Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Validity, Reliability and Factorial Structure of the Turkish Version of the Tromso Social Intelligence Scale.

Th e purpose of the present study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the Tromso Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS) developed by Silvera, Martinussen, and Dahl (2001). 719 students from Sakarya University participated in the study. Construct validity and criterion related validity and reliability were assessed. Factor analysis for Turkish university students yielded three factor solutions as the original TSIS. Correlation coeffi cient of the Social Skills Inventory with the TSIS was . 51. Cronbach alpha, test-retest and split half reliability coeffi cients were . 83, . 80, and . 75 respectively. Overall results of this study showed that this scale is capable enough to measure social intelligence among university students in a valid and reliable way.
The Interplay of Motivation and Willingness to Communicate in Four Skills: The Iranian Perspective

The present study examined the relationship between willingness to communicate (WTC) and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation among Iranian intermediate learners of English. It also attempted to identify the motivational orientations which best predicted learners’ WTC. Moreover, it measured Iranian intermediate learners’ willingness to read (WTR), willingness to listen (WTL), and willingness to write (WTW). To this end, 133 university intermediate English majors filled out a questionnaire based on which their L2 WTC and language learning motivation level were measured. All participants were then interviewed individually to elicit their attitudes towards L2 WTC and motivation in learning English. The results indicated that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were significantly correlated with L2 WTC. However, only intrinsic motivation predicted L2 WTC significantly, and extrinsic motivation was more dominant among Iranian learners. Results of the 7-item structured interview indicated that teacher immediacy, the teachers’ and peers’ judgment, and scoring, ranked in descending order, were as the top impetus to influence the participants’ WTC. Results also demonstrated that participants represented higher degrees of WTL and WTW than WTR. In light of the findings of the study, teachers are recommended to improve learners’ L2 WTC by recognizing individual and situational factors affecting WTC, strengthening their motivation and self-confidence, and decreasing their anxiety.
A new look at possible connections between solar activity, clouds and climate

We present a re‐evaluation of the hypothesis of a coupling between galactic cosmic rays, clouds and climate. We have used two independent estimates of low cloud cover from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project, covering 16.5 years of data. The cloud cover data are used in conjunction with estimates of galactic cosmic ray flux and measurements of solar irradiance. It is found that solar irradiance correlates better and more consistently with low cloud cover than cosmic ray flux does. The correlations are considerably lower when multichannel retrievals during daytime are used than retrievals using IR‐channels only. Due to large autocorrelations, the statistical significance of the results is marginal. A mechanism is suggested whereby solar irradiance variations are amplified by interacting with sea surface temperature (SST), and subsequently low cloud cover. The feasibility of such a mechanism is supported by negative correlations between SSTs and low cloud cover in subtropical regions.
Detection of Error Related Neuronal Responses Recorded by Electrocorticography in Humans during Continuous Movements

Background Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) can translate the neuronal activity underlying a user’s movement intention into movements of an artificial effector. In spite of continuous improvements, errors in movement decoding are still a major problem of current BMI systems. If the difference between the decoded and intended movements becomes noticeable, it may lead to an execution error. Outcome errors, where subjects fail to reach a certain movement goal, are also present during online BMI operation. Detecting such errors can be beneficial for BMI operation: (i) errors can be corrected online after being detected and (ii) adaptive BMI decoding algorithm can be updated to make fewer errors in the future. Methodology/Principal Findings Here, we show that error events can be detected from human electrocorticography (ECoG) during a continuous task with high precision, given a temporal tolerance of 300–400 milliseconds. We quantified the error detection accuracy and showed that, using only a small subset of 2×2 ECoG electrodes, 82% of detection information for outcome error and 74% of detection information for execution error available from all ECoG electrodes could be retained. Conclusions/Significance The error detection method presented here could be used to correct errors made during BMI operation or to adapt a BMI algorithm to make fewer errors in the future. Furthermore, our results indicate that smaller ECoG implant could be used for error detection. Reducing the size of an ECoG electrode implant used for BMI decoding and error detection could significantly reduce the medical risk of implantation.
Market Reaction to Changes in the FTSE/ATHEX Indices

This paper examines the effects of changes in the FTSE/ATHEX indices. The benefit of analyzing changes in these indices is that they are determined by a ranking by market capitalization at regular semi annual reviews. Changes in indices composition should therefore have absolutely no direct information content. I find that stocks added to or deleted from these indices experience significant changes in stock price on the announcement day and the effective day. The results suggest that temporary price pressure play a role in the observed revision effect.
SpatialEase: learning language through body motion

Games that engage both mind and body by targeting users' kinesthetic intelligence have the potential to transform the activity of learning across a wide variety of domains. To investigate this potential in the context of second language learning, we have developed SpatialEase: a Kinect game for the body-based learning of language that is grounded in space and motion. In this game, learners respond to audio commands in the second language by moving their bodies in space, while a game mechanic based on distributed cued-recall supports learning over time. Our comparison of SpatialEase with the popular Rosetta Stone software for learner of Mandarin Chinese showed similar learning gains over a single session and generated several key implications for the future design of mixed-modality learning systems.
Optical characterization of Copper Oxide thin films prepared by reactive dc magnetron sputtering for solar cell applications

Cu2O thin films have been deposited using reactive dc magnetron sputtering technique using an Edward Auto 306 Magnetron Sputtering System. Transmittance and reflectance data in the range 300 nm-2500 nm were obtained using UV-VIS NIR Spectrophotometer Solid State 3700 DUV for all the thin films samples that were prepared. Transmittance values of above 70% were observed. The optical measurements were simulated using SCOUT 98 software to determine optical constants and optical bad gap of the thin. The optical properties in these films were varied by varying oxygen flow rate at constant powerof 200 W. Optical studies show a direct allowed transition and a shift in the optical absorption edge as the oxygen flow rate varies at constant argon flow rate and other deposition parameters. These results show that single phase Cu2O thin films can be synthesized at a relatively low substrate temperature using the reactive dc magnetron sputtering technique. Band gap values of 1.62 eV -2.54 eV is observed. The surface sheet resistivities at room temperature of 298 K were found to vary with the deposition parameters and film thickness. Urbach energy varied between 0.6 ×10-4 to 1.92 ×104.
A Rare Case of Fusobacterium Necrophorum Liver Abscesses

Liver abscesses are an uncommon disease that can present with vague symptoms. Fusobacterium necrophorum causing liver abscesses is a rare condition and only a few cases have been reported. An 88-year-old female presented to her primary care physician with one week of fevers, night sweats, chills, fatigue and vague right upper quadrant abdominal pain. She denied nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea and unintentional weight loss. A computed tomography scan of the abdomen showed two liver abscesses in the right lobe as well as extensive diverticulosis. Percutaneous drainage was performed and draining catheters were placed in the abscesses. Culture of the abscess fluid grew Fusobacterium necrophorum. She was treated with ceftriaxone and metronidazole as per sensitivities. Rare cases of F. necrophorum hepatic abscesses have been published. The source of infection described in reported cases included hematogenous spread from dental caries/peritonsillar abscess and those involving the gastrointestinal tract resulting from inflammation of the bowel wall or from inflamed diverticuli via the portal circulation. In one study, thirteen cases of liver abscess due to F. necrophorum were studied, and two of these cases had diverticular disease without inflammation.
CODA: Toward Automatically Identifying and Scheduling Coflows in the Dark

Leveraging application-level requirements using coflows has recently been shown to improve application-level communication performance in data-parallel clusters. However, existing coflow-based solutions rely on modifying applications to extract coflows, making them inapplicable to many practical scenarios. In this paper, we present CODA, a first attempt at automatically identifying and scheduling coflows without any application-level modifications. We employ an incremental clustering algorithm to perform fast, application-transparent coflow identification and complement it by proposing an error-tolerant coflow scheduler to mitigate occasional identification errors. Testbed experiments and large-scale simulations with production workloads show that CODA can identify coflows with over 90% accuracy, and its scheduler is robust to inaccuracies, enabling communication stages to complete 2.4x (5.1x) faster on average (95-th percentile) compared to per-flow mechanisms. Overall, CODA's performance is comparable to that of solutions requiring application modifications.
Stability of quantum motion and correlation decay

We derive a simple and general relation between the fidelity of quantum motion, characterizing the stability of quantum dynamics with respect to arbitrary static perturbation of the unitary evolution propagator, and the integrated time auto-correlation function of the generator of perturbation. Surprisingly, this relation predicts the slower decay of fidelity the faster the decay of correlations. In particular, for non-ergodic and non-mixing dynamics, where asymptotic decay of correlations is absent, a qualitatively different and faster decay of fidelity is predicted on a timescale 1/δ as opposed to mixing dynamics where the fidelity is found to decay exponentially on a timescale 1/δ2, where δ is the strength of perturbation. A detailed discussion of a semiclassical regime of small effective values of Planck constant is given where classical correlation functions can be used to predict quantum fidelity decay. Note that the correct and intuitively expected classical stability behaviour is recovered in the classical limit → 0, as the two limits δ → 0 and → 0 do not commute. In addition, we also discuss non-trivial dependence on the number of degrees of freedom. All the theoretical results are clearly demonstrated numerically on the celebrated example of a quantized kicked top.
Boson-Sampling in the light of sample complexity

Boson-Sampling is a classically computationally hard problem that can — in principle — be efficiently solved with quantum linear optical networks. Very recently, a rush of experimental activity has ignited with the aim of developing such devices as feasible instances of quantum simulators. Even approximate Boson-Sampling is believed to be hard with high probability if the unitary describing the optical network is drawn from the Haar measure. In this work we show that in this setup, with probability exponentially close to one in the number of bosons, no symmetric algorithm can distinguish the Boson-Sampling distribution from the uniform one from fewer than exponentially many samples. This means that the two distributions are operationally indisti nguishable without detailed a priori knowledge. We carefully discuss the prospects of efficiently using know ledge about the implemented unitary for devising non-symmetric algorithms that could potentially improve upon this. We conclude that due to the very fact that Boson-Sampling is believed to be hard, efficie nt classical certification of Boson-Sampling devices seems to be out of reach.
Area change of glaciers in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, 1919 to 2006

Glaciers in the Canadian Rocky Mountains con- stitute an important freshwater resource. To enhance our understanding of the influence climate and local topogra- phy have on glacier area, large numbers of glaciers of dif- ferent sizes and attributes need to be monitored over pe- riods of many decades. We used Interprovincial Boundary Commission Survey (IBCS) maps of the Alberta-British Columbia (BC) border (1903-1924), BC Terrain Resource Information Management (TRIM) data (1982-1987), and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) imagery (2000-2002 and 2006) to doc- ument planimetric changes in glacier cover in the central and southern Canadian Rocky Mountains between 1919 and 2006. Over this period, glacier cover in the study area de- creased by 590± 70 km 2 (40± 5 %), 17 of 523 glaciers disappeared and 124 glaciers fragmented into multiple ice masses. Glaciers smaller than 1.0 km 2 experienced the great- est relative area loss (64 ± 8 %), and relative area loss is more variable with small glaciers, suggesting that the local topographic setting controls the response of these glaciers to climate change. Small glaciers with low slopes, low mean/median elevations, south to west aspects, and high in- solation experienced the largest reduction in area. Similar rates of area change characterize the periods 1919-1985 and 1985-2001; 6.3± 0.6 km 2 yr 1 ( 0.4± 0.1 % yr 1 ) and 5.0± 0.5 km 2 yr 1 ( 0.5± 0.1 % yr 1 ), respectively. The
A Variable Metric Proximal Point Algorithm forMonotone

The Proximal Point Algorithm (PPA) is a method for solving inclusions of the form 0 2 T (z) where T is a monotone operator on a Hilbert space. The algorithm is one of the most powerful and versatile solution techniques for solving variational inequalities, convex programs, and convex{concave mini{max problems. It possesses a robust convergence theory for very general problem classes and is the basis for a wide variety of decomposition methods called splitting methods. Yet, the classical PPA typically exhibits slow convergence in many applications. For this reason, acceleration methods for the PPA algorithm are of great practical importance. In this paper we propose a variable metric implementation of the proximal point algorithm. In essence, the method is a Newton{like scheme applied to the Moreau{Yosida resolvent of the operator T. In this article, we establish the global and linear convergence of the proposed method. In addition, we characterize the super{linear convergence of the method. In a companion work, we establish the super{linear convergence of the method when implemented with Broyden updating (the non{symmetric case) and BFGS updating (the symmetric case).
College Graduates' Perceptions of Their Use of Teamwork Skills: Soft Skill Development in Fort Hays State University Leadership Education.

As the world has changed over the last century, so has the world of work. Today’s knowledge workers have fewer individual repetitive tasks, more autonomy, and more need to work with and through people at every level of an organization (Overtoom, 2000). As a result of the ‘flattening’ of the organizational hierarchy, it is critical that employees at all levels are proficient in soft skills. Recent studies indicate that employers consistently rate these skills as deficient in their incoming hires. Skills such as communication, teamwork, leadership and adaptability are commonly ranked as deficient. Academic leadership education strongly emphasizes this valuable skill set often referred to as soft skills. This study examined the relationship of the soft skills gained to the amount of leadership education completed by Fort Hays State University graduates using the Teamwork Skills Questionnaire (O’Neil, Lee, Wang & Mulkey, 1999). Those who received no leadership education from the FHSU Department of Leadership Studies were compared with those who received a leadership certificate and those who received a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership. The study provided insight into whether academic leadership education enhances graduate’s soft skill development and to assess the impact this has on their perception of teamwork proficiency in the workplace. Results indicate that the leadership certificate does not significantly change soft skill development in graduates’ self-reported perceptions, as compared to students with no leadership coursework. It was found that the bachelor’s degree does make limited significant changes in graduates’ soft skill proficiency as compared with graduates who received the leadership certificate. Multiple significant changes were found in graduates with bachelor’s degrees as compared with graduates who received no leadership coursework. Recommendations to be considered when conducting further research include the use of qualitative methodology, the inclusion of more universities that offer a degree in Organizational Leadership, and the measurement of other skills the leadership coursework may produce but was not reflected in this instrument. COLLEGE GRADUATES’ PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR USE OF TEAMWORK SKILLS: SOFT SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN FORT HAYS STATE UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP EDUCATION
Educational Crowding Out: Do Immigrants Affect the Educational Attainment of American Minorities?

The paper studies whether immigration affects the probability of high school graduation of American-born minorities. Since both the costs and the benefits of education are likely to rise due to immigration, the direction of the impact is ambiguous. The paper uses pooled 1980 and 1990 Census data to test for a link. State fixed effect estimates suggest a negative and significant impact of immigrants on the probability of completing high school for native-born blacks and Hispanics. The results are robust to use of metropolitan fixed effects, controlling for the pupil-teacher ratio in the state, and removing those who have recently moved. The results for blacks are also robust to removal of observations from California. However, the results for Hispanic natives depend crucially on the inclusion of the Californian subsample
Emotion and Self‐Regulation Failure

As most people can attest, conquering vices and changing bad habits are difficult. Even when the motivation to change is strong, selfcontrol failures are common. Subjectively, it often feels as though our capacity to selfregulate waxes and wanes in the face of new temptations, changing moods, and fatigue. Contemporary investigations into the causes of selfregulation failure have demonstrated that the ability to selfregulate can be undermined by a variety of threats that act by impairing awareness, exhausting limited resources, or increasing the salience of temptations. Perhaps the most potent of these threats is negative affect. When people experience emotional distress, be it in the form of a bad mood, disappointment, or social rejection, they often find it more difficult to resist temptations or to suppress unwanted impulses and may engage in various forms of selfdefeating behaviors (for a review, see Baumeister, 1997). However, the relationship between emotions and selfcontrol is by no means all one-way; too much selfregulation over a period of time can increase emotional reactivity, as well as impair an individual’s ability to regulate his or her emotions. Much like the experience of hunger or thirst, emotions serve to motivate behavior and predispose individuals toward certain actions (e.g., Keltner & Gross, 1999; Levenson, 1994). It has been suggested that one function of emotion is to indicate whether individuals are succeeding or failing to meet their goals (Carver & Scheier, 1990). Therefore, just as it would be fatally maladaptive for an organism to have the ability to turn off thirst, it would be just as detrimental to be able to completely shut down emotions. However, there are times when our emotions interfere with our goals or may lead us to further distress, such as when our mood causes us to violate social norms (i.e., being tragically depressed on a first date or overjoyed at a funeral). Thus, it is often in our best interests to be able to regulate our affective states. In this chapter, we take the view that regulating emotions relies on much of the same cognitive and neural machinery as regulating other responses (e.g., thoughts, behaviors, impulses) with the understanding that, all things being equal, emotions are more difficult to suppress or inhibit. Unlike behaviors, thoughts, or cravings, all of which tend to have a clear target of regulation (e.g., “I must not grab the cigarette and light it”), affect is typically more diffuse, with no clear action to regulate. Indeed, one of the central findings of research on emotion regulation is that direct, responsefocused attempts to suppress the outward expression of emotion are more cognitively taxing and less successC h a P t E r 3 6
The Dark Side of ETFs and Index Funds

Do popular investment products such as passive ETFs and index funds benefit individual investors? Using data from one of the largest broke rages in Germany, we find that individual investors worsen their portfolio performance after using these products compared with non-users. As these securities make market timing easier, we i nv stigate whether this decrease in users’ portfolio performance is primarily due to bad marke t timing. Our answer is yes. JEL classification: D14, G11, G28
Human-Robot Interaction in UVs Swarming: A Survey

The purpose of this paper is to review research pertaining to the limitations and advantages of User-Robot Interaction for Unmanned-Vehicles (UVs) swarming. We identify and discuss results showing technologies that mitigate the observed problems such as specialized level of automation and human factors in controlling a swarm of mobile agents. In the paper, we first present an overview of definitions and important terms of swarm robotics and its application in multiple UVs systems. Then, the discussion of human-swam interactions in controlling of multiple vehicles is provided with consideration of varies limitations and design guidelines. Finally, we discussed challenges and potential research aspects in the area of Human-robot interaction design in large swarm of UVs and robots.