Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Educational Attainment, Teacher-Student Ratios, and the Risk of Adult Incarceration Among U.S. Birth Cohorts Since 1910

Little is known about the relationship between school characteristics, such as teacher-student ratios, and the risk of incarceration in adulthood. Educational skeptics argue that investment in schools has little effect on outcomes, such as criminality or the risk of incarceration, because criminal propensities are fixed at an early age and organizational inefficiencies make public schools incapable of using resources effectively to alter students' outcomes. Some educational proponents contend that schools increasingly provide critical defining moments in the life course and that by improving economic opportunities and facilitating social control in schools, greater resources can directly reduce criminality and the risk of incarceration. This article uses previously unreleased U.S. census data to identify the increasing association between educational attainment and teacher-student ratios on individuals' risk of incarceration for five-year birth cohorts starting in 1910. On the basis of an elaborate fixed-effect control methodology, the authors find conditional support for the conclusion that educational resources—measured as teacher-student ratios—are associated with the reduced risk of adult incarceration. They assess the robustness of this conclusion by replicating the analysis using school-level measures of teacher-student ratios and longitudinal indicators of individual-level incarceration from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth.
Anonymous, Secure and Efficient Vehicular Communications Author's Declaration

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. Xiaoting Sun I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. Abstract Vehicular communication networking is a promising approach for facilitating road safety, traffic management, and infotainment dissemination for drivers and passengers. However, it is subject to various malicious abuses and security attacks which hinder it from practical implementation. In this study, we propose a novel security protocol called GSIS based on group signature and identity-based signature schemes to meet the unique requirements of vehicular communication networks. The proposed protocol not only guarantees security and anonymity, but also provides easy traceability when the identity of the sender of a message has to be revealed by the authority. However, the cryptographic operations introduced in GSIS as well as the existing public key based message authentication protocols incur some computation and communication overhead which affect the system performance. Simulation results show that the GSIS security protocol is only applicable under light traffic conditions in terms of the message end to end delay and message loss ratio. Both the GSIS protocol and the existing public key based security protocols have to sign and verify all the received messages with asymmetric algorithms. The PKI based approach also has to attach a public key certificate in each packet. Therefore, to enhance the system performance and mitigate the message overhead without compromising the security requirement, this study further proposes an enhanced TESLA based Secure Vehicular Communication (TSVC) protocol. In TSVC, the communication overhead can be significantly reduced due to the MAC tag attached in each packet and only a fast hash operation is required to verify each packet. Simulation results show that TSVC maintains acceptable message latency, using a much smaller packet size, and significantly reduces the message loss ratio as compared to GSIS and existing PKI based protocols, especially when the traffic is denser. We conclude that the proposed approach could serve as good candidate for future vehicular communication networks. iv Acknowledgements
Structure and content of affective associations with health behaviours: Is the behaviour ‘good OR bad’ or ‘good AND bad’

Objective: The feelings and emotions individuals associate with health-related behaviours influence engagement in those behaviours. However, the structure and the content of these affective associations have not been examined. The studies reported here examined competing hypotheses about the structure (unidimensional or bidimensional) and content (generalised affect or specific emotions) of affective associations with two health-related behaviours: physical activity and fruit/vegetable consumption. Design: For each behaviour, participants (fruit and vegetable consumption n = 149; physical activity n = 199) completed an assessment of the association of 40 positive and 51 negative affect concepts with the behaviour. Main outcome measures: Ratings of affective associations with each behaviour. Results: Confirmatory factor analyses comparing unidimensional and bidimensional affect structure models showed that the structure of individuals’ affective associations was bidimensional for both behaviours – positive and negative affective associations were shown to be separate and distinct constructs. Exploratory factor analyses supported a model of affective associations as generalised affect for both behaviours. Conclusion: Affective associations with both physical activity and with fruit/vegetable consumption consist of separate positive and negative dimensions of generalised affect. These findings lead to recommendations for research and intervention development based on the implications for how affective associations might operate to influence behavioural decision-making.
Effects of Product Placement in On-Line Games on Brand Memory: A Perspective of the Limited-Capacity Model of Attention

This study explores the conditions under which product placement in an on-line game will get noticed and be remembered from a perspective of the limited-capacity model of attention. Results show that the location of brand messages in the game (referred to here as proximity), game involvement, and prior game-playing experience interact to influence brand memory. Although experienced players in the moderate-involvement condition recognize focal brands better than the peripheral brands, the recognition superiority of the focal brands over the peripheral brands disappears when experienced players' involvement is high. The interaction between proximity and game involvement does not emerge for inexperienced players, however. Findings also demonstrate that the degree of congruity between the product category of a brand and game content influences brand memory such that highly incongruent brands are better recalled than either moderately incongruent brands or highly congruent brands. Implications for researchers are also discussed.
Treatment of Bulimia Nervosa:

This article reviews the current literature with regard to psychological and psychopharmacologic treatments for bulimia nervosa in the adolescent population. The two most researched psychological treatments, cognitive behavior therapy and interpersonal therapy, are described in terms of treatment protocols and outcome research. Psychopharmacologic treatment is reviewed, including treatment indications, contraindications, dose respondent information, and the need for future research.
PML nuclear bodies are highly organised DNA-protein structures with a function in heterochromatin remodelling at the G2 phase

We have recently demonstrated that heterochromatin HP1 proteins are aberrantly distributed in lymphocytes of patients with immunodeficiency, centromeric instability and facial dysmorphy (ICF) syndrome. The three HP1 proteins accumulate in one giant body over the 1qh and 16qh juxtacentromeric heterochromatins, which are hypomethylated in ICF. The presence of PML (promyelocytic leukaemia) protein within this body suggests it to be a giant PML nuclear body (PML-NB). The structural integrity of PML-NBs is of major importance for normal cell functioning. Nevertheless, the structural organisation and the functions of these nuclear bodies remain unclear. Here, we take advantage of the large size of the giant body to demonstrate that it contains a core of satellite DNA with proteins being organised in ordered concentric layers forming a sphere around it. We extend these results to normal PML-NBs and propose a model for the general organisation of these structures at the G2 phase. Moreover, based on the presence of satellite DNA and the proteins HP1, BRCA1, ATRX and DAXX within the PML-NBs, we propose that these structures have a specific function: the re-establishment of the condensed heterochromatic state on late-replicated satellite DNA. Our findings that chromatin-remodelling proteins fail to accumulate around satellite DNA in PML-deficient NB4 cells support a central role for PML protein in this cellular function.
Sharpening a tool for teaching: the zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) provides an important understanding of learning, but its implications for teachers are often unclear or limited and could be further explored. We use conceptual analysis to sharpen the ZPD as a teaching tool, illustrated with examples from teaching critical thinking in zoology. Our conclusions are the following: teachers should assign tasks that students cannot do on their own, but which they can do with assistance; they should provide just enough assistance so that students learn to complete the tasks independently and, finally, teachers can increase learning gains by providing learning environments that enable students to do harder tasks than would otherwise be possible and by assigning the hardest tasks students can do with assistance. This analysis provides a sharp and useful tool for supporting learning across all curriculum areas.
Education Policy and Equality of Opportunity

We provide a measure of equality of educational opportunity in 54 countries, estimated as the effect of family background on student performance in two international TIMSS tests. We then show how organizational features of the education system affect equality of educational opportunity. Our model predicts that late tracking and a long pre-school cycle are beneficial for equality, while pre-school enrollment is detrimental at low levels of enrollment and beneficial at higher levels. Using cross-country variations in education policies and their interaction with family background at the student level, we provide empirical evidence supportive of these predictions.
Structural and magnetic properties of amorphous and nanocrystalline CoFeSiB thin films

We have studied the structural, magnetic, and transport properties of CoFeSiB films with various Co compositions. Here, we focus on two amorphous Co<sub>74</sub>Fe<sub>4</sub>Si<sub>14</sub>B<sub>8</sub> and nanocrystalline Co<sub>78</sub>Fe<sub>2</sub>Si<sub>12</sub>B<sub>8</sub> thin films. Our results show that the amorphous film is a typical soft magnetic material, while the nanocrystalline film has a large saturation field. We conjecture that in the nanocrystalline film, the super-paramagnetism of nanocrystalline phase or antiferromagnetic exchange at the boundary between the amorphous and nanocrystalline phases causes the large saturation field.
THE EFFECTS OF REDUNDANCY AND FAMILIARITY ON TRANSLATING AND REPEATING BACK A FOREIGN AND A NATIVE LANGUAGE

The experiment explored the effect of sequential constraints on two speech transmission tasks: (a) ‘shadowing’ or repeating back passages in a native and in a foreign language; (b) simultaneous translation between a foreign and a native language. Three factors affecting performance were revealed: (1) efficiency decreased in both tasks with increased information rate in the presentation of the passages; (2) the familiarity of the language affected subjects' performance in shadowing; this effect was independent of sequential constraints; (3) translation proved more difficult than shadowing, but in this case the decrement was greater the higher the information content of the passages. This suggested (i) that sequential constraints are important in facilitating both types of speech transmission; (ii) that they are learnt concurrently with vocabulary in the acquisition of a foreign language; (iii) that translating is more difficult than shadowing not only because of decreased familiarity of either input or output, but also because of the increased decision load imposed by the more complex transformation between input and output. The roles of grammatical and semantic constraints were separated by the use of passages with words chosen at random but syntax conforming to normal rules. Performance with these passages was intermediate between that with normal prose and that with random words; the grammatical constraints seemed relatively more important than constraints of meaning in shadowing than in translating, in a native than in a foreign language, and in French than in English. The ear-voice span was measured for six subjects and was found to be greater for translating than for shadowing, but to be unaffected by the degree of sequential constraints.
The relationship between managers' leadership styles and emergency medical technicians' job satisfaction.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Leadership plays a crucial role in many professions, especially in challenging positions such as emergency medical service jobs. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between managers' leadership styles and emergency medical technicians' job satisfaction. METHOD This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study that was carried out in 2010. The research population included 21 managers and 87 emergency medical technicians working in 23 stations in Isfahan city, Iran. The main tools used for data accumulation were the Multiple Leadership Questionnaire for evaluating leadership styles and the Job Descriptive Index for measuring job satisfaction levels. Also, the Pearson correlation analysis test was used to evaluate the relationship between leadership style and job satisfaction. RESULTS Among both managers and technicians, the highest mean score related to the transformational management style, whereas the lowest mean score related to the laissez-faire management style. Moreover, a significant relationship (P<0.01) was found between the transformational and transactional leadership styles and job satisfaction. However, no significant relationship was observed between the laissez-faire management style and job satisfaction. CONCLUSION Considering the importance of job satisfaction in medical emergencies, it is recommended that health sector policy makers should provide the groundwork for implementing the transformational leadership style to enhance job satisfaction of the medical emergency staff.
Lung function and respiratory symptoms among female hairdressers in Palestine: a 5-year prospective study

Objectives Hairdressers are exposed to chemicals at the workplace which are known to cause respiratory symptoms and asthma. This study aimed to examine changes in self-reported respiratory symptoms over 5 years, as well as to examine the lung function decline and determine whether it is within the expected range, to assess the dropout rate and reasons for leaving the profession, and to examine the associations between occupational factors and lung function changes at follow-up. Design Prospective study. Setting Female hairdressing salons in Hebron city, Palestine. Participants 170 female hairdressers who participated in a baseline survey in 2008 were followed up in 2013. A total of 161 participants participated in 2013. Outcome measures Change in reported respiratory symptoms and change in lung function over follow-up. Dropout from the profession and reasons for it. Differences between current and former hairdressers in respiratory symptoms and lung function at follow-up. Ambient air ammonia levels in 13 salons. Results Current hairdressers reported more respiratory symptoms in 2013 compared with baseline. Former hairdressers reported fewer symptoms at follow-up. At follow-up, current hairdressers showed a significant decrease in forced vital capacity of 35 mL/year (95% CI 26 to 44 mL/year) and of 31 mL/year (95% CI 25 to 36 mL/year) for forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1). 28 (16%) of the hairdressers quit the job during the 5-year follow-up, 8 (28%) because of health problems. Hairdressers who had been working for 4 years or more at baseline showed a stronger decline in FEV1 compared with those who worked less than 4 years (difference 13, 95% CI 1 to 25). Conclusions Current hairdressers developed more respiratory symptoms and larger lung function decline than former hairdressers during follow-up. Few hairdressers left their profession because of respiratory health problems. Working for more years is associated with lung function decline among current hairdressers.
Genetic structure of an aphid studied using microsatellites: cyclic parthenogenesis, differentiated lineages and host specialization

In a previous study, samples of the grain aphid Sitobion avenae (F.) were collected from wheat and adjacent cocksfoot hosts in a population thought to be primarily parthenogenetic, and DNA from individual aphids was analysed with a multilocus technique. Here we have applied single‐locus microsatellites and a mitochondrial DNA marker to a subset of the same DNA extracts, and have made several additional inferences about important genetic and population processes in S. avenae. Microsatellite analysis indicated very high levels of genic and genotypic variation. S. avenae fell into three genotypic groups inferred to be almost noninterbreeding, while analysis of linkage and Hardy‐Weinberg equilibria suggested high levels of sexual recombination within each genotypic group. Host specialization was evident: one lineage was found only on wheat, and one (bearing many alleles inferred to be introgressed from the blackberry‐grass aphid S. fragariae (Walker)) was found only on cocksfoot. The third group of interrelated genotypes was found commonly on both hosts. Although most genotypes were found only once, some were much more numerous in the sample than expected from the frequency of the alleles they contained. This, and rapid temporal changes in genotypic composition of samples, indicates strong selective differences between genotypes and lineages. In the major genotypic group, the commonest genotypes were significantly more homozygous than were rare ones: thus these data may help to explain the frequent observation of homozygous excess in aphid allozymes. The genotype group showing S. avenae‐like as well as S. fragariae‐like alleles also carried S. fragariae‐like mitochondrial DNA in at least 25/31 cases, indicating gender‐asymmetrical hybridization.
The FIFA World Cup tournament 2010: Conferring and consolidating identity among international students

This study highlights the importance of international spectator sports in the maintenance of collective identity among international students. No research has been conducted on the international student experience of sport fandom away from home and on the impact of such a following on national identification. Using qualitative findings from interviews with international postgraduate students in England, this paper shows how the FIFA World Cup tournament in 2010 offered the opportunity to celebrate and consolidate national and regional identity, as well as to heal wounds. Far away from the home country, the televised football matches galvanised students into forming temporary conational communities in a bid to recreate some of the atmosphere of celebration taking place at home, and to bond at a distance with the home culture. This paper offers an important contribution to the literature on international education by pointing to the role played by sport in the international student experience.
Beyond Bipolar Conceptualizations and Measures: The Case of Attitudes and Evaluative Space

All organisms must be capable of differentiating hostile from hospitable stimuli to survive. Typically, this evaluative discrimination is conceptualized as being bipolar (hostile-hospitable). This conceptualization is certainly evident in the area of attitudes, where the ubiquitous bipolar attitude measure, by gauging the net affective predisposition toward a stimulus, treats positive and negative evaluative processes as equivalent, reciprocally activated, and interchangeable. Contrary to conceptualizations of this evaluative process as bipolar, recent evidence suggests that distinguishable motivational systems underlie assessments of the positive and negative significance of a stimulus. Thus, a stimulus may vary in terms of the strength of positive evaluative activation and the strength of negative evaluative activation it evokes. Low activation of positive and negative evaluative processes by a stimulus reflects attitude neutrality or indifference, whereas high activation of positive and negative evaluative processes reflects attitude ambivalence. As such, attitudes can be represented more completely within a bivariate space than along a bipolar continuum. Evidence is reviewed showing that the positive and negative evaluative processes underlying many attitudes are distinguishable (stochastically and functionally independent), are characterized by distinct activation functions (positivity offset and negativity bias principles), are related differentially to attitude ambivalence (corollary of ambivalence asymmetries), have distinguishable antecedents (heteroscedacity principle), and tend to gravitate from a bivariate toward a bipolar structure when the underlying beliefs are the target of deliberation or a guide for behavior (principle of motivational certainty). The implications for societal phenomena such as political elections and democratic structures are discussed.
The ‘Plateau‐ing’ of the European Better Regulation Agenda: An Analysis of Activities Carried out by the Barroso Commission

This paper examines the European Commission's (EC) Better Regulation Agenda, from the time that President Barroso came to power -- in November 2004 -- to the 2006 summer recess. It particularly focuses on whether the Commission's regulatory thinking has moved away from the precautionary principle and towards Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA), something I predicted in 2004 (Lofstedt, 2004). The article summarises the papers and communications in the Better Regulation area put forward by the Commission since November 2004, and makes a number of observations about how the Better Regulation Agenda may develop in the future. In conclusion I argue that the Commission's Better Regulation Agenda has plateaued. Commissioner Verheugen will not be successful in pushing the Agenda further forward because of issues such as REACH and opposition from member states, notably France. It is based on a combination of desk research and interviews with policy-makers, regulators, academics and stakeholders who have been involved either in shaping or fighting the Better Regulation Agenda.
Iron at high pressure: Linearized-augmented-plane-wave computations in the generalized-gradient approximation.

General potential linearized-augmented-plane-wave computations using the generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) of Perdew and Wang (PW-II) show excellent agreement with the measured equations of state of bcc and hcp phases to over 300 GPa, the bcc to hcp phase transition pressure, and the bcc magnetic moment. The results are a significant improvement over the local-spin-density approximation and the earlier PW-1 GGA functional. The bcc phase is mechanically unstable at high pressure with respect to a tetragonal strain, and is thus unlikely to exist in the earth's inner core.