Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Meta-Analytic Examination of Student Race on Classroom Interaction.

A quantitative summary of 15 studies indicated that African-American/Latino students receive more negative feedback from teachers in the classroom than do Euro-American students. In addition, teachers interact less frequently with African-American/Latino students than Euro-American students. No difference based on race existed in the amount of positive feedback provided by teachers. Results indicated a potential source of differential treatment in the classroom by instructors that may impact student achievement. (Contains 2 tables of data and 49 references.) (Author/NKA) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ********************************************************************************
Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants

This paper empirically analyzes economic and noneconomic determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants, within and across countries. The two survey data sets used, covering a wide range of developed and developing countries, make it possible to test for interactive effects between individual characteristics and country-level attributes. In particular, theory predicts that the correlation between pro-immigration attitudes and individual skill should be related to the skill composition of natives relative to immigrants in the destination country. Skilled individuals should favor immigration in countries where natives are more skilled than immigrants and oppose it otherwise. Results based on direct and indirect measures of the relative skill composition are consistent with these predictions. Noneconomic variables also are correlated with immigration attitudes, but they don't alter significantly the labor-market results.
Infant Mortality of Professional Sports Clubs: An Organizational Ecology Perspective

Summary Due to their limited financial resources winning the national championship or qualifying for an international cup competition is not a viable option for most small market clubs in any of the European professional team sports leagues, such as soccer, ice hockey, basketball or handball. However, since a particularly poor performance is usually punished by relegation and since being relegated to the respective second division is associated with a dramatic decline in revenues, avoiding relegation is a target in itself. Using data from seven different professional team sports leagues in four different countries we estimate various parametric and semi-parametric regression models to identify the determinants of the clubs’ length of stay in their respective first division. In line with the organizational ecology literature we find that club experience, previous club performance (number of previous championship titles and number of previous relegations) and market size (average attendance) affect survival in a statistically significant and economically relevant sense. Perhaps surprisingly, founding conditions seem to be irrelevant for a club’s length of stay in its respective first division.
Politics and the Press in Thailand: Media Machinations

1. Introduction: politics and the media in Thailand 2. Political newsgathering in Thai language newspapers 3. The role of political reporters 4. Inside a political daily: editorial politics at Matichon 5. Investigative reporting? The strange case of 'Dr. S' 6. The power of the political columnist 7. Conclusion
Fault detection and location in DES using Petri nets

This paper is concerned with fault detection and location of discrete event systems (DES) modeled using interpreted Petri nets (IPN). The approach held deals with IPN models in which the marking is partially known. A diagnosis scheme that tracks the DES inputs and outputs is proposed; it allows detecting and locating an unexpected behavior within the DES. The diagnoser handles a monitoring model, expressed also as an IPN, which is computed from the DES model through an induced conservative marking law.
Impact of Information Technology Management Practices on Customer Service

Recently,despite huge incentives and subsequent increases in investment in customer relationship management technology, many firms have not been able to increase their customer satisfaction index ratings. The purpose of this paper is to gauge whether IT management practices differ among firms where IT has a major role in transforming marketing, operations, or both, which give the firms advantage by affecting their customer service. Several research hypotheses are tested using data obtained from a survey of 213 IT-leaders in the financial services industry. The results clearly indicate that the IT-leader firms have a higher level of IT management sophistication and a higher role for their IT-leaders compared to IT-enabled customer focus, IT-enabled operations focus, and IT-laggard firms. This paper concludes with the implications for both researchers and practitioners.
Mapping of Key Functions of the Herpes Simplex Virus 1 US3 Protein Kinase: the US3 Protein Can Form Functional Heteromultimeric Structures Derived from Overlapping Truncated Polypeptides

ABSTRACT Earlier studies have shown that the herpes simplex virus (HSV) US3 encodes two transcriptional units directing the synthesis of the US3 (residues 1 to 481) and US3.5 (residues 77 to 481) protein kinases. Both kinases phosphorylate histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1) and HDAC2 and enable the expression of genes cotransduced into U2OS cells by recombinant baculoviruses, an activity designated the “helper function. ” The two kinases differ with respect to antiapoptotic activity. In the studies reported here, we made a series of FLAG-tagged amino- and carboxyl-terminal truncations of US3 and these were tested for antiapoptotic activity, phosphorylation of HDAC1, and the helper function. We report the following. (i) HDAC1 phosphorylation and the helper function were expressed in cells transduced by the truncation encoding residues 182 to 481 but not in cells transduced by the truncation encoding residues 189 to 481 or the amino-terminal polypeptides encompassing the first 188 amino acids. (ii) The self-posttranslational modification requires residues 164 to 481. (iii) The antiapoptotic activity requires both the amino-terminal and the carboxyl-terminal domains, of which the truncated protein containing residues 1 to 163 and that containing residues 164 to 481, respectively, were the smallest fragments tested to be effective. The two domains need not be on the same molecule, but they must overlap. The smallest overlapping pair tested was the fragment containing residues 1 to 181 and that containing residues 164 to 481. Consistent with the hypothesis that the effective overlapping truncations form a heteromultimeric structure, antibody to FLAG coprecipitated untagged US3 from lysates of cells cotransduced with FLAG-tagged, truncated US3 constructs. Although US3 has been reported to be a monomeric enzyme, the results indicate that it can form enzymatically active multimeric structures.
Majority-Rule Consensus of Phylogenetic Trees Obtained by Maximum-Likelihood Analysis

The maximum-likelihood (ML) approach is a powerful tool for reconstructing molecular phylogenies. In conjunction with the Kishino-Hasegawa test, it allows direct comparison of alternative evolutionary hypotheses. A commonly occurring outcome is that several trees are not significantly different from the ML tree, and thus there is residual uncertainty about the correct tree topology. We present a new method for producing a majority-rule consensus tree that is based on those trees that are not significantly less likely than the ML tree. Five types of consensus trees are considered. These differ in the weighting schemes that are employed. Apart from incorporating the topologies of alternative trees, some of the weighting schemes also make use of the differences between the log likelihood estimate of the ML tree and those of the other trees and the standard errors of those differences. The new approach is used to analyze the phylogenetic relationship of psbA proteins from four free-living photosynthetic prokaryotes and a chloroplast from green plants. We conclude that the most promising weighting scheme involves exponential weighting of differences between the log likelihood estimate of the ML tree and those of the other trees standardized by the standard errors of the differences. A consensus tree that is based on this weighting scheme is referred to as a standardized, exponentially weighted consensus tree. The new approach is a valuable alternative to existing treeevaluating methods, because it integrates phylogenetic information from the ML tree with that of trees that do not differ significantly from the ML tree.
A Comparative Study of Synchronous and Asynchronous Remote Usability Testing Methods

Traditional in-lab usability testing has long been the standard method for evaluating and improving the usability of software interfaces. In-lab testing, though effective, has its drawbacks such as unavailability of representative end-users, high testing costs, and the difficulty of reproducing a user‟s everyday environment. To overcome these issues, various alternative usability evaluation methods (UEMs) have been developed over the past two decades. One of the most commonly used is the remote usability testing method. Ever since remote usability testing was introduced fourteen years ago, its effectiveness has been judged and evaluated against that of traditional in-lab testing. However, there is a distinct lack of research exploring the effectiveness of the various modes of remote usability testing. This research aimed to conduct a comparative study of two types of remote usability testing methods namely: synchronous and asynchronous remote usability testing. These two methods were compared through an evaluation of a website, which involved three points of comparison: number and type of problems discovered, overall task performance, and test participants‟ satisfaction. The results of the study showed that the synchronous testing method performed better than the asynchronous testing method in terms of the number and types of usability problems discovered, although no statistical significant differences were found. The participants in the synchronous test were notably more successful than the participants in the asynchronous test in completing the test tasks. However, the asynchronous test participants were significantly quicker than synchronous participants in performing those tasks. Participants in the synchronous tests also scored slightly higher satisfaction rate with regards to the targeted website. However, asynchronous participants were considerably more satisfied with the remote method that they had participated in. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for conducting such research.
Market orientation, innovation capability and business performance: Insights from the global financial crisis

Purpose - The paper aims to examine the role of market orientation (MO) and innovation capability in determining business performance during an economic upturn and downturn. Design/methodology/approach - The data comprise two national-level surveys conducted in Finland in 2008, representing an economic boom, and in 2010 when the global economic crisis had hit the Finnish market. Partial least square path analysis is used to test the potential mediating effect of innovation capability on the relationship between MO and business performance during economic boom and bust. Findings - The results show that innovation capability fully mediates the performance effects of a MO during an economic upturn, whereas the mediation is only partial during a downturn. Innovation capability also mediates the relationship between a customer orientation and business performance during an upturn, whereas the mediating effect culminates in a competitor orientation during a downturn. Thus, the role of innovation capability as a mediator between the individual market-orientation components varies along the business cycle. Originality/value - This paper is one of the first studies that empirically examine the impact of the economic cycle on the relationship between strategic marketing concepts, such as MO or innovation capability, and the firm's business performance.
Propositional Opinion Diffusion

We present a formal model of opinion diffusion and formation which combines notions from social network analysis together with concepts and techniques from judgment aggregation and merging. The model allows us to study the propagation of individual opinions, represented in the form of yes/no answers to a set of multiple binary issues, in a multiagent system linked by an influence network. The process is iterative with discrete time. We are interested in characterizing properties of the network structure which guarantee convergence of the iterative process for every initial configuration of the agents' opinions, and in developing tractable algorithms for computing the set of opinions at convergence.
Predicting the Long-Term Course of Asthma in Wheezing Infants Is Still a Challenge

Background. In recurrent wheezing infants, it is important to identify those likely to remain asthmatic in order to propose appropriate long-term management. Objective. To establish predictive factors for persistent asthma at adolescence in a population of recurrent wheezing infants. Methods. Retrospective study of 227 infants. Inclusion criteria were age under 36 months, a history of at least three wheezing episodes assessed via a doctor-led ISAAC questionnaire and a standardized allergy testing programme. At 13 years, active asthma was assessed by questionnaire. Results. Risk factors for asthma persisting into adolescence were allergic sensitization to multiple airborne allergens (OR 4.6, CI-95% (1.9–11.2) P = 0.001), initial atopic dermatitis (OR 3.4, CI-95% (1.9–6.3) P < 0.001), severe recurrent wheezing (OR 2.3, CI-95% (1.3–4.2) P = 0.007), and hypereosinophilia ≥470/mm3 (OR 2.2, CI-95% (1.07–4.7) P = 0.033). Conclusion. While it is still difficult to predict the long-term course of asthma, atopy remains the major risk factor for persistent asthma.
Open-set Person Re-identification

Person re-identification is becoming a hot research for developing both machine learning algorithms and video surveillance applications. The task of person re-identification is to determine which person in a gallery has the same identity to a probe image. This task basically assumes that the subject of the probe image belongs to the gallery, that is, the gallery contains this person. However, in practical applications such as searching a suspect in a video, this assumption is usually not true. In this paper, we consider the open-set person re-identification problem, which includes two sub-tasks, detection and identification. The detection sub-task is to determine the presence of the probe subject in the gallery, and the identification sub-task is to determine which person in the gallery has the same identity as the accepted probe. We present a database collected from a video surveillance setting of 6 cameras, with 200 persons and 7,413 images segmented. Based on this database, we develop a benchmark protocol for evaluating the performance under the open-set person re-identification scenario. Several popular metric learning algorithms for person re-identification have been evaluated as baselines. From the baseline performance, we observe that the open-set person re-identification problem is still largely unresolved, thus further attention and effort is needed.
Genes for the majority of group a streptococcal virulence factors and extracellular surface proteins do not confer an increased propensity to cause invasive disease.

BACKGROUND The factors behind the reemergence of severe, invasive group A streptococcal (GAS) diseases are unclear, but it could be caused by altered genetic endowment in these organisms. However, data from previous studies assessing the association between single genetic factors and invasive disease are often conflicting, suggesting that other, as-yet unidentified factors are necessary for the development of this class of disease. METHODS In this study, we used a targeted GAS virulence microarray containing 226 GAS genes to determine the virulence gene repertoires of 68 GAS isolates (42 associated with invasive disease and 28 associated with noninvasive disease) collected in a defined geographic location during a contiguous time period. We then employed 3 advanced machine learning methods (genetic algorithm neural network, support vector machines, and classification trees) to identify genes with an increased association with invasive disease. RESULTS Virulence gene profiles of individual GAS isolates varied extensively among these geographically and temporally related strains. Using genetic algorithm neural network analysis, we identified 3 genes with a marginal overrepresentation in invasive disease isolates. Significantly, 2 of these genes, ssa and mf4, encoded superantigens but were only present in a restricted set of GAS M-types. The third gene, spa, was found in variable distributions in all M-types in the study. CONCLUSIONS Our comprehensive analysis of GAS virulence profiles provides strong evidence for the incongruent relationships among any of the 226 genes represented on the array and the overall propensity of GAS to cause invasive disease, underscoring the pathogenic complexity of these diseases, as well as the importance of multiple bacteria and/or host factors.
Third-Degree Stochastic Dominance

Here F(x) and G(x) are less-than cumulative probability distributionis where x is a continuous or discrete random variable representing the outcome of a prospect. The closed interval [a, b] is the sample space of both prospects. The integral shown in Rule 2 and those shown throughout the paper are Stieltjes integrals. Recall that the Stieltjes integral fb f(x)dg(x) exists if one of the functions f and g is continuous and the other has finite variation in [a, b]. Let D1, D2, and D3 be three sets of utility functions ? (x). D1 is the set containing all utility functions with 4(x) and +1(x) continuous, and 41(x) >0 for all xE[a, b]. D2 is the set with ? (x), ? 1(x), ? 2(x) continuous, and q$j(x)>0, 02(x)? O for all xC[a, b]. D3 is the set with ? (x), ? 1(x), ? 2(X), ? 3(X) continuous, and +1(x) > 04 2(x) O O for all xC[a, b]. Here +1(x) denotes the ith derivative of +(x). Hadar and Russell proved that Rule 1 is valid for all ,CD1 and Rutle 2 is valid for all ED2. The authors point out that the set of probability distributions that can be ordered by means of second-degree stochastic dominance is, in general, larger than that which can be ordered by means of first-degree stochastic dominance. Note that in Rule 2, they assume that +(x) is not only an increasing function of x but also exhibits weak global risk aversion, a condition guaranteed by requiring the second derivative of ? (x) to be nonpositive. In this paper, a condition which will be called third-degree stochastic dominance is considered. It is based on the following assumption about the form of the utility function ? (x). From a normative point of view, one expects the risk premium associated with an uncertain prospect to become smaller the greater is the individual's wealth. The plausibility and implications of this assumption h'ave been explored by John Pratt, as well as others. The risk premium of an uncertain prospect is that amount by which the certainty equivalent of the prospect differs from its expected value. In mathematical terms, given the prospect F(x) with expected value A, the corresponding risk premium -t is obtained by solving the following equation. rb
The effect of combination therapy with metformin and combined oral contraceptives (COC) versus COC alone on insulin sensitivity, hyperandrogenaemia, SHBG and lipids in PCOS patients.

BACKGROUND Neither oral contraceptives (COC) nor metformin are an optimal modality for the long-term treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). The aim of this study was to evaluate whether a combination of both is beneficial over COC monotherapy. METHODS Altogether, 30 women were included in the study and 28 finished the protocol. The patients were randomly assigned to two groups treated with either COC (COC group) or COC and metformin (1500 mg/day) (METOC group) for 6 months. Anthropometric parameters, androgens, lipids, fasting insulin, glucose and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) concentrations were measured before and at the end of the sixth cycle of treatment. The insulin sensitivity index was evaluated using the euglycaemic clamp. RESULTS There were no significant changes in anthropometric parameters, fasting glucose or insulin sensitivity in either group. Total testosterone, free androgen index, androstenedione and dehydroepiandrosterone decreased and SHBG increased significantly in both groups. When comparing the effect of both treatments, only a more pronounced decrease in free androgen index was found in the METOC group. CONCLUSIONS Adding metformin slightly modified the treatment effect of COC, causing a more significant decrease in the free androgen index but having no additional positive impact on lipids, insulin sensitivity, SHBG or testosterone. The available data do not offer enough evidence to advocate the standard use of combined treatment in PCOS. Whether the combination might be beneficial for specific subgroups of patients is of further interest.
Orthogonal optimization of subqueries and aggregation

There is considerable overlap between strategies proposed for subquery evaluation, and those for grouping and aggregation. In this paper we show how a number of small, independent primitives generate a rich set of efficient execution strategies —covering standard proposals for subquery evaluation suggested in earlier literature. These small primitives fall into two main, orthogonal areas: Correlation removal, and efficient processing of outerjoins and GroupBy. An optimization approach based on these pieces provides syntax-independence of query processing with respect to subqueries, i. e. equivalent queries written with or without subquery produce the same efficient plan. We describe techniques implemented in Microsoft SQL Server (releases 7.0 and 8.0) for queries containing sub-queries and/or aggregations, based on a number of orthogonal optimizations. We concentrate separately on removing correlated subqueries, also called “query flattening,” and on efficient execution of queries with aggregations. The end result is a modular, flexible implementation, which produces very efficient execution plans. To demonstrate the validity of our approach, we present results for some queries from the TPC-H benchmark. From all published TPC-H results in the 300GB scale, at the time of writing (November 2000), SQL Server has the fastest results on those queries, even on a fraction of the processors used by other systems.
The Value of Public Goods Generated by a National Football League Team

Using the contingent valuation method, this article estimates the value of public goods the National Football League’s Jaguars produce for Jacksonville, Florida, including the value of elevating Jacksonville to “major league” status and the value of improving racial relations. It also estimates the incremental value of public goods potentially produced by a National Basketball Association team in Jacksonville. The present value of public goods created by the Jaguars is $36.5 million or less, far below subsidies provided to attract the Jaguars. For a basketball team, the figure is less than $22.8 million. The results add to the growing body of CVM literature indicating that sport public goods probably cannot justify the large public expenditures on stadiums and arenas.