Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Student-teachers’ strategies in classroom interaction in the context of the teaching practicum

Abstract Strategies student-teachers employ in classroom interaction with pupils during teaching practice periods are surprisingly understudied, considering that the teaching practicum provides a central arena for student-teachers learning to become teachers. This study investigates the primary strategies student-teachers utilised in classroom interaction and the multiple qualities of these strategies. The data were collected from 31 student-teachers during their teaching practicum through stimulated recall (STR) interviews focusing on challenging and empowering critical incidents that student-teachers chose from their video-recorded lessons. The results showed that in challenging classroom incidents, student-teachers applied predominantly reactive behavioural strategies, whereas in the empowering situations, student-teachers primarily employed proactive cognitive and behavioural strategies. Use of proactive cognitive strategies was typically associated with positive meaningful experiences; hence, they setting the stage for utilising a more diverse set of proactive strategies in the classroom. Implications for teacher education programmes providing student-teachers authentic learning opportunities that promote proactive strategies are discussed.
Gain scheduling control of nonlinear singularly perturbed time-varying systems with derivative information

In this paper, we analyse the ultimate boundedness of nonlinear singularly perturbed time-varying systems and propose a control law using gain scheduling where the slow state and the exogenous signals are used as scheduling variables. In our control scheme, we have some flexibility in selecting the slow manifold of the system. Moreover, the derivative information can be properly engaged to manipulate the size of ultimate bound in tracking error of the controlled system.
Untangling the two-way signalling route from synapses to the nucleus, and from the nucleus back to the synapses

During learning and memory, it has been suggested that the coordinated electrical activity of hippocampal neurons translates information about the external environment into internal neuronal representations, which then are stored initially within the hippocampus and subsequently into other areas of the brain. A widely held hypothesis posits that synaptic plasticity is a key feature that critically modulates the triggering and the maintenance of such representations, some of which are thought to persist over time as traces or tags. However, the molecular and cell biological basis for these traces and tags has remained elusive. Here, we review recent findings that help clarify some of the molecular and cellular mechanisms critical for these events, by untangling a two-way signalling crosstalk route between the synapses and the neuronal soma. In particular, a detailed interrogation of the soma-to-synapse delivery of immediate early gene product Arc/Arg3.1, whose induction is triggered by heightened synaptic activity in many brain areas, teases apart an unsuspected ‘inverse’ synaptic tagging mechanism that likely contributes to maintaining the contrast of synaptic weight between strengthened and weak synapses within an active ensemble.
Peer Victimization from Kindergarten to Grade 2

This fascicle is based on data from the Québec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (QLSCD 1998-2010) which is being conducted by the Institut de la statistique du Québec (Québec Institute of Statistics) in collaboration with various partners (lis ted on the back cover). The goal of this study is to gain a better understanding of the trajectories which, during early childhood, lead to children’s success or failure in the education system.
The factor analysis procedure for exploration: a short guide with examples / El análisis factorial exploratorio: una guía breve con ejemplos

Abstract Surveys and tests contain multiple test items, sets of repeated tests or multiple survey questions. Commonly, these units are arranged within instruments subject to varying contexts of tests or questions. The analyst’s goal is to discover communalities across these items such that items can be reduced down to common meaningful factors. We provide a literature review that supports our further choice between exploratory analytical models for analysing empirical data and for building a guide to interpreting results. The purpose of this research is to provide a methodological and systematic framework for researchers who consider exploratory analyses. Following a comparison between factor extraction methods, we suggest various approaches to look at the association between the original variables and the factor, as well as correlations between factors. Our empirical case study data is a survey instrument of 19 items from a questionnaire developed by the Branco Weiss Institute in Israel, for evaluating at-risk high school and intermediate school students. Properties of the data such as the sample size, the quality of data by means of distribution patterns and extreme values, and correlations between the original items are considered. We argue that a concurrent integration of two fundamental processes — the empirical model fit and the substantive meaning — are essential in the process of implementing exploratory analysis results. The main conclusion is that the process of exploring latent factors needs an allocation of analytical resources, similar to other statistical modelling practices. Data and context mutually function as the platform for arriving at the optimal number of factors and their item composition. The exploratory factor analysis is a powerful tool for researchers who are ready to operate this tool properly.
Talking Less during Social Interactions Predicts Enjoyment: A Mobile Sensing Pilot Study

Can we predict which conversations are enjoyable without hearing the words that are spoken? A total of 36 participants used a mobile app, My Social Ties, which collected data about 473 conversations that the participants engaged in as they went about their daily lives. We tested whether conversational properties (conversation length, rate of turn taking, proportion of speaking time) and acoustical properties (volume, pitch) could predict enjoyment of a conversation. Surprisingly, people enjoyed their conversations more when they spoke a smaller proportion of the time. This pilot study demonstrates how conversational properties of social interactions can predict psychologically meaningful outcomes, such as how much a person enjoys the conversation. It also illustrates how mobile phones can provide a window into everyday social experiences and well-being.
Contact Toric Manifolds

We complete the classification of compact connected contact toric manifolds initiated by Banyaga and Molino and by Galicki and Boyer. As an application we prove the conjectures of Toth and Zelditch on toric integrable systems on the n-torus and the 2-sphere.
Framing the debate and taking positions on food allergen legislation: The 100 chefs incident on social media

Those suffering with food allergies and intolerances need to consider risk every day, and professional organisations are increasingly enrolled in this risk management venture (e.g. offering support, developing legislation, and enforcing laws). Following the release of new food allergen rules in the UK, the Daily Telegraph, a national broadsheet newspaper, published a letter and an article in March 2015 endorsed by 100 chefs criticising the legislation. The chefs felt that innovation and creativity were being harmed by the requirement to state the presence of 14 allergens in the dishes they cooked. Following the release, many food allergen-concerned consumers utilised social media to share their views. In this article we use qualitative research data, comments posted online and collected between 9 and 16 March 2015, to explore how claimants positioned themselves and others in the ensuing online debate, and how the debate itself was framed. The data included traditional news articles, online forum comments, individual Twitter posts, and Twitter discussions. We identified frames across the debate discourse that emphasised medical concerns around managing risks associated with food allergy/intolerance, the assignment of responsibility, fairness of access, the political nature of the debate, and the financial implications involved. We draw on Positioning Theory to illustrate how user-positions can be defined, redefined, and challenged in the light of new or varying information. Our findings have implications for understanding communication around managing food risks from both a consumer and business perspective, and understanding the progression of debates through both traditional and new media platforms.
Simulation of Mobile Ad hoc Routing Strategies

Several routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks have been proposed in the literature, each one based on a different strategic: proactive, reactive and hybrid. Some of these protocols have been studied and their performance is evaluated in detail. However a comparison between them is lacking to help determine an optimal strategy. This paper addresses this issue by comparing three protocols DSDV, AODV and CBRP from different MANET routing strategies. Performance is evaluated with respect to packets delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and normalized routing load for a given mobility mode, traffic load and network size by using Ns2 simulator.
The Interplay of Science and Values in Assessing and Regulating Environmental Risks

In the late 1970s, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed a standard for identifying, classifying, and regulating carcinogens. ' The hearings for the standard attracted the largest number of participants in OSHA's rulemaking history and lasted for two months (May and June 1978). Although a standard was never implemented, OSHA's efforts stimulated a debate over the assumptions and decisionmaking process for assessing and regulating cancer risks which continues today. This debate about the methods for identifying and estimating occupational cancer risks appears at first to be predominantly scientific, but an analysis of the responses to OSHA's proposal led me to hypothesize that regulatory values and other social and political values influenced the selection among scientific assumptions and, furthermore, that these regulatory values seemed linked to place of employment. To test these hypotheses, I designed an empirical study that explored the impact of regulatory values, institutional affiliation, and other social and political attributes on occupational health scientists' selection among assumptions used in the OSHA standard. I conducted 136 interviews with occupational physicians and industrial hygienists working for industry, academia, and government. This article describes some of the results of that study and focuses on the role of science and scientists in the decisionmaking process for determin-
Long term on-site experiments and mass balances in waste water treatment by multi-soil-layering system

The results of ten years long term on-site testing of Multi-Soil-Layering (MSL) system tested using model family of 2-5 persons for the treatment of domestic wastewater showed the high-grade performance even 10th year under optimum condition of aeration. In 10 years results, MSL system could treat domestic wastewater of mean concentrations of BOD 106 mg L, COD K2Cr2O7 148 mg L, T-N 65 mg L, and T-P 9.6 mg L respectively, as following removal efficiency, i.e. BOD and COD 90%, T-N 70%, and T-P 80%, respectively under optimum aeration with the hydraulic loading rate of 130-210 L m d. The best indicator to control the aeration was the pH of the treated water, i.e., if pH became higher than 7, the MSL was aerated at the rate of 3.5 x 10 L m d through porous pipes installed at the 70 cm depth of the MSL. If pH of the treated water became lower than 6, the aeration was stopped. Although excess aeration increased the removal of both BOD and COD, which made pH of treated water lower than 5, and Nitrate as well as phosphate leached out. The shortage of aeration resulted in poor removal of BOD, COD, especially COD, and ammonium as well as phosphate. From the results of soil and zeolite analyses, accumulated amount of N, P and COD in MSL during 10 year operation were estimated as 7, 19 and 0.4 kg. N and COD were likely released in out side of MSL through nitrification or decomposition.
Dynamics of Nonlinear Schrodinger / Gross-Pitaevskii Equations; Mass Transfer in Systems with Solitons and Degenerate Neutral Modes

Nonlinear Schrodinger / Gross-Pitaevskii equations play a central role in the understanding of nonlinear optical and macroscopic quantum systems. The large time dynamics of such systems is governed by interactions of the nonlinear ground state manifold, discrete neutral modes (``excited states'') and dispersive radiation. Systems with symmetry, in spatial dimensions larger than one, typically have degenerate neutral modes. Thus, we study the large time dynamics of systems with degenerate neutral modes. This requires a new normal form (nonlinear matrix Fermi Golden Rule) governing the system's large time asymptotic relaxation to the ground state (soliton) manifold.
Low-Power Scan Testing for Test Data Compression Using a Routing-Driven Scan Architecture

A new scan architecture is proposed to reduce peak test power and capture power. Only a subset of scan flip-flops is activated to shift test data or capture test responses in any clock cycle. This can effectively reduce the capture test power and peak test power. Two routing-driven schemes are proposed to reduce the routing overhead. Experimental results show that the proposed scan architecture can effectively reduce peak test power, capture power, test data volume, and test application cost.
Teichm\"uller harmonic map flow into nonpositively curved targets

The Teichm\"uller harmonic map flow deforms both a map from an oriented closed surface $M$ into an arbitrary closed Riemannian manifold, and a constant curvature metric on $M$, so as to reduce the energy of the map as quickly as possible [16]. The flow then tries to converge to a branched minimal immersion when it can [16,18]. The only thing that can stop the flow is a finite-time degeneration of the metric on $M$ where one or more collars are pinched. In this paper we show that finite-time degeneration cannot happen in the case that the target has nonpositive sectional curvature, and indeed more generally in the case that the target supports no bubbles. In particular, when combined with [16,18,9], this shows that the flow will decompose an arbitrary such map into a collection of branched minimal immersions.
The Talk Test as a simple marker of ventilatory threshold

Endurance training prescriptions are often based on laboratory measurements of physiological reference points, such as the ventilatory threshold (VT). This study evaluated the relationship between a simple surrogate of the VT, the Talk Test (TT), and objective measures of VT in well-trained individuals. This was a comparative study of the oxygen consumption (V02) in reference to TT, VT and respiratory compensation threshold (RCT).
Neurocomputational Model of EEG Complexity during Mind Wandering

Mind wandering (MW) can be understood as a transient state in which attention drifts from an external task to internal self-generated thoughts. MW has been associated with the activation of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In addition, it has been shown that the activity of the DMN is anti-correlated with activation in brain networks related to the processing of external events (e.g., Salience network, SN). In this study, we present a mean field model based on weakly coupled Kuramoto oscillators. We simulated the oscillatory activity of the entire brain and explored the role of the interaction between the nodes from the DMN and SN in MW states. External stimulation was added to the network model in two opposite conditions. Stimuli could be presented when oscillators in the SN showed more internal coherence (synchrony) than in the DMN, or, on the contrary, when the coherence in the SN was lower than in the DMN. The resulting phases of the oscillators were analyzed and used to simulate EEG signals. Our results showed that the structural complexity from both simulated and real data was higher when the model was stimulated during periods in which DMN was more coherent than the SN. Overall, our results provided a plausible mechanistic explanation to MW as a state in which high coherence in the DMN partially suppresses the capacity of the system to process external stimuli.
The Neural Mechanisms Of Conformity Across Socioeconomic Status And Development

Social influence is omnipresent, explicitly and implicitly influencing people’s preferences and behaviors. Recently, neuroscientists have begun to contribute to our understanding of social influence, providing insight into mental processes that occur in real time without the need for participant introspection. The current dissertation aims to build our understanding of social influence by examining the neural mechanism that underlie receiving feedback about others’ preferences, as well as the mechanisms that underlie conformity to others’ preferences. In order to examine these relationships, the current dissertation examined four questions. First, we examined which neural mechanisms underlie processing social feedback and conformity across 249 people, making it the largest study of social influence in the brain to date. Next, we examined whether SES (high versus low) moderates neural mechanisms associated with social influence processing and conformity. Third, we examined whether development (adolescents versus young adults) moderates neural mechanisms associated with social influence. Finally, we examined whether the relationship between SES and social influence processing and conformity is different depending on developmental trajectories. Results from the current dissertation provide robust evidence for a core set of brain systems involved in conflict detection and mentalizing that are implicated in social influence across groups. We address previous methodological limitations stemming from diverse methods employed to study social influence across different past studies of influence. In addition, we begin to show evidence that socio-demographic factors and development may moderate the neural bases of social influence. Taken together the findings from the current dissertation advance our understanding of social influence by providing evidence for a set of core mechanisms involved in social influence. We do not find robust evidence for differences in neural processing associated with sociodemographic factors, but highlight some subtle differences and discuss possibilities for future neuroimaging research that can more definitively address commonalities and differences across groups. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Emily B. Falk
Epigallocatechin-3-gallate suppresses the lipid deposition through the apoptosis during differentiation in bovine bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells

Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a major component of tea, has known effects on obesity, fatty liver, and obesity‐related cancer. We explored the effects of EGCG on the differentiation of bovine mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs, which are multipotent) in a dose‐ and time‐dependent manner. Differentiating BMSCs were exposed to various concentrations of EGCG (0, 10, 50, 100, and 200 µM) for 2, 4, and 6 days. BMSCs were cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM)/high‐glucose medium with adipogenic inducers for 6 days, and the expression levels of various genes involved in adipogenesis were measured using real‐time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Western blotting. We assessed apoptosis by flow cytometry and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick‐end labeling (TUNEL) staining of control and EGCG‐exposed cells. We found that EGCG significantly suppressed fat deposition and cell viability (P < 0.05). The mRNA and protein levels of various adipogenic factors were measured. Expression of the genes encoding peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor gamma (PPARG), CCAAT/enhancer‐binding protein alpha (CEBPA), fatty acid‐binding protein 4 (FABP4), and stearoyl‐CoA desaturase (SCD) were diminished by EGCG during adipogenic differentiation (P < 0.05). We also found that EGCG lowered the expression levels of the adipogenic proteins encoded by these genes (P < 0.05). EGCG induced apoptosis during adipogenic differentiation (P < 0.05). Thus, exposure to EGCG potentially inhibits adipogenesis by triggering apoptosis; the data suggest that EGCG inhibits adipogenic differentiation in BMSCs.
Is Work-Related Rumination Associated with Deficits in Executive Functioning?

Work-related rumination, that is, perseverative thinking about work during leisure time, has been associated with a range of negative health and wellbeing issues. The present paper examined the association between work-related rumination and cognitive processes centerd around the theoretical construct of executive functioning. Executive functioning is an umbrella term for high level cognitive processes such as planning, working memory, inhibition, mental flexibility; and it underlies how people manage and regulate their goal directed behavior. Three studies are reported. Study I, reports the results of a cross-sectional study of 240 employees, and demonstrates significant correlations between work-related rumination and three proxy measures of executive functioning: cognitive failures (0.33), cognitive flexibility (-0.24), and situational awareness at work (-0.28). Study II (n = 939), expands on the findings from study 1 and demonstrates that workers reporting medium and high work-related rumination were 2.8 and 5 times, respectively, more likely to report cognitive failures relative to low ruminators. High ruminators also demonstrated greater difficulties with ‘lapses of attention’ (OR = 4.8), ‘lack of focus of attention’ (OR = 3.4), and ‘absent mindedness’ (OR = 4.3). The final study, examined the association between work-related rumination and executive functioning using interview data from 2460 full time workers. Workers were divided into tertiles low, medium, and high. The findings showed that high work-related rumination was associated with deficits in starting (OR = 2.3) and finishing projects (OR = 2.4), fidgeting (OR = 1.9), memory (OR = 2.2), pursuing tasks in order (OR = 1.8), and feeling compelled to do things (OR = 2.0). It was argued that work-related rumination may not be related to work demands per se, but appears to be an executive functioning/control issue. Such findings are important for the design and delivery of intervention programes aimed at helping people to switch off and unwind from work.