Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of job insecurity on job performance and absenteeism : the moderating effects of work attitudes

Job insecurity was found to have relevant psychosocial consequences for both individuals and organisations. Recently, research is increasingly focusing on those variables that can moderate its negative influences. In this study, the impact of job insecurity on two indicators of organisational behaviour (i.e. job performance and absenteeism) was investigated. It was expected that job insecurity was negatively related to job performance and positively to absenteeism, and that this relationship was moderated by work related attitudes, such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Four-hundred and twenty five workers were interviewed with a structured questionnaire. Overall, the hypotheses were supported by the data: job insecurity was in fact negatively correlated with job performance and positively with absenteeism. However, work related attitudes moderated only the effect of job insecurity on job performance but not on absenteeism. Opsomming Daar is gevind dat werksonsekerheid relevante psigososiale gevolge vir beide individue en organisasies inhou. Onlangse navorsing fokus al hoe meer op daardie veranderlikes wat die negetiewe effekte hiervan kan modereer. In hierdie studie is die impak van werksonsekerheid op twee indikatore van organisasiegedrag (werksprestasie en afwesigheid) ondersoek. Dit was verwag dat werkonsekerheid ’n negetiewe verhouding tot werksprestasie en ’n positiewe verhouding tot afwesigheid sou gehad het en dat hierdie verhouding gemodereer sou word deur werksverwante gesindhede, soos werkstevredenheid en organisasiegebondenheid. 425 werknemers is met ’n gestruktureerde vraelys ondervra. Die hipotese is oor die algemeen deur die data ondersteun: werksonsekerheid het inderdaad ’n negetiewe korrelasie tot werksprestasie en ’n positiewe korrelasie tot afwesigheid gehad. Werksverwante gesindhede het egter slegs die effek van werksonsekerheid op werksprestasie gemodereer, maar nie op afwesigheid nie.
Assessing why substance use disorder patients drop out from or refuse to attend 12-step mutual-help groups: The “REASONS” questionnaire

Substance use disorder (SUD) patients who become involved in 12-step mutual-help groups (MHGs), such as Alcoholics Anonymous, experience better outcomes and have reduced healthcare costs. In spite of this, many do not attend at all and other initial attendees drop out. Reasons for non-attendance and dropout have not been systematically studied, yet such knowledge could enhance the efficiency of twelve-step facilitation (TSF) efforts or help clinicians decide which patients might prefer non-12-step MHGs (e.g., SMART Recovery). This study developed and tested a measure of reasons for non-participation and dropout from 12-step MHGs. Items were generated and clustered into eight domains using a rational keying approach. Male veterans (N = 60; M age = 49; 41% African American) undergoing SUD treatment were asked to complete a brief assessment about prior MHG experiences. Psychometric analyses produced a 24-item measure containing seven internally consistent, face-valid, subscales. Co-morbid psychiatric issues and, to a lesser degree, spiritual concerns, were found to be particularly important dimensions relating to this phenomenon. The measure could serve as a useful screening tool for barriers to 12-step participation and subsequently focus TSF efforts or inform referral to non-12 step MHGs.
Cognitive and Affective Concomitants of Task and Ego Goal Orientations during the Middle School Years

Recent research with young adolescents (Duda, Fox, Biddle, & Armstrong, 1992) and with older adolescents (Duda, 1989) has reported a conceptually coherent relationship between individuals' achievement goal orientations and their beliefs about competitive sport. The purpose of the present study was to extend this line of research and examine the cognitive and affective concomitants of task and ego goal orientations (Nicholls, 1980, 1984, 1989) at three different ages during adolescence. Specifically, beliefs about the purposes of sport, causes of success, and satisfaction in sport were examined. A robust pattern of results emerged from canonical correlation procedures. For all three ages, a task orientation was related to prosocial and adaptive achievement beliefs about sport participation. In contrast, an ego orientation was related to negative social aspects and maladaptive achievement beliefs about sport involvement. The results suggest that a task orientation is likely to facilitate adaptive cognitive .
Interconnected growing self-organizing maps for auditory and semantic acquisition modeling

Based on the incremental nature of knowledge acquisition, in this study we propose a growing self-organizing neural network approach for modeling the acquisition of auditory and semantic categories. We introduce an Interconnected Growing Self-Organizing Maps (I-GSOM) algorithm, which takes associations between auditory information and semantic information into consideration, in this paper. Direct phonetic–semantic association is simulated in order to model the language acquisition in early phases, such as the babbling and imitation stages, in which no phonological representations exist. Based on the I-GSOM algorithm, we conducted experiments using paired acoustic and semantic training data. We use a cyclical reinforcing and reviewing training procedure to model the teaching and learning process between children and their communication partners. A reinforcing-by-link training procedure and a link-forgetting procedure are introduced to model the acquisition of associative relations between auditory and semantic information. Experimental results indicate that (1) I-GSOM has good ability to learn auditory and semantic categories presented within the training data; (2) clear auditory and semantic boundaries can be found in the network representation; (3) cyclical reinforcing and reviewing training leads to a detailed categorization as well as to a detailed clustering, while keeping the clusters that have already been learned and the network structure that has already been developed stable; and (4) reinforcing-by-link training leads to well-perceived auditory–semantic associations. Our I-GSOM model suggests that it is important to associate auditory information with semantic information during language acquisition. Despite its high level of abstraction, our I-GSOM approach can be interpreted as a biologically-inspired neurocomputational model.
Robust online appearance models for visual tracking

We propose a framework for learning robust, adaptive appearance models to be used for motion-based tracking of natural objects. The approach involves a mixture of stable image structure, learned over long time courses, along with 2-frame motion information and an outlier process. An online EM-algorithm is used to adapt the appearance model parameters over time. An implementation of this approach is developed for an appearance model based on the filter responses from a steerable pyramid. This model is used in a motion-based tracking algorithm to provide robustness in the face of image outliers, such as those caused by occlusions. It also provides the ability to adapt to natural changes in appearance, such as those due to facial expressions or variations in 3D pose. We show experimental results on a variety of natural image sequences of people moving within cluttered environments.
Reliable Crowdsourcing and Deep Locality-Preserving Learning for Expression Recognition in the Wild

Past research on facial expressions have used relatively limited datasets, which makes it unclear whether current methods can be employed in real world. In this paper, we present a novel database, RAF-DB, which contains about 30000 facial images from thousands of individuals. Each image has been individually labeled about 40 times, then EM algorithm was used to filter out unreliable labels. Crowdsourcing reveals that real-world faces often express compound emotions, or even mixture ones. For all we know, RAF-DB is the first database that contains compound expressions in the wild. Our cross-database study shows that the action units of basic emotions in RAF-DB are much more diverse than, or even deviate from, those of lab-controlled ones. To address this problem, we propose a new DLP-CNN (Deep Locality-Preserving CNN) method, which aims to enhance the discriminative power of deep features by preserving the locality closeness while maximizing the inter-class scatters. The benchmark experiments on the 7-class basic expressions and 11-class compound expressions, as well as the additional experiments on SFEW and CK+ databases, show that the proposed DLP-CNN outperforms the state-of-the-art handcrafted features and deep learning based methods for the expression recognition in the wild.
The Gender Gap in Suicide Rates: An Analysis of Twenty Developed Countries, 1955-1994

Although analysis of the gender difference in suicide rates has traditionally examined the ratio of male to female rates, we analyze the difference between the male and female suicide rates. We examine variation in this measure of gender gap in suicide rates in 20 developed countries from 1955 through 1994. We examine a Durkheimian societal integration model along with data measuring the cultural disapproval of suicide. Regression models for the entire 1955-1994 period explained 62 percent of the variation in the gender gap, while R 2 for 1955-1974 and 1975-1994 separately was . 81 and . 86, respectively. Further analysis failed to find the pattern between the 1955-1974 and 1975-1994 periods as predicted by the ldquo;institutional adjustment" hypothesis.
Stakes Matter in Ultimatum Games

One of the most robust findings in experimental economics is that individuals in one-shot ultimatum games reject unfair offers. Puzzlingly, rejections have been found robust to substantial increases in stakes. By using a novel experimental design that elicits frequent low offers and uses much larger stakes than in the literature, we are able to examine stakes' effects over ranges of data that are heretofore unexplored. Our main result is that proportionally equivalent offers are less likely to be rejected with high stakes. In fact, our paper is the first to present evidence that as stakes increase, rejection rates approach zero. (JEL: C72, C78, C91)
Sociolinguistic Variation in the Intonation of Buenos Aires Spanish

This paper contrasts the intonation of Buenos Aires Spanish with classic Spanish according to the variables of gender and age. The corpus contains declarative, wh-question and exclamatory sentences, uttered in a repetition task by 72 native speakers, 36 males/36 females equally divided into three age – groups (5-8; 18-50; 51-75). The data were analyzed using the Autosegmental¬¬-Metrical model with the ToBI system adopted for Argentine Spanish. The results were explained according to the principle that language represents a compromise in the struggle to achieve maximum communication through minimal effort (Diver, 1979, 1995; Davis 1984/1987; Tobin, 1997). The data show an inverse proportion between the difficulty of the sentence and the range of prosodic variation. The most simple declarative sentence has the largest variation for both gender and age. In the most difficult wh- questions, speakers prefer marked patterns with variation in gender and age. In the less difficult exclamatory sentence, there were minor differences for both gender and age. Our data indicate that: (1) females of all ages consistently prefer marked forms; (2) male children tend to follow adult female speakers; (3) adult males have more random patterns and (4) adults (18-50) of both genders have the most variation in wh-questions.
In the fast lane toward structure in implicit learning: Nonanalytic processing and fluency in artificial grammar learning

This paper reports three experiments that investigated the relation between perceptual fluency and nonanalytic processing in artificial grammar classification. Nonanalytic processing was manipulated by invoking response time restrictions. In Experiment 1 there were no response time restrictions for classification decisions (response time: M=5950 ms), Experiment 2 invoked a response deadline of 2 s (response time: M=1310 ms), and Experiment 3 used a within-subjects response-signal procedure comparing classification after a 500 ms delay (response time: M=838 ms) with a 2000 ms delay (response time: M=2280 ms) The results showed that fluency created by masked priming affects classification in artificial grammar learning under conditions of relatively nonanalytic processing (Experiment 2 and the short condition of Experiment 3). The results are discussed in relation to different heuristics that participants can use in artificial grammar classification, the fluency heuristic being one of them. The experiments also provided some evidence that metaknowledge of grammaticality in artificial grammar learning may under some circumstances be enhanced by nonanalytic processing during testing.
Suffix Effects in Lists of Temporally Grouped Words

Two groups of university students were presented with auditory lists of temporally grouped words for recall. The lists were immediately followed by either a redundant suffix, a nonredundant suffix or no suffix. One group of subjects was instructed to recall the items in strict serial order; the second group was required to write the last items first, indicating the position of all items in the list. According to Kahneman's (1973) account of the suffix effect, the interfering effect of the suffix should be eliminated when the suffix is segregated in a different group or perceptual unit from the memory items. The results did not support the prediction from Kahneman's hypothesis. An alternative account of the suffix effect was presented.
Risk factors for perforation and delayed bleeding associated with endoscopic submucosal dissection for early gastric neoplasms: Analysis of 1123 lesions

Background and Aim: Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is a useful procedure for the treatment of early gastric neoplasms; however, this advanced technique has also resulted in an increase in serious complications such as perforation and delayed bleeding. This study aimed to elucidate the risk factors for these complications.
Time synchronous Bluetooth sensor networks

Bluetooth-equipped wireless sensor nodes can be quickly integrated in small home networks. These networks can be utilized e.g. for surveillance, home monitoring and automation. Accurate time is an important factor for time-stamping of sensor data, encryption/authentication and it can also to used to implement time synchronous schemes for low power radio communication. We argue that IP-based time synchronization, such as various flavors of the NTP protocol, can be used with Bluetooth networks. This in combination with an activation schedule allows an efficient trade-off between energy consump- tion and communication delay, and provides easy integration with available infrastructure. The proposed approach in this paper is well suited for smaller wireless home networks, typically single- hop networks with access points that are always available. Our approach is verified by experiments performed on a COTS-based platform using Bluetooth.
Conditional and joint models for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion

In this work, we introduce several models for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion: a conditional maximum entropy model, a joint maximum entropy n -gram model, and a joint maximum entropy n -gram model with syllabiﬁcation. We examine the relative merits of conditional and joint models for this task, and ﬁnd that joint models have many advantages. We show that the performance of our best model, the joint n -gram model, compares favorably with the best results for English grapheme-to-phoneme conversion reported in the literature, sometimes by a wide margin. In the latter part of this paper, we consider the task of merging pronunciation lexicons expressed in different phone sets. We show that models for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion can be adapted effectively to this task.
Hearing Latin American Voices in International Relations Studies

This article offers a general account of international relations studies (IR) in Latin America through an examination of IR thinking in the region, an inventory of IR theory courses in seven Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago), and an analysis of journal articles selected from five specialized IR journals in Latin America. Although considerable U.S. influence upon the ways in which IR is approached in Latin America is made apparent through this narrative, the specific context in which IR studies have evolved in the region has substantially altered the content of U.S. IR discourse. Therefore, the article concludes with a discussion of the possible contributions of Latin American IR to Anglo-American perspectives in the field.
Conflict Monitoring and Motor Control During Pre-Potent Response Suppression in Aging: A Behavioural, Kinematic, and Electrophysiological Investigation

The current thesis investigated the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to age-related declines in pre-potent response suppression, and the interaction between those mechanisms and motor control processes that support response production. To achieve this goal, participants were visually cued to perform repeated pairs of key presses that established a pre-potent response. This was contrasted with responses that conflicted with the pre-potent pair. Cognitive and motor processes were delineated through kinematic analyses that decomposed reaction time into movement planning and execution phases. The goal of Study 1 was to explore whether there are age differences in conflict adaptation effects during pre-potent response suppression. In this study, conflicts were presented once, twice, or three times in each sequence. Older adults performed the first conflicting response in a series as well as young adults, but at a cost to pre-potent response performance. Younger adults improved performance with increased conflict frequency, whereas older adults did not. Older adults spent less time planning, but more time executing their conflicting responses compared to younger adults. This study revealed that conflict adaptation effects are diminished in the elderly, and that flexible adjustments in motor control by younger adults contribute to age-related differences in pre-potent response suppression. In Study 2, the neurophysiological correlates of conflict monitoring, and their relation to adjustments in motor control were investigated with concurrent acquisition of motion capture and event-related potential (ERP) data. Context effects were also explored through manipulation of the proportion of conflicting responses across conditions. The movement patterns, and ERP data revealed larger conflict-related interference effects for both groups when the proportion of conflicting responses was low. This context effect was exaggerated in the elderly. Moreover, only younger adults showed a robust conflict-related N2 component over fronto-central electrode sites. The magnitude of this N2 was related to shorter execution time in the younger, but not older participants, indicating that conflict detection facilitated within-trial adjustments in movement control. These findings are discussed in terms of current models of cognitive control and aging. These data contribute to current knowledge about the mechanisms by which conflict monitoring and cognitive control processes influence motor performance.
Individuals and society in transition : a narrative study of parents' use of smacking

INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIETY IN TRANSITION: A NARRATIVE STUDY OF PARENTS’ USE OF SMACKING. Parents’ use of smacking has been the subject of much private and public debate within the UK in recent years. Within this qualitative study, narrative methods were used to explore relationships between societal change and individuals’ own biographical narratives of growing up and becoming parents and for some, becoming health visitors. Initially print media texts that spanned the past twenty years were analysed to discover the dominant 'storylines' about parents’ use of smacking. Secondly, narrative interviews were carried out with parents, grandparents and health visitors (most of whom were also parents or grandparents). The approach to analysis was sequential and narratives were considered in terms of their form and their content, across all of the narrative data and then within six selected narrative exemplars. The stories recounted by participants are about 'transition' and the formation of new identities within a society that could be described as being in a 'state of flux', as the children's rights agenda is interpreted and played out in different ways. Identification of personal turning points during the life course and the use of Frank’s (1995) narrative types has allowed further understanding of the ways in which these stories are culturally constructed.
Associations Between Morningness-Eveningness and Sleep Quality Among Female Dormitory Residents

Results: Over 60% of the students were categorized as poor-quality sleepers by the PSQI, 69.2%, 27.5%, and 3.2% of the subjects were intermediate, evening, and morning types, respectively. There was a significant negative correlation between MEQ and PSQI scores and its dimensions such as subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, and sleep efficiency (P < 0.05); while there were no significant differences between sleep disturbances, daytime dysfunction, use of sleep medication, and MEQ scores. Conclusions: The results showed that the quality of evening type sleep was worse than that of the morning type.
In Search of the Knowledge Base of Language Teaching: Explanations by Experienced Teachers

This paper examines aspects of the knowledge base that experienced English as a second language (ESL) teachers draw on in their teaching, primarily in giving explanations of grammar and other language points. The paper focuses on three categories of teacher knowledge: content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and knowledge of learners (Shulman, 1987). Observations of and interviews with four experienced ESL grammar teachers about their classroom explanations are analyzed using this framework. The results indicate that these three categories of knowledge are intertwined in complex ways as they are played out in the classroom and in teacher thinking. This knowledge base and the actions it leads to are further seen to be fundamentally process-oriented. It is argued that the knowledge base itself should be integrated into language teacher education programs and that its complex and process-oriented nature needs to be taken into account in language teacher education curriculum design.
Understanding and Treating Substance Abusers and Their Infants

The problem of drug dependency among women of childbearing age is a major public health dilemma in the United States. The substance abusing mother with her medical, obstetrical, psychiatric, and drug treatment needs, combined with her infant with any degree of neurobehavioral or other difficulties, often yields a mother–infant dyad fraught with difficulty. This article describes the multiple needs of the substance abusing mother and her infant and the experience of a comprehensive care treatment facility in meeting those needs. General recommendations for practitioners treating this unique population are also included.