Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Religious motivation, nepotism and conflict management in Jordan

Purpose The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the role of individual and cultural differences, specifically religious motivation and attitudes toward nepotism, in the selection of conflict management styles (obliging, avoiding, forcing, integrating and compromising), in the Middle-Eastern context. Design/methodology/approach The research surveyed a sample of 588 individuals (both Muslims and Christians), representative of the Jordanian population. Data were analyzed through multiple ANOVAs and multiple regressions. Findings Results suggest that both religious motivation and attitude toward nepotism affect the choice of conflict management styles, while demographic variables, such as age and gender, do not seem to have an effect. Originality/value This paper constitutes one of the first attempts to investigate the conflict management style preferences of a Middle-Eastern society and the role of two important cultural variables, namely, religious motivation and attitudes toward nepotism, which have not been previously investigated by conflict management research.
Evidence for Widespread GC-biased Gene Conversion in Eukaryotes

Abstract GC-biased gene conversion (gBGC) is a process that tends to increase the GC content of recombining DNA over evolutionary time and is thought to explain the evolution of GC content in mammals and yeasts. Evidence for gBGC outside these two groups is growing but is still limited. Here, we analyzed 36 completely sequenced genomes representing four of the five major groups in eukaryotes (Unikonts, Excavates, Chromalveolates and Plantae). gBGC was investigated by directly comparing GC content and recombination rates in species where recombination data are available, that is, half of them. To study all species of our dataset, we used chromosome size as a proxy for recombination rate and compared it with GC content. Among the 17 species showing a significant relationship between GC content and chromosome size, 15 are consistent with the predictions of the gBGC model. Importantly, the species showing a pattern consistent with gBGC are found in all the four major groups of eukaryotes studied, which suggests that gBGC may be widespread in eukaryotes.
Differential effects of age of acquisition and frequency on memory: evidence from free recall of pictures and words in Turkish

ABSTRACT The advantage of processing early over late acquired items in lexical and semantic tasks across a number of languages is well documented. Interestingly contradictory evidence has been reported in recall tasks where participants perform better overall on late acquired items compared to early acquired items in English. Moreover, free recall is modulated by frequency and list type in that studying pure lists of high-frequency words or low-frequency words typically leads to a recall advantage for high-frequency words. This recall advantage either disappears or is reversed when the same items are presented in mixed lists containing both high- and low-frequency items. The current experiment aims to shed light on this discrepancy by exploring the influence of Age of Acquisition (AoA) and frequency on free recall on standardised pictures and their names in Turkish. Eighty Turkish-speaking participants were assigned to either the picture (N = 40) or word condition (N = 40) in which stimuli were presented in either a mixed or a pure list. Following a distractor task, participants were asked to recall as many items as they could remember from the list they viewed. The findings and their implications are discussed within the context of current cognitive frameworks.
Corticosterone Response in Sleep Deprivation and Sleep Fragmentation

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep deprivation is understood to be associated with more severe negative effects than REM fragmentation. Comparison of the corticosterone response between these patterns of sleep disruption has not been well characterized. Black Swiss mice were exposed to 1-day and 3-day periods of REM deprivation with inverted flower-pot method or REM fragmentation using the moving bar method. Immediately after experimental procedures mice were sacrificed and blood collected. Corticosterone levels were measured in the plasma portion using enzyme-linked immunoassay. Corticosterone levels in both REM deprivation and REM fragmentation were elevated in comparison to baseline, but were not significantly different from each other. In continuous conditions of sleep disruptioneither REM deprivation or REM fragmentationmarkers of stress are elevated to a similar degree.
Reduced Striatal Dopamine Transporters in People with Internet Addiction Disorder

In recent years, internet addiction disorder (IAD) has become more prevalent worldwide and the recognition of its devastating impact on the users and society has rapidly increased. However, the neurobiological mechanism of IAD has not bee fully expressed. The present study was designed to determine if the striatal dopamine transporter (DAT) levels measured by 99mTc-TRODAT-1 single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) brain scans were altered in individuals with IAD. SPECT brain scans were acquired on 5 male IAD subjects and 9 healthy age-matched controls. The volume (V) and weight (W) of bilateral corpus striatum as well as the 99mTc-TRODAT-1 uptake ratio of corpus striatum/the whole brain (Ra) were calculated using mathematical models. It was displayed that DAT expression level of striatum was significantly decreased and the V, W, and Ra were greatly reduced in the individuals with IAD compared to controls. Taken together, these results suggest that IAD may cause serious damages to the brain and the neuroimaging findings further illustrate IAD is associated with dysfunctions in the dopaminergic brain systems. Our findings also support the claim that IAD may share similar neurobiological abnormalities with other addictive disorders.
Patterns of coherent decadal and interdecadal climate signals in the Pacific Basin during the 20th century

Two distinct low‐frequency fluctuations are suggested from a joint frequency domain analysis of the Pacific Ocean (30°S‐60°N) sea surface temperature (SST) and sea level pressure (SLP). The lowest frequency signal reveals a spatially coherent interdecadal evolution, In‐phase SST and SLP anomalies are found along the subarctic frontal zone (SAFZ). It is symmetric about the equator, with tropical SST anomalies peaking near 15° latitudes in the eastern Pacific. The other low‐frequency signal reveals a spatially coherent decadal evolution. It is primarily a low‐latitude phenomenon. Tropical SST anomalies peak in the central equatorial ocean with evidence of atmospheric teleconnections. These interdecadal and decadal signals join the ENSO and quasi‐biennial signals in determining dominant patterns of Pacific Ocean natural climate variability. Relative phasing and location of the SST and SLP anomalies for the decadal, ENSO, and the quasi‐biennial signals, are similar to one another but significantly different from that of the interdecadal signal.
The Validity of Rasterstereography: A Systematic Review

Introduction To investigate and monitor the progression of scoliosis and other spinal deformities in patients following idiopathic scoliosis (IS), non-invasive and radiation-free techniques are recommended because of the need for repeated radiographs. In a clinical setting, spine parameters can be quickly, cheaply and easily assessed using rasterstereography (RS). The objective of this paper was to assess the validity of the radiation-free technique RS based on surface topography compared with radiographs. Material and Methods MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library and EMBASE were systematically searched for studies which investigate the validity of rasterstereography compared with X-ray measurements. Studies published between January 1, 1990 and July 31, 2013 in English, German and French were included. Studies dealing with magnetic resonance imaging were excluded. Results Twelve studies with 570 patients were included; these articles were published between 1990 and 2013. The majority of studies investigated patients with IS, but other spinal pathologies included were thoracic hyperkyphosis and Scheuermann's disease. With regard to the quality assessment criteria for the included studies, three out of twelve studies were evaluated using a twelve point scale and two used a scale with eleven points. Conclusions RS facilitates clinical practice by analyzing the spinal column. It is completely radiation-free and could help to monitor scoliosis progression.
Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom

In this article, the important role of culture has in the foreign language classroom is explained by means of a reflection on the way teachers deal with culture and how it can be used as a tool to teach grammar and show cultural differences. Also the reflection shows how educators and students can avoid stereotypes and become real cultural apprentices making of everyday and opportunity not only to learn structures but also a way to learn about places and people.
Automatic Recognition of Emotions and Membership in Group Videos

Automatic affect analysis and understanding has become a well established research area in the last two decades. However, little attention has been paid to the analysis of the affect expressed in group settings, either in the form of affect expressed by the whole group collectively or affect expressed by each individual member of the group. This paper presents a framework which, in group settings automatically classifies the affect expressed by each individual group member along both arousal and valence dimensions. We first introduce a novel Volume Quantised Local Zernike Moments Fisher Vectors (vQLZM-FV) descriptor to represent the facial behaviours of individuals in the spatio-temporal domain and then propose a method to recognize the group membership of each individual (i.e., which group the individual in question is part of) by using their face and body behavioural cues. We conduct a set of experiments on a newly collected dataset that contains fourteen recordings of four groups, each consisting of four people watching affective movie stimuli. Our experimental results show that (1) the proposed vQLZM-FV outperforms the other feature representations in affect recognition, and (2) group membership can be recognized using the non-verbal face and body features, indicating that individuals influence each other's behaviours within a group setting.
Cluster cross‐sections for strong lensing: analytic and numerical lens models

The statistics of gravitationally lensed arcs was recognized earlier as a potentially powerful cosmological probe. However, while fully numerical models find orders of magnitude difference between the arc probabilities in different cosmological models, analytic models tend to find markedly different results. In this paper we introduce an analytic cluster lens model that improves upon existing analytic models in four ways. (i) We use the more realistic Navarro‐Frenk‐White profile instead of singular isothermal spheres, (ii) we include the effect of cosmology on the compactness of the lenses, (iii) we use elliptical instead of axially symmetric lenses and (iv) we take the intrinsic ellipticity of sources into account. While these improvements to the analytic model lead to a pronounced increase of the arc probability, comparisons with numerical models of the same virial mass demonstrate that the analytic models still fall short by a substantial margin of reproducing the results obtained with numerical models. Using multipole expansions of cluster mass distributions, we show that the remaining discrepancy can be attributed to substructure inside clusters and tidal fields contributed by the cluster surroundings, effects that cannot reasonably and reliably be mimicked in analytic models.
On the brink of education: Experiences of refugees beyond the age of compulsory education in Austria

This paper offers first-hand accounts of refugees beyond the age of compulsory education having arrived in Austria during the last five years. Their accounts were collected using qualitative interviews and a visual method to allow for different approaches towards their educational biographies. Nine individual and two group interviews (altogether with 16 young people) were conducted, where the majority of the young refugees are from Afghani background. All interviewees were older than 16 years. In addition, five expert interviews were conducted. Their experiences having arrived in a new country, the importance of education for them, and their aspirations in the new system became visible in the interviews. Arbitrary provision and the one-sided language focus of the system present challenges to the core of a (school) system that has proved resistant to the influx of pupils from many different cultural backgrounds for years. The results of this qualitative study show that educational segregation is common for this group, including having less chances to obtain a university entrance exam.
Working Papers Department of Economics University of Vienna Evolution of Profit Persistence in the Us: Evidence from Four 20-years Periods

The present study analyzes and compares profit persistence in four different samples of US companies during the periods 1950-72, 1960-80, 1970-90 and 1980-99. While most of the previous studies perform profit persistence analysis on survivors only, the present setup allows for companies to enter and exit the analyzed sample, thus giving a more comprehensive depiction of the US economy during this half of the century. The results point towards an increase of competition after the opening of the US economy to international competition in the 60-80's, nevertheless the speed seems to have decreased in the most recent period. Key determinants of profit persistence seem to be firm's size, industry-and firm growth, and in the most recent period industry concentration, market share, and the company's merger activity.
Morphohistometric investigations of placentas of diabetic patients in correlation to the metabolic adjustment of the disease

In order to determination if an interdependence exists between the well-known maturational disturbances in placentas of diabetics and the quality of metabolic adjustment, a morphometric study covering 7,500 terminal villi of 50 placentas was performed. The diabetic mothers were divided into two groups according to satisfactory or unsatisfactory blood glucose values. Significant differences in placental retardation were observed between both diabetic groups and a normal control group. Although outcomes did not differ greatly between the two diabetic groups, macrosomia and the ratio of malformations in the newborns correlate with unsatisfactory metabolic management. Small-for-date babies, the need for early termination of pregnancy as well as pre-eclampsia are related to the severity and duration of the disease.
Children learning outside the classroom

The original study, from which this chapter is drawn, comprised a qualitative, case-study approach. The context, and the nature and ago group of the participants, required an eXllrlliD81ion ofliterature liom three areas of study: design and technology (D&T), education outside the classroom (EOTC), and the nature and the characteristics of 5-year-old children. This provided the principles that underpinned a planning framework co-constmcted by myself and the two teachers of the new entrant classes. Over a 6-month period, data was gathered during three phases of the study: first, preparation for the visit outside the classroom; then the visit to the chocolate factory and the subsequent development of the chocolate gift in the classroom; and finally e,q,loring the children's enduringunderatandings that resulted from the visit Data was gathered through a series of interviews with the children and their teachers, observations and the analysis of the children's work. In addition. the focus of this cbapter required an e1UU11inarion of literature that explored creativity and how this may be fostered with young children. Further discussion is in Chapter 3. Interestingly, the key ideas of this investigation merged closely with the pedagogical approach employed to support the children in their technological pntctice and problemsolving.
Predictive Analysis for Social Processes

This paper presents a new approach to predictive analysis for social processes. A key element of the proposed methodology is proper characterization of the interplay between the intrinsic aspects of a social process (e.g., the persuasiveness of an argument) and the social dynamics which is its realization (e.g., the way the argument propagates through a segment of society). We show that this interplay can be modeled within a novel multi-scale framework that is sociologically and mathematically sensible, expressive, illuminating, and amenable to formal analysis. We then develop a scientifically rigorous, computationally tractable approach to predictive analysis. Among other capabilities, this analytic approach enables assessment of process predictability, identification of measurables which have predictive power, discovery of reliable early indicators for events of interest, and scalable, robust prediction. The potential of the proposed approach is illustrated through a case study involving early warning analysis for mobilization/protest events.
Effects of anticancer agents on cell viability, proliferative activity and cytokine production of peripheral blood mononuclear cells

We investigated the effects of anticancer agents on peripheral blood mononuclear cells for the purpose of providing data to support new translational chemoimmunotherapy regimens. Peripheral-blood mononuclear cells were treated with one of four anticancer agents (5-fluorouracil, irinotecan, cisplatin, and gemcitabine) for 2 h, after which cell viability was determined. For assessment of effects of each drug on proliferation and cytokine production, cells were stimulated with phytohemagglutinin for 48 h. As a result, the anticancer agents did not affect cell viability. Cell proliferation was unaffected by 5-fluorouracil and irinotecan but inhibited by cisplatin and gemcitabine. Treatment with gemcitabine enhanced the production of IFN-γ and decreased the number of regulatory T cells. gemcitabine treatment increased IFN-γ production among CD4 T cells but not among CD8 T cells. The results indicated that GEM had immunoregulatory properties that might support immune response against cancer. This finding has implications for designing chemoimmunotherapy strategies.
Group I Metabotropic Glutamate Receptors Mediate a Dual Role of Glutamate in T Cell Activation*

Metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR) are present in cells of the nervous system, where they are activated by one of the main neurotransmitters, glutamate. They are also expressed in cells outside the nervous system. We identified and characterized two receptors belonging to group I mGluR, mGlu1R and mGlu5R, in human cell lines of lymphoid origin and in resting and activated lymphocytes from human peripheral blood. Both are highly expressed in the human Jurkat T cell line, whereas mGlu5R is expressed only in the human B cell line SKW6.4. In blood lymphocytes, mGlu5R is expressed constitutively, whereas mGlu1R is expressed only upon activation via the T cell receptor-CD3 complex. Group I receptors in the central nervous system are coupled to phospholipase C, whereas in blood lymphocytes, activation of mGlu5R does not trigger this signaling pathway, but instead activates adenylate cyclase. On the other hand, mGlu5R does not mediate ERK1/2 activation, whereas mGlu1R, which is coupled neither to phospholipase C nor to calcium channels and whose activation does not increase cAMP, activates the mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade. The differential expression of mGluR in resting and activated lymphocytes and the different signaling pathways that are triggered when mGlu1Rs or mGlu5Rs are activated point to a key role of glutamate in the regulation of T cell physiological function. The study of the signaling pathways (cAMP production and ERK1/2 phosphorylation) and the proliferative response obtained in the presence of glutamate analogs suggests that mGlu1R and mGlu5R have distinct functions. mGlu5R mediates the reported inhibition of cell proliferation evoked by glutamate, which is reverted by the activation of inducible mGlu1R. This is a novel non-inhibitory action mechanism for glutamate in lymphocyte activation. mGlu1R and mGlu5R thus mediate opposite glutamate effects in human lymphocytes.
The effects of selection ratio and applicant goal orientation on faking behavior

ii List of Tables . iv List of Illustrations . v Introduction . 1 History of Personality Inventories in Organizational Settings . 2 The Issue of Response Distortion . 4 Modeling Faking Behavior. 9 Hypotheses . 28 Method . 29 Participants and Procedure . 29 Measures . 32 Analytic Strategies . 29 Results . 37 Discussion . 41 Limitations and Implications . 44 References . 47 Appendix 1 . 64
Self Organization of Interfering 802.11 Wireless Access Networks

The increased popularity of IEEE 802.11 WLANs has led to dense deployments in urban areas. Such high density leads to sub-optimal performance unless the interfering networks learn how to optimally share the spectrum. This paper proposes a set of novel fully distributed algorithms that allow (i) multiple interfering 802.11 WLANs to select their operating frequency in a way that minimizes global interference, and (ii) clients to choose their Access Point so that the bandwidth of all interfering networks is shared optimally. The proposed algorithms rely on Gibbs' sampler and optimize global network performance based on local information. They do not require explicit coordination among the wireless devices. We establish the mathematical properties of the proposed algorithms and study their performance using analytical, event-driven simulations. Our results strongly motivate the need for self-organization strategies in wireless access networks. We discuss implementation requirements and show that significant benefits can be gained even within incremental deployments and in the presence of non-cooperating wireless clients.
Processing time and comprehensibility judgments in non-native listeners’ perception of L2 speech

This study investigated the relationship between processing time and comprehensibility judgments in non-native listeners’ perception of L2 speech as a function of an L1- match between speaker and listener and non-native listeners’ proficiency. Instructed L2-English learners differing in L1 (Catalan, German) and L2-proficiency (Low, High), and native-English listeners performed speeded speech processing tasks with English word and sentence stimuli spoken by L1-Catalan, L1-German and native English speakers, and rated the sentence stimuli for comprehensibility. The results showed significant moderate correlations between processing times and comprehensibility judgments mediated by an interaction between listeners’ L1 and their L2 proficiency. Non-native English was processed faster and judged to be more comprehensible by non-native listeners if produced by L1-matched speakers. When non-native English was produced by L1-matched speakers, low-proficiency listeners found it easier to process and understand than native English, whereas high-proficiency listeners showed a processing advantage over native English listeners