Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Perceptive Determination of Self-Perceived Listening Comprehension Strategies Employed by Saudi English-major University Undergraduates

This cross-sectional survey aims at investigating Saudi English-major university undergraduates about their self-perceived listening comprehension strategies they employ to comprehend listening texts. To generate data for this empirical study, a 5-point strongly agree to strongly disagree Likert-scale questionnaire has been adapted and standardized steps were followed to ensure the reliability and validity of the instrument. Arabic version of the questionnaire was administered to randomly selected male and female Saudi Englishmajor university undergraduates studying at foreign languages department during their regular teaching session to generate data. Descriptive analyses were run to calculate percentages, means and standard deviation. The results inform that the participants of this study prefer to use cognitive strategies the most followed by metacognitive strategies. Socio-affective strategies were reported to be used the least by this group. This trend offers valuable insights into the fact that Saudi English as a foreign language (EFL) learners resort to bottom-up strategies more frequently as compared to the top-down ones. It is recommended that Saudi EFL learners should be made aware of the significance of these strategies to enhance their listening comprehension. English language teachers should provide their students with appropriate skills of how to listen, retrospect on listening process and concentrate on practicing metacognitive and socio-affective strategies during their listening tasks. It is also recommended that teachers should provide their students with this confidence and courage to talk about their listening problems as well as the strategies they have used to tackle those problems.
Understanding the Effects of Government Spending on Consumption

Recent evidence on the effect of government spending shocks on consumption cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard New Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule-of-thumb (non-Ricardian) consumers. We show how the interaction of the latter with sticky prices and deficit financing can account for the existing evidence on the effects of government spending
Outcomes, perceptions, and experiences in one CPED-aligned educational doctorate (EdD) program

EdD programming has been questioned because of lack of clarity in the initial degree construction and confusion regarding its unique focus on enhancing practice. An improved, coherent focus was developed through the Carnegie Project on the Educational Doctorate (CPED). To understand the changes happening in CPED-influenced EdD programs, studies conducted within these newly-revised programs are vital. The current mixed-methods study explored perceptions of education doctoral (EdD) students in a CPED-Influenced program at one Midwestern university (n=36 for survey; n=8 for interviews). The research questions examined: (a) the successful completion of outcomes in the program; (b) the influence of the seven outcomes on the students in the program; and (c) being a full-time or part-time student in the program. In the first data collection phase, survey participants rated themselves at the average (3.07) to slightly above average (4.08) level for all seven outcomes, showing students perceived program outcomes as being met. The highest level of proficiency rated was the outcome Research in Practice (4.08), and the lowest was the outcome Organizational Change (3.07). In comparing old program students to new program students, there were no significant differences in their perceptions of proficiency for program outcomes. There were no significant differences between full and part-time students in their perceptions of proficiency for program outcomes; however, calculations of specific benchmark revealed one significant difference and a medium effect size (Cohen’s d= 0.59) favoring full-time students for the benchmark “Students understand program delivery models and their implications for practice. ” The second and third data collection were conducted through qualitative interviews. Emerging themes included the transformative change in the ways students think, invested and professional faculty members acting as mentors, collaboration with and diversity among peers, flexibility of the programming structure and course requirements, the focus on quality research in practice, and the application of learning. Many advantages and a few disadvantages were identified for both full-time and part-time students; however, satisfaction with the option to be full-time or part-time was the primary finding. OUTCOMES, PERCEPTIONS, AND EXPERIENCES IN ONE CPED-ALIGNED EDUCATIONAL DOCTORATE (EdD) PROGRAM A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Education
Perceptions of Service Providers’ Burnout: Comparison of Service Users and Service Providers

This paper reports the findings of a study comparing service providers’ and service users’ perceptions of providers’ burnout. It addresses two issues: the similarities and differences in their perceptions; and the associations between any gaps in their perceptions and the service users’ satisfaction and perceptions of change. The study was conducted on 270 matched pairs of service users and service providers in a human service agency in a major city in Israel, using the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The findings show that the service users viewed their providers as less emotionally exhausted, as having a lower level of accomplishment and as more depersonalising than the providers viewed themselves. They also show that user-versus-provider discrepancies in perceptions of the providers’ accomplishments and depersonalisation contributed significantly to the users’ satisfaction with the agency and their provider, as well as to their perception of changes in their presenting problem.
The tidal tails of NGC 5466

The study of substructure in the stellar halo of the Milky Way has made a lot of progress in recent years, especially with the advent of surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Here, we study the newly discovered tidal tails of the Galactic globular cluster NGC 5466. By means of numerical simulations, we reproduce the shape, direction and surface density of the tidal tails, as well as the structural and kinematical properties of the present-day NGC 5466. Although its tails are very extended in SDSS data (≥45°), NGC 5466 is only losing mass slowly at the present epoch and so can survive for probably a further Hubble time. The effects of tides at perigalacticon and disc-crossing are the dominant causes of the slow dissolution of NGC 5466, accounting for ≥60 per cent of the mass loss over the course of its evolution. The morphology of the tails provides a constraint on the proper motion - the observationally determined proper motion has to be refined (within the stated error margin) to match the location of the tidal tails.
Back to the app: the costs of mobile application interruptions

Smartphone users might be interrupted while interacting with an application, either by intended or unintended circumstances. In this paper, we report on a large-scale observational study that investigated mobile application interruptions in two scenarios: (1) intended back and forth switching between applications and (2) unintended interruptions caused by incoming phone calls. Our findings reveal that these interruptions rarely happen (at most 10% of the daily application usage), but when they do, they may introduce a significant overhead (can delay completion of a task by up to 4 times). We conclude with a discussion of the results, their limitations, and a series of implications for the design of mobile phones.
Dipeptidyl Peptidase 4 Inhibition May Facilitate Healing of Chronic Foot Ulcers in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

The pathophysiology of chronic diabetic ulcers is complex and still incompletely understood, both micro- and macroangiopathy strongly contribute to the development and delayed healing of diabetic wounds, through an impaired tissue feeding and response to ischemia. With adequate treatment, some ulcers may last only weeks; however, many ulcers are difficult to treat and may last months, in certain cases years; 19–35% of ulcers are reported as nonhealing. As no efficient therapy is available, it is a high priority to develop new strategies for treatment of this devastating complication. Because experimental and pathological studies suggest that incretin hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 may improves VEGF generation and promote the upregulation of HIF-1α through a reduction of oxidative stress, the study evaluated the effect of the augmentation of GLP-1, by inhibitors of the dipeptidyl peptidase-4, such as vildagliptin, on angiogenesis process and wound healing in diabetic chronic ulcers. Although elucidation of the pathophysiologic importance of these aspects awaits further confirmations, the present study evidences an additional aspect of how DPP-4 inhibition might contribute to improved ulcer outcome.
Heterogeneous Fusion of IDS Alerts for Detecting DOS Attacks

Denial of Service (DOS) attacks is a situation in attacker tries to prevent the user of a particular service from using that service. Intrusion detection system is more efficient compared to firewalls in detecting DOS attack generated due to internal traffic. However, single IDS system usually fails in detecting novel attack and produces larger false alerts. This paper proposes a method for heterogeneous alert fusion for detection of DOS attacks. The proposed method shows increase in the detection rate of about 20% compared to signature based IDS and 10% compared to anomaly based IDS. On the other hand the False alarm rate reduces by 40%. Alert fusion results for two redundant IDS as well as two complementary IDS have been demonstrated.
Student Models for Prior Knowledge Estimation

Intelligent behavior of adaptive educational systems is based on student models. Most research in student modeling focuses on student learning (acquisition of skills). We ocus on prior knowledge, which gets much less attention in modeling and yet can be highly varied and have important consequences for the use of educational systems. We describe several models for prior knowledge estimation – the Elo rating system, its Bayesian extension, a hierarchical model, and a networked model (multivariate Elo). We evaluate their performance on data from application for learning geography, which is a typical case with highly varied prior knowledge. The result show that the basic Elo rating system provides good prediction accuracy. More complex models do improve predictions, but only slightly and their main purpose is in additional information about students and a domain.
Pesticides Associated with Suspended Sediments in the San Francisco Bay During the First Flush, December 1995

The majority of suspended sediments are transported into estuaries by the “first flush” – runoff from the first major storm of the water year. Pesticides associated with these sediments may represent a significant fraction of pesticides transported to estuaries, where they have different environmental effects than dissolved pesticides. Water and suspended sediment samples were collected at the head of the San Francisco Bay during a peak in suspended sediment concentration, following the first major storm. These samples were analyzed for a variety of pesticides that span a wide range of hydrophobicity. For the 19 compounds analyzed, an average of 10 was found on the samples. Few pesticides were found dissolved in concurrent water samples and at concentrations much lower than would be expected from equilibrium partitioning between the aqueous and sedimentary phases. DDT and its metabolites were observed in all suspended sediment samples in concentrations ranging from 5.1 to 11.1 nanograms per gram dry sediment weight. Other compounds were sporadic in occurrence, but did occur at higher concentrations. For example, oxyflurofen and endosulfan each exceeded 20 nanograms per gram in a single sample. However, there were no significant trends in the total or individual pesticide concentrations, or in the number of compounds observed as the peak in suspended sediment concentration passed the sampling site. Also, there were no significant relations between sediment-associated pesticide concentration and parameters such as KOC of the pesticide, organic carbon content of the sediment, or amount of pesticide applied in the drainage basin, suggesting that observed sediment-associated pesticide concentrations may reflect disequibrium between sedimentary and aqueous phases resulting from long equilibration times at locations where pesticides were applied, and relatively short transit times for reequilibration to occur.
‘Certified to make a difference’: the motivation and perceptions of newly qualified early years teachers in England

Abstract The last 20 years have brought numerous workforce reforms to the early years sector, enacted in the name of professionalisation, including the recent introduction of a new postgraduate qualification, the Early Years Teacher Status. This article features data from interviews with 22 participants who had just completed this award and situates their views in the relevant policy context and alongside a discussion of what it means to professionalise the early years sector and create a graduate led workforce. The data support findings from similar studies of Early Years Professionals, namely that the interviewees are passionate about working with young children. They view the sector as in need of change, and themselves as potential leaders and agents of change. The participants endorse the view that up-skilling the workforce is essential to the professionalisation of the sector and improving the quality of early years education.
Adolescents’ Intentions to Engage in Criminal Activity: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach Linking Theories From Social Psychology and Criminology

ABSTRACT The Intentions to Transgress (ITT) model was developed based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and the motivators of crime identified by Agnew (1995). A survey of 512 youths attending South Australian high schools or detained in a youth detention facility, allowed an empirical test of the ITT model where it was found to consistently fit the drug taking, fighting and stealing data, suggesting that transgressional attitudes, subjective norms, perceived control and negative affect are important proximal factors related to adolescents’ transgressional intentions, but that moral norms and reputation enhancement play more of a distal role.
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in the double-blind treatment of a depressed patient suffering from bulimia nervosa: a case report.

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; APA, 1994), bulimia nervosa (BN) is classified as an eating disorder. The disease is characterized by discrete periods of binge eating during which, large amounts of food are consumed and a sense of control over eating is absent, followed by differing types of purging behaviour to prevent weight gain. Since the first descriptions of the diagnosis, little is known about the aetiological background of the disease. BN is accompanied by, or due to, alterations of serotonin and/or norepinephrine activity. These changes may possibly be involved in the pathological eating behaviour and in causing associated depression.
Understanding Adversarial Training: Increasing Local Stability of Neural Nets through Robust Optimization

We propose a general framework for increasing local stability of Artiﬁcial Neural Nets (ANNs) using Robust Optimization (RO). We achieve this through an alternating minimization-maximization procedure, in which the loss of the network is minimized over perturbed examples that are generated at each parameter update. We show that adversarial training of ANNs is in fact robustiﬁcation of the network optimization, and that our proposed framework generalizes previous approaches for increasing local stability of ANNs. Experimental results reveal that our approach increases the robustness of the network to existing adversarial examples, while making it harder to generate new ones. Furthermore, our algorithm improves the accuracy of the network also on the original test data.
Does the Use of Chitosan Contribute to Oxalate Kidney Stone Formation?

Chitosan is widely used in the biomedical field due its chemical and pharmacological properties. However, intake of chitosan results in renal tissue accumulation of chitosan and promotes an increase in calcium excretion. On the other hand, the effect of chitosan on the formation of calcium oxalate crystals (CaOx) has not been described. In this work, we evaluated the antioxidant capacity of chitosan and its interference in the formation of CaOx crystals in vitro. Here, the chitosan obtained commercially had its identity confirmed by nuclear magnetic resonance and infrared spectroscopy. In several tests, this chitosan showed low or no antioxidant activity. However, it also showed excellent copper-chelating activity. In vitro, chitosan acted as an inducer mainly of monohydrate CaOx crystal formation, which is more prevalent in patients with urolithiasis. We also observed that chitosan modifies the morphology and size of these crystals, as well as changes the surface charge of the crystals, making them even more positive, which can facilitate the interaction of these crystals with renal cells. Chitosan greatly influences the formation of crystals in vitro, and in vivo analyses should be conducted to assess the risk of using chitosan.
Baryon Number Transfer Could Delay Quark–Hadron Transition in Cosmology

In the early Universe, strongly interacting matter was a quark–gluon plasma. Both lattice computations and heavy ion collision experiments, however, tell us that, in the absence of chemical potentials, no plasma survives at T < ∼ 150 MeV. The cosmological Quark–Hadron transition, however, seems to have been a crossover; cosmological consequences envisaged when it was believed to be a phase transition no longer hold. In this paper, we discuss whether even a crossover transition can leave an imprint that cosmological observations can seek or, vice versa, if there are questions cosmology should address to QCD specialists. In particular, we argue that it is still unclear how baryons (not hadrons) could form at the cosmological transition. A critical role should be played by diquark states, whose abundance in the early plasma needs to be accurately evaluated. We estimate that, if the number of quarks belonging to a diquark state, at the beginning of the cosmological transition, is < ∼ 1 : 10 6 , its dynamics could be modified by the process of B-transfer from plasma to hadrons. In turn, by assuming B-transfer to cause just mild perturbations and, in particular, no entropy input, we study the deviations from the tracking regime, in the frame of SCDEW models. We find that, in some cases, residual deviations could propagate down to primeval nuclesynthesis.
Turbulent Convection and Pulsational Stability of Variable Stars. II. Oscillations of RR Lyrae and Horizontal Branch Red Variable Stars

Using a nonlocal time-dependent theory of convection, we have calculated the linear nonadiabatic oscillations of horizontal branch (HB) stars, carefully treating both the dynamic and thermodynamic coupling between convection and oscillations. Turbulent pressure and turbulent viscosity have been included consistently in our equations of nonadiabatic pulsation. When the coupling between convection and oscillations is ignored, for all models with Te ≤ 7350 K, the fundamental through the second overtone are pulsationally unstable, while for Te ≤ 6200 K all the models are unstable up to (at least) the 9th overtone. When the coupling between convection and oscillations is included, the RR Lyrae instability strip is very well predicted. Within the strip, most models are pulsationally unstable only for the fundamental and the first few low-order overtones. The turbulent viscosity is an important damping mechanism. Being exclusively distinct from the luminous red variables (long-period variables), the HB stars to the right of the RR strip are pulsationally stable for the fundamental and low-order overtones, but become unstable for some of the high-order overtones. This may provide a valuable clue to the short-period, low-amplitude red variables found outside the red edge of the RR strip on the H-R diagram of globular clusters. We also present a new radiation-modulated excitation mechanism functioning in a zone of radiation flux gradient. The effects of nonlocal convection and the dynamic coupling between convection and oscillations are discussed. The spatial oscillations of the thermal variables in the pulsational calculations have been effectively suppressed.
Evaluation of Three Electronic Noses for Detecting Incipient Wood Decay

Tree assessment methodologies, currently used to evaluate the structural stability of individual urban trees, usually involve a visual analysis followed by measurements of the internal soundness of wood using various instruments that are often invasive, expensive, or inadequate for use within the urban environment. Moreover, most conventional instruments do not provide an adequate evaluation of decay that occurs in the root system. The intent of this research was to evaluate the possibility of integrating conventional tools, currently used for assessments of decay in urban trees, with the electronic nose–a new innovative tool used in diverse fields and industries for various applications such as quality control in manufacturing, environmental monitoring, medical diagnoses, and perfumery. Electronic-nose (e-nose) technologies were tested for the capability of detecting differences in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by wood decay fungi and wood from healthy and decayed trees. Three e-noses, based on different types of operational technologies and analytical methods, were evaluated independently (not directly compared) to determine the feasibility of detecting incipient decays in artificially-inoculated wood. All three e-nose devices were capable of discriminating between healthy and artificially-inoculated, decayed wood with high levels of precision and confidence. The LibraNose quartz microbalance (QMB) e-nose generally provided higher levels of discrimination of sample unknowns, but not necessarily more accurate or effective detection than the AromaScan A32S conducting polymer and PEN3 metal-oxide (MOS) gas sensor e-noses for identifying and distinguishing woody samples containing different agents of wood decay. However, the conducting polymer e-nose had the greater advantage for identifying unknowns from diverse woody sample types due to the associated software capability of utilizing prior-developed, application-specific reference libraries with aroma pattern-recognition and neural-net training algorithms.
On non-equivalence of Lorentz and Coulomb gauges within classical electrodynamics

It is shown that the well-known procedure for proving the equivalence of the expressions for the electric field calculated using the Lorentz and Coulomb gauges is incorrect. The difference between the two gauges is due to the difference in the speed of propagation of a disturbance of the scalar potential. As an auxiliary result, it is proven that the solution for the electric field cannot be obtained directly from the Maxwell equations, i.e. without introducing the scalar and vector potentials.