Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Editor's Reviews of VYGOTSKIAN PERSPECTIVES ON LITERACY RESEARCH: CONSTRUCTING MEANING THROUGH COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY and INSIDE CITY SCHOOLS: INVESTIGATING LITERACY IN MULTICULTURAL CLASSROOMS

Studies of cognition in education continue to suggest that learners acquire and internalize knowledge through social interaction with others. A term often used to describe this model of knowledge acquisition is inquiry, as in "inquiry-based learning. " This model assumes that knowledge results from a process of constructing answers to questions about which learners are genuinely curious and in which they have some personal or professional investment. Two recent books from prominent literacy researchers illustrate the value of inquiry as an analytic approach to understanding how people learn about literacy. Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research: Constructing Meaning through Collaborative Inquiry, edited by Carol Lee and Peter Smagorinsky, expands upon and illustrates the theories of the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky through analysis of literacy learning and literacy research in communities of practice.
Supply Side Interventions and Redistribution

We evaluate the effect on welfare of shifting the burden of capital income taxes to labour taxes in a dynamic equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and constant tax rates. We calibrate and simulate the economy; we find that lowering capital taxes has two effects: it increases efficiency in terms of aggregate production and it redistributes wealth in favour of those agents with a low wage/wealth ratio. When the parameters of the model are calibrated to match the distribution of income in terms of the wage/wealth ratio, the redistributive effect dominates, and agents with a high wage/wealth ratio would experience a large loss in utility if capital income taxes were eliminated.
Beta Blockers Use in Cardiac Failure: Does the Current Prescribing Practice at a Large Urban Hospital in Zimbabwe Exhibit Evidence Based Care and Offer Optimal Therapy for Cardiac Failure Patients?

Background: Cardiac failure treatment largely focused on symptomatic relief at the expense of the address of the underlying disease process of cardiac remodelling. This old wisdom of practice has been turned around by clinical research findings that have shown that there are agents that reverse cardiac remodelling and offer long-term benefits to cardiac failure patients. This has led to the recommendation of evidence-based practice in chronic heart failure management using reverse modelling agents such as beta blockers. Objectives: To ascertain the prescribing patterns of beta blockers in cardiac failure patients by doctors in a public hospital setting and determine the prevalence of cardiac failure hospitalisation and the age groups involved. Study design: A retrospective medical records review observational study. Methodology: A sample size of 385 cardiac failure cases was used. Data on cardiac failure patients who were once hospitalised at the hospital of study were abstracted from the patients’ medical records files using data collection forms. Results: There were 36 (9.4%) patients who were prescribed beta blockers, 7 patients had their beta blocker substituted for another. Atenolol was prescribed to 30 (7.8%) patients, propranolol to 7 (1.8%) and carvedilol to 6 (1.6%) patients. Metoprolol and bisoprolol were not prescribed at all. There were more females (57.9%) than males (42.1%) and the mean age was 41.9 (standard deviation 24.0) years. The prevalence of cardiac failure hospitalisation was 1.54%. Conclusion: The rate of beta blocker prescribing was low. There is need for emphasis on evidence-based treatment options in the management of cardiac failure in Zimbabwe.
Justification of emotional and instrumental aggression in Hong Kong and Spanish university students

This study reports the degrees of approval for different aggressive acts in a number of instrumental and emotional situations. A nationally-adapted version of the Lagerspetz and Westman questionnaire (1) was administered to 332 university students of both sexes in Spain and Hong Kong. Respondents had to indicate levels of justification of several aggressive acts of different quality and intensity in the context of different social justifications. Our results replicated the general findings of previous research in other cultures: in both samples, more drastic forms of aggression (e.g., killing, torture) were less accepted than non-dangerous forms of such behavior (e.g., hindering, being ironic); aggressive acts more socially justified (in terms of protection of self or other) were clearly more accepted than others with no such justification (problems of communication); and instrumental-motivated aggression was higher justified than emotional-motivated aggression. Some differences in the level of acceptance according to the sex of the participants were found: women were more prone to a higher acceptance of acts and situations more related to emotion. Although both sexes justified aggression in a higher degree for instrumentally motivated situations than for emotional ones, males showed a higher acceptance than females for instrumental situations and a lower one than females for emotional ones. There were also some minor culturally bound differences in these attitudes: Spaniards accepted less than HK students aggression in emotional situations, specially for the cases of punishment and lack of communication, but more emotional acts, such as rage and shouting. Thus, patterns of moral approval of various kinds of aggressive acts are in a large part common to both cultures. Findings also confirmed a two-factor solution and the respective predictive power of justifications for aggression in instrumental vs. emotional motivated situations. The reliability and validity of this brief self-report have been further established by the present study, paving the way for future studies to measure instrumental and emotional aggression.
Connection and Regulation at Home and in School

Qualities of adolescent-adult relationships across home and school environments are examined as predictors of academic growth in mathematics. An ethnically diverse sample of adolescents was drawn from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, 1988. In separate analyses, adolescents’perceptions of (a) connection with parents and teachers and (b) regulation from parents and teachers uniquely predicted academic growth in math from 8th to 12th grade. Thus, assets across home and school were additive. No evidence supported a compensatory process in which less connection or regulation at home was compensated by the presence of these experiences in school. Within school, teacher connection was the strongest predictor for all adolescents, but a combination of connection and regulation, making up an authoritative teaching style, predicted even greater academic growth in math for adolescents from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
ANALISIS KOHESI DALAM TEKS BACAAN (READING TEXT) PADA â€œUJIAN NASIONAL TAHUN PELAJARAN 2009/2010 BAHASA INGGRISâ€ UNTUK SEKOLAH MENENGAH ATAS (SMA)

Teks bacaan selain untuk media pengajaran, juga digunakan dalam sebuah pengukuran penilaian, yaitu dalam bentuk tes bacaan seperti yang ada dalam ujian nasional sekolah. Namun, dalam kenyataannya banyak siswa kesulitan dalam memahami teks bacaan dikarenakan beberapa faktor seperti teks yang terlalu panjang dengan tidak memperhatikan aspek kepaduan antar kata satu dengan kata lain, kalimat satu dengan kalimat lain, dan paragraf satu dengan lainnya. Dalam hal ini, kesulitan dalam memahami teks bacaan tersebut dikarenakan ketiadaan kohesi yang mana fungsi kohesi adalah untuk mengurangi kebingungan siswa dalam memahami ide di dalam teks. Oleh karena itu, timbul dua pertanyaan penting dalam penelitian ini; (1) Jenis-jenis piranti kohesi apa saja yang sering muncul pada teks bacaan ujian akhir â€œUjian Nasional Tahun Pelajaran 2009/2010 Bahasa Inggrisâ€ SMA? dan (2) Apakah fungsi dari piranti kohesi tersebut dalam teks bacaan pada ujian akhir â€œUjian Nasional Tahun Pelajaran 2009/2010 Bahasa Inggrisâ€ SMA? Untuk menjawab pertanyaan tersebut, pendekatan kualitatif digunakan dengan metode pengumpulan data dokumentasi. Pengumpulan data ini dipilih karena jenis data penelitian ini adalah jenis sekunder, yaitu berupa teks bacaan yang ada pada ujian nasional bahasa inggris SMA. Hasil yang didapat dari penelitian ini adalah sebagai berikut: pada teks bacaan ujian nasional SMA ditemukan penggunaan piranti kohesi baik itu kohesi gramatikal dan leksikal, yang mana piranti kohesi yang sering muncul adalah piranti referensi (134 piranti) dan yang tidak muncul sama sekali adalah piranti antonimi (0 piranti). Fungsi dari piranti-piranti tersebut pada umumnya adalah menghubungkan antar kata, frasa, dan klausa untuk menciptakan kepaduan teks yang mudah dipahami baik itu secara bentuk struktur maupun makna, sehingga pembaca dapat dengan mudah memperoleh informasi dari teks bacaan tersebut. Dari hasil di atas, maka disarankan bagi guru maupun tenaga pendidik untk memperhatikan kepaduan teks bacaan yang diberikan. Hal ini penting karena teks bacaan yang kohesif akan memberikan pemahaman baik itu bentuk maupun isi dari teks tersebut. Terbatasnya penggunaan piranti leksikal dalam hasil penelitian ini, menunjukkan kurang bervariasinya kosakata yang digunakan. Untuk itu, bagi penulis naskah soal Reading Text ujian nasional harus memperhatikan penggunaan piranti kohesi gramatikal dan kohesi leksikal agar lebih bervariasi dan tidak monoton. Selain itu, bagi para pelajar perlu diberikan materi terkait kohesi, karena pengetahuan tentang kohesi sangat bermanfaat dalam penguasaan bahasa mereka khususnya dalam kemampuan membaca dan menulis. Kata kunci: Kohesi, Membaca, Teks Bacaan
Study of gas production from shale reservoirs with multi-stage hydraulic fracturing horizontal well considering multiple transport mechanisms

Development of unconventional shale gas reservoirs (SGRs) has been boosted by the advancements in two key technologies: horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing. A large number of multi-stage fractured horizontal wells (MsFHW) have been drilled to enhance reservoir production performance. Gas flow in SGRs is a multi-mechanism process, including: desorption, diffusion, and non-Darcy flow. The productivity of the SGRs with MsFHW is influenced by both reservoir conditions and hydraulic fracture properties. However, rare simulation work has been conducted for multi-stage hydraulic fractured SGRs. Most of them use well testing methods, which have too many unrealistic simplifications and assumptions. Also, no systematical work has been conducted considering all reasonable transport mechanisms. And there are very few works on sensitivity studies of uncertain parameters using real parameter ranges. Hence, a detailed and systematic study of reservoir simulation with MsFHW is still necessary. In this paper, a dual porosity model was constructed to estimate the effect of parameters on shale gas production with MsFHW. The simulation model was verified with the available field data from the Barnett Shale. The following mechanisms have been considered in this model: viscous flow, slip flow, Knudsen diffusion, and gas desorption. Langmuir isotherm was used to simulate the gas desorption process. Sensitivity analysis on SGRs’ production performance with MsFHW has been conducted. Parameters influencing shale gas production were classified into two categories: reservoir parameters including matrix permeability, matrix porosity; and hydraulic fracture parameters including hydraulic fracture spacing, and fracture half-length. Typical ranges of matrix parameters have been reviewed. Sensitivity analysis have been conducted to analyze the effect of the above factors on the production performance of SGRs. Through comparison, it can be found that hydraulic fracture parameters are more sensitive compared with reservoir parameters. And reservoirs parameters mainly affect the later production period. However, the hydraulic fracture parameters have a significant effect on gas production from the early period. The results of this study can be used to improve the efficiency of history matching process. Also, it can contribute to the design and optimization of hydraulic fracture treatment design in unconventional SGRs.
Cerebrovascular Thromboprophylaxis in Mice by Erythrocyte-Coupled Tissue-Type Plasminogen Activator

Background— Cerebrovascular thrombosis is a major source of morbidity and mortality after surgery, but thromboprophylaxis in this setting is limited because of the formidable risk of perioperative bleeding. Thrombolytics (eg, tissue-type plasminogen activator [tPA]) cannot be used prophylactically in this high-risk setting because of their short duration of action and risk of causing hemorrhage and central nervous system damage. We found that coupling tPA to carrier red blood cells (RBCs) prolongs and localizes tPA activity within the bloodstream and converts it into a thromboprophylactic agent, RBC/tPA. To evaluate the utility of this new approach for preventing cerebrovascular thrombosis, we examined the effect of RBC/tPA in animal models of cerebrovascular thromboembolism and ischemia. Methods and Results— Preformed fibrin microemboli were injected into the middle carotid artery of mice, occluding downstream perfusion and causing severe infarction and 50% mortality within 48 hours. Preinjected RBC/tPA rapidly lysed nascent cerebral thromboemboli, providing rapid, durable reperfusion and reducing morbidity and mortality. These beneficial effects were not achieved by preinjection of tPA, even at a 10-fold higher dose, which increased mortality from 50% to 90% by 10 hours after embolization. RBC/tPA injected 10 minutes after tail amputation to simulate postsurgical hemostasis did not cause bleeding from the wound, whereas soluble tPA caused profuse bleeding. RBC/tPA neither aggravated brain damage caused by focal ischemia in a filament model of middle carotid artery occlusion nor caused postthrombotic hemorrhage in hypertensive rats. Conclusions— These results suggest a potential RBC/tPA utility as thromboprophylaxis in patients who are at risk for acute cerebrovascular thromboembolism.
Cognition–Well-Being Relations in Old Age

Abstract. We examine whether sensory impairment moderates the association between cognitive performance and well-being and, if so, whether such a moderation effect is due to a mediating mechanism via everyday competence in sensory-impaired individuals. Our sample consisted of visually-impaired (VI, n = 121), hearing-impaired (HI, n = 116), and sensory-unimpaired older adults (UI, n = 150), with a mean age of 82.50 years (SD = 4.71 years). Multiple measures of well-being (life satisfaction, affect, loneliness) as well as several established tests of cognitive performance were included. We found stronger relationships between cognitive performance and well-being in the HI and VI group than in UI individuals. Furthermore, the relationship was mostly mediated by everyday competence both in VI and HI older adults.
The Control of Dominance Area in Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithms for Many-Objective Problems

Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEA) are particulary suitable to solve real life problems, but they have some limitations when dealing with problems with many objectives, typically more than three. Recently, some many-objective techniques were proposed to avoid the deterioration of the search ability of Pareto dominance based MOEA for many-objective problems. This work applies the control of dominance area in two different Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization algorithms and investigates the influence of this technique in a cooperative-based framework. Besides, an empirical study is performed to identify if the many-objective technique increases the quality of the PSO algorithms for many-objective problems. The experimental results are compared applying some quality indicators and statistical test.
Differences in Characteristics of the Caregiving Network by Area of Residence: Implications for Primary Caregiver Stress and Burden.

The objectives of this research are to (a) compare characteristics of impaired elderly care receivers, primary caregivers, informal networks, and formal networks likely to impact primary caregiver stress and burden by area of residence and (b) fit a conceptual model explaining primary caregiver stress and burden in rural, small city, and urban samples. The data are from a matched sample of 1388 noninstitutionalized functionally limited elderly people and their primary caregivers drawn from the 1982 National Long-Term Care Survey and the National Survey of Informal Caregivers. Results show that there are significant residential differences in characteristics of the caregiving network in general, but minimal variation in primary caregiver stress and burden. Furthermore, there are some structural differences in the ability of the conceptual model to explain stress and burden by area of residence. These findings suggest that residential differences in the complex factors associated with primary caregiver stress and burden should be considered when formulating public policy, designing intervention strategies, and conducting future research.
Identification and Functional Characterization of Cardiac Pacemaker Cells in Zebrafish

In the mammalian heart a conduction system of nodes and conducting cells generates and transduces the electrical signals evoking myocardial contractions. Specialized pacemaker cells initiating and controlling cardiac contraction rhythmicity are localized in an anatomically identifiable structure of myocardial origin, the sinus node. We previously showed that in mammalian embryos sinus node cells originate from cardiac progenitors expressing the transcription factors T-box transcription factor 3 (Tbx3) and Islet-1 (Isl1). Although cardiac development and function are strikingly conserved amongst animal classes, in lower vertebrates neither structural nor molecular distinguishable components of a conduction system have been identified, questioning its evolutionary origin. Here we show that zebrafish embryos lacking the LIM/homeodomain-containing transcription factor Isl1 display heart rate defects related to pacemaker dysfunction. Moreover, 3D reconstructions of gene expression patterns in the embryonic and adult zebrafish heart led us to uncover a previously unidentified, Isl1-positive and Tbx2b-positive region in the myocardium at the junction of the sinus venosus and atrium. Through their long interconnecting cellular protrusions the identified Isl1-positive cells form a ring-shaped structure. In vivo labeling of the Isl1-positive cells by transgenic technology allowed their isolation and electrophysiological characterization, revealing their unique pacemaker activity. In conclusion we demonstrate that Isl1-expressing cells, organized as a ring-shaped structure around the venous pole, hold the pacemaker function in the adult zebrafish heart. We have thereby identified an evolutionary conserved, structural and molecular distinguishable component of the cardiac conduction system in a lower vertebrate.
Selective attentional processes in mild Parkinson's disease and mild Alzheimer's disease

On tasks of visual selective attention, both patients with mild Parkinson's disease (PD) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) show patterns of performance that differ from those observed in healthy controls. Typically in research, selective attention is treated as a unitary concept and altered performance explained in terms of a broad inhibitory deficit, i.e. problems ignoring extraneous stimuli. This thesis sought to clarify whether the performance of these patients reflected mechanisms that impact on different stages of attentional processing. The goal of the series of studies reported was not to compare the performance of patients with PD (n=20 throughout) and AD (n=16 to 20), rather it was to examine within each patient group (and healthy controls) similarities or differences in patterns of performance across tasks. In each study, targets and distractors were presented simultaneously and the characteristics of the distractors and/or their relationship to the target stimuli were manipulated in terms of visual characteristics, location or meaning. The performance of patients with mild PD improved when distractors were semantically related to the target. It was suggested that this was due to a priming mechanism that aided stimulus identification, and so these patients tended to rely on the meaning of items within the visual array. In contrast, the performance of patients with mild AD did not benefit from semantic similarity and was impaired by visual similarity. It was suggested that these patients tended to rely on the visual characteristics of items, and so the distraction from extraneous visual information interfered with stimulus selection. A framework was suggested that articulated how the properties of visual stimuli interact with processing mechanisms that impact on different stages of selective attention. The impairment of different visual attentional processes in patients with mild PD and mild AD could have implications for the cognitive support provided to them.
Fundamentals of the Downlink Green Coverage and Energy Efficiency in Heterogeneous Networks

This paper studies the proposed green (energy-efficient) coverage probability, link and network energy efficiencies in the downlink of a heterogeneous cellular network (HetNet) consisting of K independent Poisson point processes of base stations (BSs). The important statistical properties of the universal (general) cell association functions are first studied, and the cell load statistics for power-law cell association functions, which can characterize the accurate void cell probability of a BS in every tier, are also derived. A simple and feasible green channel-aware cell association (GCA) scheme is proposed and the green coverage probability is also proposed for any particular cell association scheme, such as the maximum received power association (MRPA) and the nearest BS association (NBA) schemes. Then, the link and network energy efficiencies are proposed to characterize the mean spectrum efficiency per unit power consumption for a BS and the mean area spectrum efficiency for the HetNet, respectively. All the tight bounds on the green coverage probability, link, and network energy efficiencies for the GCA, MRPA, and NBA schemes are found. They are theoretically shown to pose the fundamental maximum limits on the link and network energy efficiencies achieved by any other cell association schemes, and such a fact is validated by numerical results as well.
The Effect of Perceived Service Quality, Perceived Sacrifice and Perceived Service Outcome on Online Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is a key driver of financial performance in service organizations. We investigate whether or not online customer loyalty can be increased through enhancing the perceived service quality, reducing perceived sacrifice and improving the perceived service outcome in the online service context with the possible availability of live help service technology. We also investigate the moderating role of customer product knowledge on these relationships. The empirical results indicate that 1) online customer loyalty increases with higher perceived service quality, lower perceived sacrifice and better perceived service outcome, 2) perceived service quality positively influences perceived service outcome while perceived sacrifice negatively influences perceived service outcome, 3) customer product knowledge negatively moderates the relationship between perceived service quality and online customer loyalty such that greater product knowledge weakens that relationship, 4) customer product knowledge positively moderates the relationship between perceived sacrifice and online customer loyalty. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.