Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of Study Group Attendance and Students' Perceived Helpfulness on Expected Grade.

This study examines the association between the number of study group sessions a student attends, the student's attitude toward these sessions, and expected grade for the class. Seven hundred and two students participated in the study, 30% of whom never attended a study group session. Of the remaining 70% who did participate, 24% attended five or more sessions, 27% attended three to four sessions, and 17% attended one to two sessions. Out of the twenty-eight classes that were surveyed at Oakland Community College (Michigan) over a 2-year period, Introduction to Psychology had the highest participation rate in the study group (18%). At the end of each semester, students were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding the study group sessions. Fifty percent of the students who attended the sessions said that they were "extremely helpful," and 33% responded "very helpful. " "Somewhat helpful" and "not helpful at all" accounted for 3% combined. Data from the attendees and non-attendees were compared, and overall, students who attended the study groups and perceived their group leader as effective expected higher grades. Tables 1 and 2 indicate the frequency of attendees by course, and the correlation between the number of sessions attended and the perception of helpfulness and expected grade. (AS) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** RUNNING HEAD: SUPPLEMENTAL INSTRUCTION AND EXPECTED GRADE Influence of Study Group Attendance and Students' Perceived Helpfulness on Expected Grade Michelle Plecha * Oakland Community College Orchard Ridge Campus Individualized Instruction Center U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) his document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. ° Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position cr policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY M. Plecha TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) * I would like to thank J.J. Berry and Christine Francis for their assistance with this project. An earlier version of this paper was written while a student at the University of Michigan. "EST COPY MAKABLE 2 Ls
School Transitions Among Military Adolescents: A Qualitative Study of Stress and Coping

Abstract The research on highly mobile military adolescents has produced mixed findings. Whereas early descriptive studies reported that adolescents experiencing multiple residential moves exhibited symptoms of what was termed military family syndrome, more recent quantitative studies have found few negative effects after controlling for prior status. However, most of the extant research has been conducted during peacetime, and thus may not generalize to today’s mobile military students, whose parents are facing deployment at increasing rates. The current study used qualitative methods to (a) describe the transition-related stressors experienced by mobile military students; (b) describe the efforts employed to help these students cope with their stress; and (c) identify strategies that schools can use to ease the transition process for mobile military students, as reported through 11 focus groups conducted with military students, their parents, and school staff. The findings suggest that the move-related stressors experienced by mobile military students affected their adjustment to the new school environment. Recommendations for supporting mobile military students are provided.
The mediating effect of neighbor relationship between community social support and elderly’s subjective well-being in China

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between community social support, neighbor relationship, and the subjective well-being of the elderly in China. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model based on a sample of 2732 senior adults from 2010 Chinese General Social Survey. Results showed that community social support could indirectly affect the subjective well-being of the elderly through the complete mediating effect of neighbor relationship, although there was no significant correlation between community social support and the elderly’s subjective well-being. Implications for theory, social work, and social policy were discussed.
MixHop: Higher-Order Graph Convolutional Architectures via Sparsified Neighborhood Mixing

Existing popular methods for semi-supervised learning with Graph Neural Networks (such as the Graph Convolutional Network) provably cannot learn a general class of neighborhood mixing relationships. To address this weakness, we propose a new model, MixHop, that can learn these relationships, including difference operators, by repeatedly mixing feature representations of neighbors at various distances. Mixhop requires no additional memory or computational complexity, and outperforms on challenging baselines. In addition, we propose sparsity regularization that allows us to visualize how the network prioritizes neighborhood information across different graph datasets. Our analysis of the learned architectures reveals that neighborhood mixing varies per datasets.
Bounded bodies : the everyday clothing practices of larger women : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

i Acknowledgments . iii Figures . xii Corpulent Beauty . xiii Chapter One Fashioning the Fat Self . 1 Clothing the Larger Self . 3 The Language of Clothes . 3 Embodied Clothing . 6 A Matter of Size . 7 Formulating the Research Question . 10 Cutting the Cloth: The Structure of the Thesis . 12 Chapter Two Embodying the Material . 17 Talking Matters of Fa(c)t . 18 Beauty and the Abject Other . 19 Governing the Medicalised Fat Body . 23 Illegitimate Fat Bodies . 27
Moment matching based model reduction for LPV state-space models

We present a novel algorithm for reducing the state dimension, i.e., order, of linear parameter varying (LPV) discrete-time state-space (SS) models with affine dependence on the scheduling variable. The input-output behavior of the reduced order model approximates that of the original model. In fact, for input and scheduling sequences of a certain length, the input-output behaviors of the reduced and original model coincide. The proposed method can also be interpreted as a reachability and observability reduction (minimization) procedure for LPV-SS representations with affine dependence.
High-Rank Matrix Completion

This paper considers the problem of completing a matrix with many missing entries under the assumption that the columns of the matrix belong to a union of multiple low-rank subspaces. This generalizesthe standardlow-rankmatrix completion problem to situations in which the matrix rank can be quite high or even full rank. Since the columns belong to a union of subspaces, this problem may also be viewed as a missing-data version of the subspace clustering problem. Let X be an n×N matrix whose (complete) columns lie in a union of at most k subspaces, each of rank ≤ r 1 a constant depending on the usual incoherence conditions, the geometrical arrangement of subspaces, and the distribution of columns over the subspaces. The result is illustrated with numerical experiments and an application to Internet distance matrix completion and topology identification.
Gravity-Assisted Seeding Control for 1-D Material Growth

This letter presents a seeding control scheme by utilizing gravity force to form an agglomeration of molten Co seeds on a patterned inverted silicon nanopyramid. Nanometer sized molten Co seeds formed on a nonwettable inverted pyramid surface can roll along the inclination followed by aggregation to form a singular seed with the size depending on the pyramid size and the thickness of as-deposited Co film inside the pyramid. The proposed scheme allowing the formation of well-aligned catalytic seeds with manipulated size will promise the control growth of 1-D material for practical integrated microelectronic device fabrication.
Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults

Over 500 million people interact daily with Facebook. Yet, whether Facebook use influences subjective well-being over time is unknown. We addressed this issue using experience-sampling, the most reliable method for measuring in-vivo behavior and psychological experience. We text-messaged people five times per day for two-weeks to examine how Facebook use influences the two components of subjective well-being: how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives. Our results indicate that Facebook use predicts negative shifts on both of these variables over time. The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time. Interacting with other people “directly” did not predict these negative outcomes. They were also not moderated by the size of people's Facebook networks, their perceived supportiveness, motivation for using Facebook, gender, loneliness, self-esteem, or depression. On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it.
Predictors of conversion to dementia of probable Alzheimer type in patients with mild cognitive impairment.

BACKGROUND Mild Cognitive Impairment is a common condition defined as transitional state between normality and dementia of Alzheimer type. Clinically is characterized by subjective and objective memory loss beyond the expected for age and educational level, although a broad range of cognitive inefficiencies may appear, with preservation of daily living activities. Approximately half the patients convert to dementia within 3 years. Since no all patients convert to dementia it is essential to find reliable predictors so as to start the appropriate treatment as soon as possible. METHOD Extensive Medline-based search for articles dealing with predictors of conversion to dementia in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). RESULTS There is a substantial body of literature dealing with predictors of dementia in patients with MCI. These predictors range from a simple delayed recall task on Mini-Mental to sophisticated radiological techniques and CSF biomarkers. Comprehensive neuropsychological tests rarely surpass 70% sensitivity and specificity. The presence of the APOE epsilon 4 allele has been associated with increased risk of conversion but the sensitivity is quite low. CSF biochemical markers are being developed with encouraging results. beta-amyloid 42 protein is usually lower in converters than in people with stable cognitive status and tau protein is higher. The sensitivity is substantial but specificity is so far low. An epitope of tau protein (P231) looks more specific of Alzheimer's disease and therefore a promising biomarker. In the blood, high beta-amyloid protein levels indicate risk of conversion but only a few studies have been published. Hippocampal or entorhinal atrophy on MRI is one of the most used radiological markers of conversion but quantification of atrophy is not simple as it is subject to artifacts and anatomic variations. Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) are emerging as the most promising predictive tools. The highest degree of accuracy (>90%) has been achieved by means of PET plus either memory performance or APOE4 genotype. However, the samples of the published studies are mostly small, and these instruments are not widely available. CONCLUSIONS There is no enough evidence to recommend specific techniques for predictions. Until an accurate marker is developed, a combined use of cognitive tests, APOE genotype, and a neuroradiological technique is probably the best option for prediction purposes depending on availability and experience.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Can an Islamic Model of Housing Finance Cooperative Elevate the Economic Status of the Underprivileged?

JEL classification: C63 G21 G32 I31 O17 P13 Keywords: ASCRA Asset bubble Mutual bank Inflation Mortgage design ROSCA a b s t r a c t A formal home loan is onerous to subprime borrowers in efficient markets. This can deter homeownership for financially strapped individuals, leading to a market failure. This paper proposes a special form of cooperative mortgage financing (practiced in Oman) to overcome this market failure. We integrate the literature of mortgage design with that of informal savings schemes (i.e., ROSCAs/ASCRAs) to illustrate that this mode of financing dissipates credit risk better than the formal mode of financing. It is also resilient to volatility of interest rates and allows prepayments without any additional charges. Finally, we verify the assertions of Besley et al. (1994) and Hart and Moore (1998) that cooperative mortgages are pareto-superior to formal mortgages in special cases.
Efficient Sparse Semismooth Newton Methods for the Clustered Lasso Problem

We focus on solving the clustered lasso problem, which is a least squares problem with the $\ell_1$-type penalties imposed on both the coefficients and their pairwise differences to learn the group structure of the regression parameters. Here we first reformulate the clustered lasso regularizer as a weighted ordered-lasso regularizer, which is essential in reducing the computational cost from $O(n^2)$ to $O(n\log (n))$. We then propose an inexact semismooth Newton augmented Lagrangian ({\sc Ssnal}) algorithm to solve the clustered lasso problem or its dual via this equivalent formulation, depending on whether the sample size is larger than the dimension of the features. An essential component of the {\sc Ssnal} algorithm is the computation of the generalized Jacobian of the proximal mapping of the clustered lasso regularizer. Based on the new formulation, we derive an efficient procedure for its computation. Comprehensive results on the global convergence and local linear convergence of the {\sc Ssnal} algorithm are established. For the purpose of exposition and comparison, we also summarize/design several first-order methods that can be used to solve the problem under consideration, but with the key improvement from the new formulation of the clustered lasso regularizer. As a demonstration of the applicability of our algorithms, numerical experiments on the clustered lasso problem are performed. The experiments show that the {\sc Ssnal} algorithm substantially outperforms the best alternative algorithm for the clustered lasso problem.
Improving Osteoblast Response In Vitro by a Nanostructured Thin Film with Titanium Carbide and Titanium Oxides Clustered around Graphitic Carbon

Introduction Recently, we introduced a new deposition method, based on Ion Plating Plasma Assisted technology, to coat titanium implants with a thin but hard nanostructured layer composed of titanium carbide and titanium oxides, clustered around graphitic carbon. The nanostructured layer has a double effect: protects the bulk titanium against the harsh conditions of biological tissues and in the same time has a stimulating action on osteoblasts. Results The aim of this work is to describe the biological effects of this layer on osteoblasts cultured in vitro. We demonstrate that the nanostructured layer causes an overexpression of many early genes correlated to proteins involved in bone turnover and an increase in the number of surface receptors for α3β1 integrin, talin, paxillin. Analyses at single-cell level, by scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and single cell force spectroscopy, show how the proliferation, adhesion and spreading of cells cultured on coated titanium samples are higher than on uncoated titanium ones. Finally, the chemistry of the layer induces a better formation of blood clots and a higher number of adhered platelets, compared to the uncoated cases, and these are useful features to improve the speed of implant osseointegration. Conclusion In summary, the nanostructured TiC film, due to its physical and chemical properties, can be used to protect the implants and to improve their acceptance by the bone.
A Simple Scheduling Restriction Scheme for Interference Coordinated Networks

Scheduling restriction is attracting much attention in LTE-Advanced as a technique to reduce power consumption and network overhead in interference coordinated heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Such a network with inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) provides two radio resources with different channel quality statistics. One of the resources is protected (unprotected) from inter-cell interference (hence, called protected (non-protected) resource) and has higher (lower) average channel quality. Without scheduling restriction, the channel quality feedbacks would be doubled to reflect such quality difference of the two resources. We present a simple scheduling restriction scheme that addresses the problem without significant performance degradation. Users with relatively larger (smaller) average channel quality difference between the two resources are scheduled in the protected (non-protected) resource only, and a boundary user, determined by a proportional fair resource allocation (PFRA) under simplified static channels, is scheduled on either of the two resources or both depending on PFRA. Having most users scheduled in only one of the resources, power consumption and network overheads that would otherwise be required for the channel quality feedbacks on the other resource can be avoided. System level simulation of LTE-Advanced downlink shows that the performance degradation due to our scheduling restriction scheme is less than 2%, with the average feedback reduction of 40%.
Limited Mitochondrial Permeabilization Is an Early Manifestation of Palmitate-induced Lipotoxicity in Pancreatic β-Cells*

Involvement of the mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT) pore in early stages of lipotoxic stress in the pancreatic β-cell lines MIN6 and INS-1 was the focus of this study. Both long term (indirect) and acute (direct) effects of fatty acid (FA) application on β-cell susceptibility to Ca2+-induced MPT induction were examined using both permeabilized and intact β-cells. Long term exposure to moderate (i.e. below cytotoxic) levels of the saturated FA palmitate sensitized β-cell mitochondria to MPT induced by Ca2+. Long term exposure to palmitate was significantly a more efficient inducer of MPT than the unsaturated FA oleate, although upon acute application both caused similar MPT activation. Application of antioxidants, inhibitors of the ceramide pathway, or modifiers of membrane fluidity did not protect β-cell mitochondria from FA exposure. However, significant protection was provided by co-application of the unsaturated FA oleate in a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-dependent manner. Characterization of MPT pore opening in response to moderate palmitate treatment revealed the opening of a unique form of MPT in β-cells as it encompassed features of both low and high conductance MPT states. Specifically, this MPT showed solute selectivity, characteristic of a low conductance MPT; however, it affected mitochondrial respiration and membrane potential in a way typical of a high conductance MPT. Activation of the full-size/high conductance form of MPT required application of high levels of FA that reduced growth and initiated apoptosis. These findings suggest that in the β-cell, MPTs can act as both initiators of cell death and as versatile modulators of cell metabolism, depending on the mode of the MPT pore induced.
The Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model: theoretical, empirical, and clinical advances

Working memory is important for online language processing during conversation. We use it to maintain relevant information, to inhibit or ignore irrelevant information, and to attend to conversation selectively. Working memory helps us to keep track of and actively participate in conversation, including taking turns and following the gist. This paper examines the Ease of Language Understanding model (i.e., the ELU model, Rönnberg, 2003; Rönnberg et al., 2008) in light of new behavioral and neural findings concerning the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in uni-modal and bimodal language processing. The new ELU model is a meaning prediction system that depends on phonological and semantic interactions in rapid implicit and slower explicit processing mechanisms that both depend on WMC albeit in different ways. It is based on findings that address the relationship between WMC and (a) early attention processes in listening to speech, (b) signal processing in hearing aids and its effects on short-term memory, (c) inhibition of speech maskers and its effect on episodic long-term memory, (d) the effects of hearing impairment on episodic and semantic long-term memory, and finally, (e) listening effort. New predictions and clinical implications are outlined. Comparisons with other WMC and speech perception models are made.
Homomorphisms are a good basis for counting small subgraphs

We introduce graph motif parameters, a class of graph parameters that depend only on the frequencies of constant-size induced subgraphs. Classical works by Lovász show that many interesting quantities have this form, including, for fixed graphs H, the number of H-copies (induced or not) in an input graph G, and the number of homomorphisms from H to G. We use the framework of graph motif parameters to obtain faster algorithms for counting subgraph copies of fixed graphs H in host graphs G. More precisely, for graphs H on k edges, we show how to count subgraph copies of H in time kO(k)· n0.174k + o(k) by a surprisingly simple algorithm. This improves upon previously known running times, such as O(n0.91k + c) time for k-edge matchings or O(n0.46k + c) time for k-cycles. Furthermore, we prove a general complexity dichotomy for evaluating graph motif parameters: Given a class C of such parameters, we consider the problem of evaluating f ε C on input graphs G, parameterized by the number of induced subgraphs that f depends upon. For every recursively enumerable class C, we prove the above problem to be either FPT or #W[1]-hard, with an explicit dichotomy criterion. This allows us to recover known dichotomies for counting subgraphs, induced subgraphs, and homomorphisms in a uniform and simplified way, together with improved lower bounds. Finally, we extend graph motif parameters to colored subgraphs and prove a complexity trichotomy: For vertex-colored graphs H and G, where H is from a fixed class of graphs, we want to count color-preserving H-copies in G. We show that this problem is either polynomial-time solvable or FPT or #W[1]-hard, and that the FPT cases indeed need FPT time under reasonable assumptions.