV estimation strategy is undertaken using a second measure of beauty as an instrument; and measures of grooming and fastidiousness are introduced. Notwithstanding these controls, we find that more attractive teachers receive much better evaluations.
Alternating antibiotic treatments constrain evolutionary paths to multidrug resistance

Significance Antibiotic resistance is a growing threat, but the pace of drug discovery remains slow. Combination therapy can inhibit the emergence of de novo resistance but is often too toxic for long-term use. Alternating treatments, in which drugs are used sequentially with periodic switching, have been proposed as a substitute, but it remains uncertain when and how they slow the evolution of resistance. Using experimental evolution and whole-genome sequencing, we find that alternating drugs slows the rate of increase in resistance compared with single-drug treatments, by constraining resistance mutations with trade-offs in resistance to a second drug. Thus, drug combinations can exploit these trade-offs to slow the evolution of resistance, even when the drugs are not used simultaneously. Alternating antibiotic therapy, in which pairs of drugs are cycled during treatment, has been suggested as a means to inhibit the evolution of de novo resistance while avoiding the toxicity associated with more traditional combination therapy. However, it remains unclear under which conditions and by what means such alternating treatments impede the evolution of resistance. Here, we tracked multistep evolution of resistance in replicate populations of Staphylococcus aureus during 22 d of continuously increasing single-, mixed-, and alternating-drug treatment. In all three tested drug pairs, the alternating treatment reduced the overall rate of resistance by slowing the acquisition of resistance to one of the two component drugs, sometimes as effectively as mixed treatment. This slower rate of evolution is reflected in the genome-wide mutational profiles; under alternating treatments, bacteria acquire mutations in different genes than under corresponding single-drug treatments. To test whether this observed constraint on adaptive paths reflects trade-offs in which resistance to one drug is accompanied by sensitivity to a second drug, we profiled many single-step mutants for cross-resistance. Indeed, the average cross-resistance of single-step mutants can help predict whether or not evolution was slower in alternating drugs. Together, these results show that despite the complex evolutionary landscape of multidrug resistance, alternating-drug therapy can slow evolution by constraining the mutational paths toward resistance.
SOCIAL SUPPORT AND NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES DURING A LIFE STRESSOR

Social support, whether emotional, informational, or tangible (Goldsmith, 2004) is an innate need and is important to our well-being and our personal relationships. While face-to-face communication has been considered the “gold standard” to relational maintenance, we are also using communication technology to maintain our personal relationships and mobilize our social support networks. Technological advances in communication channels have provided new avenues to social interaction and social support. The purpose of this study was to explore the social support process across new communication technologies. Specifically, I examined how multiple modes of communication (including face-to-face) were used to seek and receive social support to/from different relational ties in the midst a life stressor. I also looked at what people did or said to prompt them to use certain communication channels and why. Further, I investigated the types of supportive messages that were being communicated. And, finally, I examined whether those supportive messages were perceived as helpful, or not. Through an in-depth analysis of 23 interviews, results suggested that new communication technologies helped: tell the story, orchestrate tangible support, provide direct and instant access to others, show evidence of quantity, and offer coping outlets. Delving deeper, the results from this project revealed that participants used specific communication channels for specific reasons when in need of support. Last, the results indicated that all three types of social support messages (i.e., emotional, informational, and tangible) were provided to participants via a variety of new communication technologies and relational ties. Moreover, some of the support messages were perceived as helpful, and some were not.
The Community Grant Writing Project: A Flexible Service-Learning Model for Writing-Intensive Courses.

This article describes the Community Grant Writing Project (CGWP), a flexible service-learning framework designed for use in writing-intensive courses. The CGWP incorporates bestpractice recommendations from the service-learning literature and addresses recent challenges identified for successful servicelearning partnerships. In the CGWP, students combine direct service hours with a local nonprofit organization with assistance in writing grants to support specific initiatives at the organiza tion. In the process of writing grants, students apply academic research and writing skills in a real-world context. In a firstyear seminar, the CGWP has demonstrated its value for meeting student learning objectives and community partner needs. The article concludes with suggestions based on student and community partner feedback for implementing the project in writingintensive courses.
On the impossibility of acquiring more powerful structures: A neglected alternative.

This article discusses Fodor’s demonstration of the impossibility of acquiring more powerful structures. Fodor’s extreme functionalism is shown to be unwarranted insofar as it leads to a categorical exclusion of the structural processes involved in cognitive development. An explicit consideration of these processes indicates the possibility of more powerful structures, emerging through self-organization in a way that is distinct from the combinatorial mechanisms which are invoked by Fodor. This point is illustrated by means of a simple example involving an inductive neural network with emergent structural properties. Consequently, it is argued that the possibility of acquiring more powerful structures through self-organization is a plausible alternative to nativism.
Genotyping for Human Papillomavirus Types 16 and 18 in Women With Minor Cervical Lesions: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background High-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) testing to triage women with minor cervical lesions generates many referrals. Purpose To evaluate the accuracy of genotyping for HPV types 16 and 18 and its utility as a second triage step after hrHPV testing in women with minor cervical lesions. Data Sources Searches of 4 bibliographic databases, without language restrictions, from 1 January 1999 to 1 February 2016. Study Selection Studies involving women with atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC-US) or low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL) who were triaged with tests for hrHPV and HPV 16/18 to find cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (grade ≥2 [CIN2+] or grade ≥3 [CIN3+]). Data Extraction Independent study selection, extraction of data, and quality assessment by 2 reviewers. Data Synthesis Twenty-four moderate- to good-quality studies involving 8587 women with ASC-US and 5284 with LSIL were found. The pooled sensitivity of HPV 16/18 genotyping for CIN3+ was about 70% for women with either ASC-US or LSIL. The pooled specificity (with a threshold of grade <2 CIN) was 83% (95% CI, 80% to 86%) for women with ASC-US and 76% (CI, 74% to 79%) for those with LSIL. The average risk for CIN3+ was 17% and 19% in HPV 16/18-positive women with ASC-US and LSIL, respectively, and was 5% in hrHPV-positive but HPV 16/18-negative women with either ASC-US or LSIL. Limitation Methodological and technical heterogeneity among studies; insufficient data to assess accuracy of separate assays. Conclusion Testing for HPV 16/18 to triage women with minor abnormal cytology is poorly sensitive but may be useful as a second triage test after hrHPV testing, with direct referral if the woman is positive for HPV 16/18. Whether colposcopy or repeated testing is recommended for hrHPV-positive but HPV 16/18-negative women depends on local decision thresholds that can be derived from pretest-posttest probability plots. Primary Funding Source 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission.
Utility of OCB

Building on recent developments in resource allocation theory as applied to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), the authors examine task interdependence as a contingency factor in the utility of group members’ OCBs for group performance. In a lagged field study, members of 46 work groups in six organizations rated their groups’ task interdependence, and group leaders rated groups’ OCBs. After six months, customers rated each group’s performance. OCB correlated positively with the performance of task-interdependent groups but had a neutral to negative association with the performance of task-independent groups. Consistent with this group-level resource allocation framework, the moderating role of task interdependence varied by dimensions of OCB: helping, civic virtue, and sportsmanship. The authors discuss the practical and theoretical implications of decisions about allocating a key resource—time—to OCB in work groups.
Personal Epistemology and Mathematics: A Critical Review and Synthesis of Research

This review critically examines 33 studies on students’ epistemological beliefs about mathematics. Five categories were identified: beliefs about mathematics, development of beliefs, effects of beliefs on behavior, domain differences, and changing beliefs. Studies examining beliefs about mathematics revealed consistent patterns of nonavailing beliefs at all educational levels. Mathematics instructional environments were inferred to influence the development of beliefs about mathematics. All studies revealed significant relationships between beliefs and cognition, motivation, and academic achievement. Descriptive studies found relationships between beliefs and learning behaviors. Studies examining domain differences found significant variations in beliefs across disciplines. Studies focusing on changing beliefs were successful, which was attributed to appropriate changes in instructional style. The article concludes with suggestions for future research.
Psychological contracts and organizational commitment profiles: Effects of contract fulfillment and violation on employee outcomes.

Psychological contracts are the beliefs an individual holds concerning terms of an agreement—which are implicit in nature—between the individual and the organization (Rousseau, 2000). The current study examined the effects of violation of the psychological contract on employee outcomes, and specifically how this effect may differ depending on the employee's organizational commitment profile, level of trust, and type of psychological contract. Violation of the psychological contract has been linked to negative workplace behaviours (Sturges, Conway, Guest & Liefooghe, 2005); however, limited research has investigated the role of moderators. Results indicated that trust and transactional contract type moderate the relationship between contract violation and employee outcomes and relational contract type moderates the relationship between contract fulfillment and employee outcomes. Further results indicated that the existence of moderators is dependent on the type of employee outcomes examined. Implications of these finding for employers and employees in the workplace are discussed.
Group Performance Depends on the Majority Rule

Some group decisions require a two-thirds or three-quarters majority of the people voting; others require only a simple majority. Does the accuracy of a group's decision making depend on which majority rule is used? A signal detection theory analysis was used to answer this question. Each member of a group was presented with a noisy display of either a signal or a nonsignal, and then each member cast a yes or no vote for the existence of a signal. The group decision was determined by a majority rule of the members' votes. Normative groups and groups of 5 or 7 people exhibited the same behavior: Performance was best when the group used a simple-majority rule and decreased when the group used more stringent rules. The worst performance was produced by a unanimous rule. Some group members adopted more liberal response criteria when the majority rule was made more stringent.
An Investigation of the Relationship between Motivation and Metacognitive Awareness Strategies in Listening Comprehension: The Case of Iranian EFL Learners

This study sets out to investigate the relationship between patterns of motivation and L2 listeners’ metacognitive awareness and perceived use of strategies. A total number of 3o upper intermediate students from two English language teaching Institutes in Isfahan took part in this study. They were asked to fill in two questionnaires: (a) a questionnaire on motivation, which was developed by Vallerand et al. (1992), and (b) a questionnaire on Metacognitive awareness strategies in listening developed by Vandergrift et al. (2006). The results of the study revealed that: 1) there is no significant difference in terms of type of motivation among Iranian upper intermediate EFL learners . 2) In the category of mecognitive strategies, problem solving was the most frequently used strategy and planning and evaltuation was the least frequently used one. 3) Positive relationship was found between both types of motivation and use of metacognitive awareness strategies, except for mental translation and intrinsic motivation. 4) There was significant difference in mean scores of high and low motivation groups, for three categories of metacoginitive awareness strategies including planning and evaluation, directed attention, and person knowledge. This study suggested that listeners’ metacognitive awareness should be cultivated and strategy instruction should be integrated into the teaching of listening.
On Formal Specification and Analysis of Security Policies

Security policies are ubiquitous in information systems and more generally in the management of sensitive information. Access control policies are probably the most largely used policies but their application goes well beyond this application domain. The enforcement of security policies is useless if some of their key properties like the consistency, for example, cannot be stated and checked. We propose here a framework where the security policies and the systems they are applied on, are specified separately but using a common formalism. This separation allows us not only some analysis of the policy independently of the target system but also the application of a given policy on different systems. Besides the abstract formalism we also explore how rewrite and reduction systems can be used and combined in a rather systematic way to provide executable specifications for this framework. We also propose a notion of system and policy transformation that gives the possibility to study some properties which cannot be expressed only within the initial presentation. We have shown, in particular, how confidentiality, integrity and confinment can be expressed for the BLP policy that does not deal explicitly with information flows but only with objects containing tractable information.
Barriers to systematic reflective practice as perceived by UKCC Level 1 and Level 2 qualified Rugby Union coaches

The purpose of this study was to identify the barriers to systematic reflection as perceived by UKCC Level 1 and Level 2 qualified rugby union coaches. Subjects (n = 10) were interviewed individually using a semi-structured interview and the interviews were transcribed. In total, 99 instances of perceived barriers were cited by the participants, with an almost 2:1 ratio between External and Internal barriers. Three dominant themes emerged from the study. First, the primary perceived barrier to systematic reflection is organisational, both in terms of a lack of planning by the coach as well as a lack of encouragement and enforcement by the RFU and local clubs to ensure reflection takes place. Second, coaches were not motivated to reflect, citing laziness, the repetitive nature of sessions and player behaviour as reasons. Finally, coaches cited a lack of time either as a result of other demands (work and family) or too much / too little coaching. Conclusions were that the RFU and clubs must work harder to educate coaches to the value of reflection and the role of proper session planning in this. To help make sessions more enjoyable for both players and coaches, the RFU and clubs could provide a wider range of ideas for coaching content.
Assessing the Reliability of Situational Judgment Tests Used in High‐Stakes Situations

Assessing reliability of situational judgment tests (SJTs) in high‐stakes situations is problematic with reliability inappropriately measured by Cronbach's alpha when test items are heterogeneous. We computed the corrected, weighted mean alpha from 56 alpha coefficients, which produced a value of α = . 46 and reviewed appropriate types of reliability to use with SJTs. In the current longitudinal study, SJT test–retest reliability was r = . 82, compared with internal consistency, α = . 46, and stratified alpha, α = . 45 at Time 1 and α = . 52 and stratified α = . 51 at Time 2. We used a student sample (Time 1: n = 185; Time 2: n = 132) with items from a credentialing exam with ‘should do’ instructions. The SJT correlated significantly with cognitive ability, r = . 30, and agreeableness, r = . 24. In Study 2, we assessed test–retest reliability with Human Resource professionals (Time 1: n = 94; Time 2: n = 32) who had been recently credentialed and who participated in a pilot test of new SJT items with ‘most likely/least likely do’ response options. The SJT test–retest reliability was r = . 66 compared with internal consistency, α = . 43 and stratified α = . 47 at Time 1 and α = . 61 and stratified α = . 67 at Time 2. We discuss the theoretical implications of the Study 1 results as well as the practical implications for use of SJTs in credentialing examinations.
The “Tongue Twister” Paradigm as a Technique for Studying Phonological Encoding

The “tongue twister” paradigm is underutilizedas a research tool because so little is known abouthow it induces errors. The two experiments reported here explore this paradigm in detail using a task variationwhich minimizes articulatory and mnemonic load. This task was found to elicit good rates of apparently “pure” prearticulatory errors. Two of its features had a significant error-inducing effect: a) repeated reiteration; and b) the use of similar phonemes in targets (e.g., moss knife noose muff). The presenceof phoneme repeats (e.g., palm neck name pack) had no reliable overall effect, but did influence error distribution. Performance on the task differed in several ways from that observed on a control task with similar output demands, but no reiterative component. A model of the task is proposed, in which phoneme similarity and reiteration are seen as independent contributors to the task's error-inducing potential. Wider theoretical implications of certain results are also discussed.
SEMEN COLLECTION AND ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION IN THE COMMON PIPING GUAN (PIPILE CUMANENSIS CUMANENSIS): POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS FOR CRACIDAE (AVES: GALLIFORMES)

Abstract The common piping guan (Pipile cumanensis cumanensis) is serving as a model for assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs) in Cracidae (Aves: Galliformes). Manual collection methods used in domestic birds and other exotics were modified to optimize quality and quantity of fresh semen samples. In addition, a method to subjectively assess semen quality on the basis of its color, clarity, and consistency was developed to serve as a tool when laboratory equipment is not available. In a species where only two eggs per clutch is typical, predictability of the date of the first egg is critical to ensure adequate inseminations before oviposition. An increase in both the distance between the female's pubic bones and degree of abdominal swelling indicated optimal time to initiate artificial insemination (AI) and allowed the number of semen samples used to fertilize the first egg in the clutch to be minimized while ensuring its fertility. In three separate AI trials, a total of four fertile eggs were produced, a first for cracids. Two of the four fertile eggs hatched successfully, and the chicks' parentages were confirmed using DNA fingerprinting. This study represents the first published account of the use of ARTs in Cracidae and forms the basis for future developments (e.g., AI of frozen– thawed semen) aimed at optimizing genetic management of cracids in ex situ breeding programs.
Lone motherhood, welfare reform and active citizen subjectivity

Welfare-to-work policies have become a central priority of governments in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and Scandinavia. Drawing on multiple in-depth interviews generated as part of a longitudinal qualitative study, we explore how welfare is imbricated in lone mothers’ subjectivity and citizenship. We consider women’s everyday claims-making activities as we interrogate three dimensions of welfare reform in British Columbia, Canada: (i) the employment imperative underlying active citizen subjectivity and the way this plays out in terms of gender, race and class-based occupational streaming; (ii) the coerciveness of gendered norms instantiated in such streaming; and (iii) the resulting practices of stratified reproduction. Following in the tradition of critical poverty studies, our research focuses on claims-making activities to challenge prevailing public policy practice that risks positioning impoverished lone mothers ‘under erasure’, invisible as mothers or moral citizens, and visible only as low waged worker citizens.
Towards the Development of a Sociotechnical Systems Model in Woodlands Mechanical Harvesting

An empirical study was conducted among eight similarly organized work groups numbering between 17 and 23 mechanics, operators, and supervisors each and employing similar and very sophisticated mechanical-harvesting equipment. Productivity of the higher-performing groups was double that of the lower performers. This article identifies key variables and their interactions in a model designed to explain the productivity variance. The model is developed from a sociotechnical systems perspective.