Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GAMIFICATION OF AN UNDERGRADUATE PSYCHOLOGY STATISTICS LAB: BENEFITS TO PERCEIVED COMPETENCE

Teaching undergraduate psychology statistics poses challenges to instructors and students due to the perceived complexity of the material and lack of student motivation. With the goal of boosting student competency and engagement in statistics, our study introduced a gamified learning environment into the laboratory portion of the undergraduate psychology statistics course in which the gamified learning group was compared to the traditional group. Changes in intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, and objective pre- and post-test course content were assessed. Objective posttest scores were positively associated with perceived competence in statistics for the gamified learning group. Perceived competence is a strong predictor of achievement and foundational prerequisite of intrinsic motivation, suggesting that in contrast with the traditional group, students in the gamified group were further on the path towards developing intrinsic motivation and improved scholastic achievement. First published November 2018 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives
Grammatical gender affects odor cognition

Language interacts with olfaction in exceptional ways. Olfaction is believed to be weakly linked with language, as demonstrated by our poor odor naming ability, yet olfaction seems to be particularly susceptible to linguistic descriptions. We tested the boundaries of the influence of language on olfaction by focusing on a non-lexical aspect of language (grammatical gender). We manipulated the grammatical gender of fragrance descriptions to test whether the congruence with fragrance gender would affect the way fragrances were perceived and remembered. Native French and German speakers read descriptions of fragrances containing ingredients with feminine or masculine grammatical gender, and then smelled masculine or feminine fragrances and rated them on a number of dimensions (e.g., pleasantness). Participants then completed an odor recognition test. Fragrances were remembered better when presented with descriptions whose grammatical gender matched the gender of the fragrance. Overall, results suggest grammatical manipulations of odor descriptions can affect odor cognition.
30 GHz observations of sources in the Very Small Array fields

Small angular scale (high l) studies of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies require accurate knowledge of the statistical properties of extragalactic sources at cm-mm wavelengths. We have used a 30 GHz dual-beam receiver (One Centimetre Receiver Array prototype) on the Torun 32-m telescope to measure the flux densities of 121 sources in Very Small Array fields selected at 15 GHz with the Ryle Telescope. We have detected 57 sources above a limiting flux density of 5 mJy, of which 31 sources have a flux density greater than 10 mJy, which is our effective completeness limit. From these measurements we derive a surface density of sources above 10 mJy at 30 GHz of 2.2 ± 0.4 deg -2 . This is consistent with the surface density obtained by Mason et al. who observed a large sample of sources selected at a much lower frequency (1.4 GHz). We have also investigated the dependence of the spectral index distribution on flux density by comparing our results with those for sources above 1 Jy selected from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 22 GHz catalogue. We conclude that the proportion of steep spectrum sources increases with decreasing flux density, qualitatively consistent with the predictions of de Zotti et al. We find no evidence for an unexpected population of sources above our completeness limit of 10 mJy whose spectra rise towards high frequencies, which would affect our ability to interpret current high-resolution CMB observations at 30 GHz and above.
How do Trainee Teachers Engage with a Flipped Learning Approach?

Abstract To date, research on student engagement in a flipped learning approach has almost entirely focused on students’ emotional engagement. This study further explores students’ engagement through the additional constructs of behavioral and cognitive engagement in a UK pre-service teacher education context. Data were gathered from learning analytics, focus group interviews and tutor diaries. Results revealed that whilst students held positive attitudes towards the in-class activities, their behavioral and cognitive engagement was evidenced by a variety of strategic uses of the online learning resources and a limited awareness of the constructivist principles on which a flipped learning approach is based. The study supports the need for a systematic induction period and explicit discussions on the learning principles of flipped learning. (Keywords: behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement emotional engagement, flipped learning, learning analytics) (Keywords: flipped learning, behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, learning analytics)
Atmospheric neutrino flux above 1 GeV.

In this paper we extend an earlier calculation of the flux of atmospheric neutrinos to higher energy. The earlier calculation of the neutrino flux below 3 GeV has been used for calculation of the rate of contained neutrino interactions in deep underground detectors. The fluxes are needed up to neutrino energies of 10 TeV to calculate the expected rate of neutrino-induced muons passing into and through large, deep detectors. We compare our results with several other calculations, and we evaluate the uncertainty in the rate of neutrino-induced muons due to uncertainties in the neutrino flux. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }
Embedding remote experimentation in power engineering education

Engineering education by its nature is a costly program in university environments. Perhaps the most costly component is the laboratory facility, usually consisting of specialized equipment. Effective instruction of some topics in power engineering education requires experience with actual equipment, rather than small-scale replicas or simulation. In this paper, a new laboratory approach is described, as implemented in a virtual, Internet-based, experimentation platform. This virtual laboratory (VLab) utilizes real equipment distributed among multiple universities from which remotely located students can perform experiments. The software solution is a multiuser, client-server architecture developed in the LabVIEW environment. Implementation details including video, chat, archiving, and the hardware and software platforms are presented in the paper. An example presented herein is the study of current and voltage waveforms while controlling relays and low-voltage contactors. The applications have been tested with student teams enrolled in the electrical engineering department of Politehnica University of Bucharest and the power engineering program at Arizona State University.
The impact of immigration news on anti-immigrant party support: unpacking agenda-setting and issue ownership effects over time

ABSTRACT This study focuses on immigration news as driver of anti-immigrant party support. Predicting the poll results of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), we distinguish between (a) general immigration news, news in which immigration is linked to (b) crime, (c) terrorism, or (d) the economy, and (e) immigration news in which the Freedom Party is mentioned explicitly. Focusing on the period 2004–2017, an extensive dataset has been generated using computer-assisted content analyses of media coverage (n = 1,697,976), public opinion data, and real-world indicators. Time-series analyses demonstrate a positive impact of general immigration news on anti-immigrant party support – and not on the support for other parties. No media effects are found for the immigration sub-issues or the visibility of the Freedom Party in the news. However, the main competitor on the right side of the political spectrum – the Liberal Party (VVD) – may also benefit from immigration news but only when it manages to be linked to the issue in the media coverage. Our results raise relevant questions about the preconditions of issue ownership effects, and show how issue ownership is a highly contested political asset in a fragmented and competitive multiparty system.
Lifestyle-related determinants of inflammation in adolescence

Inflammatory processes are involved in the pathogenesis of the most common chronic non-communicable diseases and may also play an important initiating role in their development. Only recently have inflammatory markers been included in epidemiological studies focusing on nutritional status, body composition and physical activity. We are just starting to understand how different lifestyles can determine basal levels of inflammatory biomarkers in early ages. This review aims to summarise what is known about the relationships between lifestyle-related determinants (focusing on overweight, physical activity and dietary habits) and inflammatory markers in apparently healthy young populations. Obesity is the most widely studied determinant. Several large-scale studies have now demonstrated that healthy young subjects with more body fat or higher BMI have moderately higher concentrations of inflammatory markers than their leaner peers, supporting the idea that obesity should be considered as a state of chronic low-grade inflammation. Less data is available to allow us to elucidate how physical activity/fitness or dietary patterns may have a direct effect on inflammation in apparently healthy, disease-free young populations.
Learning and Reasoning

What is the relationship between learning and reasoning? Much recent work in machine learning has been criticized for focusing on learning and ignoring reasoning. This paper attempts to describe the various ways in which machine learning research has (and has not) incorporated reasoning. The paper argues that there are important computational, statistical, and engineering constraints that have produced the current state of affairs. These reasons are reviewed and assessed in the light of future research directions.
Recovery techniques to improve file system reliability

We implement selective restart and resource reservation for commodity file systems to improve their reliability. Selective restart allows file systems to quickly recover from failures; resource reservation enables file systems to avoid certain failures altogether. Together they enable a new class of more robust and reliable file systems to be realized. In the first part of this dissertation (on selective restart), we develop Membrane, a generic framework built inside the operating system to selectively restart kernel-level file systems. Membrane allows an operating system to tolerate a broad class of file system failures and does so while remaining transparent to running applications; upon failure, the file system restarts, its state is restored, and pending application requests are serviced as if no failure had occurred. We also develop Re-FUSE, a generic framework designed to restart user-level file systems upon failures. Re-FUSE monitors the user-level file-system and on a crash restarts the file system and restores its state; the restart process is completely transparent to applications. We evaluate both Membrane and Re-FUSE, and show, through experimentation, that both of these frameworks induce little performance and space overhead and can tolerate a wide range of crashes with minimal code change. In the second part of the dissertation (on resource reservation), we develop Anticipatory Memory Allocation (AMA), a technique that uses static and dynamic analysis to simplify recovery code dealing with memory-allocation failures. AMA determines the memory requirements of a particular call into a file system, and then pre-allocates said amount immediately upon entry; subsequent allocation requests are serviced from the pre-allocated pool and thus guaranteed never to fail. We evaluate AMA by transforming Linux ext2 file system into a memory-failure robust version of itself (called ext2-mfr). Experiments reveal that ext2mfr avoids memory-allocation failures successfully while incurring little space and time overheads.
Rooting Gene Trees without Outgroups: EP Rooting

Gene sequences are routinely used to determine the topologies of unrooted phylogenetic trees, but many of the most important questions in evolution require knowing both the topologies and the roots of trees. However, general algorithms for calculating rooted trees from gene and genomic sequences in the absence of gene paralogs are few. Using the principles of evolutionary parsimony (EP) (Lake JA. 1987a. A rate-independent technique for analysis of nucleic acid sequences: evolutionary parsimony. Mol Biol Evol. 4:167–181) and its extensions (Cavender, J. 1989. Mechanized derivation of linear invariants. Mol Biol Evol. 6:301–316; Nguyen T, Speed TP. 1992. A derivation of all linear invariants for a nonbalanced transversion model. J Mol Evol. 35:60–76), we explicitly enumerate all linear invariants that solely contain rooting information and derive algorithms for rooting gene trees directly from gene and genomic sequences. These new EP linear rooting invariants allow one to determine rooted trees, even in the complete absence of outgroups and gene paralogs. EP rooting invariants are explicitly derived for three taxon trees, and rules for their extension to four or more taxa are provided. The method is demonstrated using 18S ribosomal DNA to illustrate how the new animal phylogeny (Aguinaldo AMA et al. 1997. Evidence for a clade of nematodes, arthropods, and other moulting animals. Nature 387:489–493; Lake JA. 1990. Origin of the metazoa. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 87:763–766) may be rooted directly from sequences, even when they are short and paralogs are unavailable. These results are consistent with the current root (Philippe H et al. 2011. Acoelomorph flatworms are deuterostomes related to Xenoturbella. Nature 470:255–260).
Extraction of Coastline in Aquaculture Coast from Multispectral Remote Sensing Images: Object-Based Region Growing Integrating Edge Detection

Aquaculture coasts have become widely distributed in coastal zones as human activities are intensified. Due to the complexity in this type of coast, it is difficult to extract the coastline with traditional automated mapping approaches. In this paper, we present an automated method—object-based region growing integrating edge detection (OBRGIE) for the extraction of this type of coastline. In this method, a new object feature named OMI (object merging index) is proposed to separate land and sea. The OBRGIE method was applied to Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) (pixel size 30m) and Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT-5) (pixel size 10 m) images of two coastal segments with lengths of 272.7 km and 35.5 km respectively, and the accuracy of the extracted coastlines was assessed in comparison with the manually delineated coastlines. The mean and RMSE (root mean square error) are 16.0 m and 16.4 m respectively for the TM images, and 8.0 m and 8.6 m, respectively, for the SPOT-5 images, indicating that the proposed method derives coastlines with pixel accuracy. The OBRGIE method is also found to be robust to the segmentation scale parameter, and the OMI feature is much more effective than the spectral attribute in separating land and sea in aquaculture coasts. This method may provide an inexpensive means of fast coastline mapping from remotely sensed imagery with relatively fine-to-moderate spatial resolution in coastal sectors with intense human interference.
Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man

This ethnography explores the emancipatory dynamics of the Burning Man project, a one-week-long antimarket event. Practices used at Burning Man to distance consumers from the market include discourses supporting communality and disparaging market logics, alternative exchange practices, and positioning consumption as self-expressive art. Findings reveal several communal practices that distance consumption from broader rhetorics of efficiency and rationality. Although Burning Man's participants materially support the market, they successfully construct a temporary hypercommunity from which to practice divergent social logics. Escape from the market, if possible at all, must be conceived of as similarly temporary and local. Copyright 2002 by the University of Chicago.
Impact of local knowledge endowment on employment growth in nanotechnology

This paper investigates the contribution of local knowledge endowment to employment growth in nanotechnology firms. We exploit a unique data set focusing on firms operating in fields that apply nanotechnology. Our findings suggest that regions that offer knowledge can stimulate employment growth in smaller and younger firms. By contrast, being embedded into specialised regions might be counterproductive, especially for firms belonging to a particularly knowledge intensive sector and older firms.
Body vibration and its transmission in alpine ski racing

The aim of the study was to quantify the vibrations occurring at the lower limbs and the trunk during alpine ski racing. Four European Cup level athletes skied each three runs on a typical giant slalom course. For each turn, power spectral density (PSD) of the measured accelerations along the segment’s longitudinal axes was computed. Run-average PSD for each body segment and the PSD ratio between neighboring body segments were reported. With regard to the latter, results were consistent to previous studies analyzing the vibration transmission between different body segments when exposed to vibrating plates or shocks from the foot strike during running. Vibration transmission was nonlinear. The knee was attenuating 75% of the vibrations from 8-12Hz whereas the hip did not attenuate any vibration below 10Hz. The trunk attenuated frequencies below 10Hz but not between 10 and 25Hz. In future, the proposed method might help to better understand of the effects of body vibrations on muscle activation and balance/motion control, and might provide deeper insights of the cause and for the prevention of overuse injuries.
The Efficacy of Choice Threats within School Accountability Systems: Results from Legislatively Induced Experiments

Stigma and school voucher threats under a revised 2002 Florida accountability law have positive impacts on student performance. Stigma and public school choice threats under the U.S. federal accountability law, No Child Left Behind, do not have similar effects in Florida. Significant impacts of stigma, when combined with the voucher threat, are observed on the test score performance of African Americans, those eligible for free lunch, and those with the lowest initial test scores. No significant impacts of the voucher threat on the performances of whites and Hispanics are detected. Estimations rely upon individual-level data and are based upon regression analyses that exploit artificial distinctions created by cliffs within the accountability regimes.
Direct Observation of Single Amyloid-β(1-40) Oligomers on Live Cells: Binding and Growth at Physiological Concentrations

Understanding how amyloid-β peptide interacts with living cells on a molecular level is critical to development of targeted treatments for Alzheimer's disease. Evidence that oligomeric Aβ interacts with neuronal cell membranes has been provided, but the mechanism by which membrane binding occurs and the exact stoichiometry of the neurotoxic aggregates remain elusive. Physiologically relevant experimentation is hindered by the high Aβ concentrations required for most biochemical analyses, the metastable nature of Aβ aggregates, and the complex variety of Aβ species present under physiological conditions. Here we use single molecule microscopy to overcome these challenges, presenting direct optical evidence that small Aβ(1-40) oligomers bind to living neuroblastoma cells at physiological Aβ concentrations. Single particle fluorescence intensity measurements indicate that cell-bound Aβ species range in size from monomers to hexamers and greater, with the majority of bound oligomers falling in the dimer-to-tetramer range. Furthermore, while low-molecular weight oligomeric species do form in solution, the membrane-bound oligomer size distribution is shifted towards larger aggregates, indicating either that bound Aβ oligomers can rapidly increase in size or that these oligomers cluster at specific sites on the membrane. Calcium indicator studies demonstrate that small oligomer binding at physiological concentrations induces only mild, sporadic calcium leakage. These findings support the hypothesis that small oligomers are the primary Aβ species that interact with neurons at physiological concentrations.
Private representative-based clustering for vertically partitioned data

This work studies how to construct a representative-based clustering algorithm under the scenario that the dataset is partitioned into at least two sections. One section of the data is owned by Alice while the other is owned by Bob. Both want to compute clusters from the union of the data but do not trust each other. Thus, they do not want the other party to learn anything about their share of the data except what can be inferred from the results. We present a protocol that allows Alice and Bob to carry this task under the k-medoids algorithm. Clustering with medoids (medians or other loss functions) is a more robust alternative that clustering with k-MEANS (the only method for which a privacy preserving protocol is known, but a methods that is statistically biased and statistically inconsistent with very low robustness to noise). Our approach highlights the necessary building blocks for extending our protocol to the family of representative-based clustering algorithms.
Resiliency Factors in the Relation Between Childhood Sexual Abuse and Adulthood Sexual Assault in College-Age Women

ABSTRACT Research has suggested that childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may be a risk factor for adulthood sexual assault. This study examined associations between CSA experiences, cognitive resiliency variables, and revictimization. Participants were 73 college-age females who completed self-report questionnaires assessing CSA, adult assault, self-efficacy, locus of control (LOC), and coping styles. Sexual assault was categorized as forced or coerced assault based on the tactics used by the perpetrator. Results indicated that CSA alone was the strongest independent predictor of forced adult assault; however, LOC and positive coping were associated with resiliency to coercive sexual assault. The current findings have clinical implications in that LOC and coping styles are characteristics that can be enhanced through therapy.