Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First Language and Second Language Writing: The Role of Linguistic Knowledge, Speed of Processing, and Metacognitive Knowledge

In this study the relative importance of linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge, and fluency or accessibility of this linguistic knowledge in both first language (L1; Dutch) and second language (L2; English) writing was explored. Data were collected from 281 grade 8 students. Using structural equation modeling, the relative importance of the three components was studied and compared across L1 and L2 writing. The results showed that the fluency measures were correlated with overall writing performance in both L1 and L2. However, when compared to linguistic knowledge resources, these fluency measures turned out to have no additional value in predicting L1 or L2 writing performance. L2 writing proficiency turned out to be highly correlated with L1 writing proficiency, more than with either L2 linguistic knowledge or the accessibility of this knowledge.
Online pricing for web service providers

We consider Web service providers, which have a finite capacity, and requests for their services, which arrive sequentially overtime, and propose an online algorithm for selecting from such requests and charging for such requests. We show that differentvariations of this problem, both as online and offline (when we know all requests a priori), are hard problems. We initially start with two naive variations of the problem and show these variations are too hard to be solved. Then, we propose an online algorithm for a variation of the problem where we make some statistical assumptions about the requests that Web service providers receive over time.
Volume preserving subgroups of A and K and singularities in unimodular geometry

For a germ of a smooth map f and a subgroup G_V of any of the Mather groups G for which the source or target diffeomorphisms preserve some given volume form V in the source or in the target we study the G_V-moduli space of f that parameterizes the G_V-orbits inside the G-orbit of f. We find, for example, that this moduli space vanishes for A-equivalence with volume-preserving target diffeomorphisms and A-stable maps f and for K-equivalence with volume-preserving source diffeomorphisms and K-simple maps f. On the other hand, there are A-stable maps f with infinite-dimensional moduli space for A-equivalence with volume-preserving source diffeomorphisms.
The Adrenal Cortex and Intersexuality

To bolster up their case they assert that animal experiments are (1) cruel, (2) useless. To prove the first they affect to believe that all the stringent safeguards of the law are simply a dead letter, in spite of the unanimous findings of the Commission to the contrary, and they maintain that feeding animals on special diets are painful " vivisections. " The term itself is of course a misnomer, and employed to prejudice all forms of animal experiment. To prove the second one would imagine was difficult in view of the triumphs of antiseptics, antitoxins, endocrine therapy and many other discoveries which have relieved the sufferings of both man and beast. Their attitude towards insulin is typical. Diabetes is increasing, so that the total number of deaths attributed to it is not diminishing, which is used as an argument for the failure of insulin. What their journals do not tell their readers is that whereas formerly no child contracting diabetes under the age of 10 was alive two years later, now quite a number of those treated when it was first introduced in 1922-23 are still alive and well. They do not point out that at whatever age death occurs, and from whatever cause, diabetes will appear on the certificate as contributory. This accounts for the increased number of deaths certified from diabetes over the age of 75, while the deaths in earlier years have markedly diminished. In other walks of life suppression of facts such as these would be regarded as disingenuous, to say the least of it. But it is unnecessary to labour these points any further. The purpose of this review is to call attention to Sir Leonard Rogers' very valuable and convincing statement of the whole case in this book before us. Sir Leonard, whose own unremitting labours for the relief of suffering have been crowned by discoveries of prime importance, is the Treasurer of the Research Defence Society founded by the late Mr. Stephen Paget, who followed the military maxim that the best defence is attack. The attack is brilliantly continued in this book which not only constitutes a battery of arguments, but unmasks the untenable position of his adversaries. Anyone reading it, however, will realise that if the case for anti-vivisection were based on reasonable grounds it would have been settled long ago. We can only conclude with Sir Arthur Keith "that the opposition to vivisection is not an isolated manifestation, but is part of a great modem issue.
On the Likelihood of Supernova Enrichment of Protoplanetary Disks

We estimate the likelihood of direct injection of supernova ejecta into protoplanetary disks using a model in which the number of stars with disks decreases linearly with time, and clusters expand linearly with time such that their surface density is independent of stellar number. The similarity of disk dissipation and main-sequence lifetimes implies that the typical supernova progenitor is very massive, ~75-100 M☉. Such massive stars are found only in clusters with ≳104 members. Moreover, there is only a small region around a supernova within which disks can survive the blast yet be enriched to the level observed in the solar system. These two factors limit the overall likelihood of supernova enrichment of a protoplanetary disk to ≲1%. If the presence of short-lived radionucleides in meteorites is to be explained in this way, however, the solar system most likely formed in one of the largest clusters in the Galaxy, more than 2 orders of magnitude greater than Orion, where multiple supernovae impacted many disks in a short period of time.
Retinotopic memory is more precise than spatiotopic memory

Successful visually guided behavior requires information about spatiotopic (i.e., world-centered) locations, but how accurately is this information actually derived from initial retinotopic (i.e., eye-centered) visual input? We conducted a spatial working memory task in which subjects remembered a cued location in spatiotopic or retinotopic coordinates while making guided eye movements during the memory delay. Surprisingly, after a saccade, subjects were significantly more accurate and precise at reporting retinotopic locations than spatiotopic locations. This difference grew with each eye movement, such that spatiotopic memory continued to deteriorate, whereas retinotopic memory did not accumulate error. The loss in spatiotopic fidelity is therefore not a generic consequence of eye movements, but a direct result of converting visual information from native retinotopic coordinates. Thus, despite our conscious experience of an effortlessly stable spatiotopic world and our lifetime of practice with spatiotopic tasks, memory is actually more reliable in raw retinotopic coordinates than in ecologically relevant spatiotopic coordinates.
Violence in school: An investigation of physical, psychological, and sexual victimization reported by Italian adolescents

ABSTRACT In Italy, numerous studies have been carried out regarding the phenomenon of bullying; however, studies on single incidences of sexual, physical, and psychological victimization at school remain scant. Therefore the aim of this study is to examine the phenomenon of scholastic violence with a broader perspective, as well as all the possible perpetrators including adults. The sample consisted of 277 adolescents (64% female), ranging from grade 6th to 13th (mean age = 13.29, SD = 2.19). Sixty-four percent of the participants were middle school students, the remaining were high school students. Results show that the most commonly reported type of victimization is psychological violence (incidence= 77%), followed by physical (incidence= 52%), and sexual victimization (incidence= 24%). These forms of violence are mainly inflicted by peers. The research confirmed the validity of the tool and its applicability in the Italian context for screening violent behavior at school.
Weighted  $\ell _{1}$ -Minimization for Generalized Non-Uniform Sparse Model

Model-based compressed sensing refers to compressed sensing with extra structure about the underlying sparse signal known a priori. Recent work has demonstrated that both for deterministic and probabilistic models imposed on the signal, this extra information can be successfully exploited to enhance recovery performance. In particular, weighted ℓ1-minimization with suitable choice of weights has been shown to improve performance in the so-called non-uniform sparse model of signals. In this paper, we consider a full generalization of the non-uniform sparse model with very mild assumptions. We prove that when the measurements are obtained using a matrix with independent identically distributed Gaussian entries, weighted ℓ1-minimization successfully recovers the sparse signal from its measurements with overwhelming probability. We also provide a method to choose these weights for any general signal model from the non-uniform sparse class of signal models.
Electronic Reprint Applied Crystallography Atsas 2.1, a Program Package for Small-angle Scattering Data Analysis Applied Crystallography Atsas 2.1, a Program Package for Small-angle Scattering Data Analysis

Author(s) of this paper may load this reprint on their own web site provided that this cover page is retained. Republication of this article or its storage in electronic databases or the like is not permitted without prior permission in writing from the IUCr. The program package ATSAS 2.1 for small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering data analysis is presented. The programs included in the package cover the major processing and interpretation steps from primary data reduction to three-dimensional modelling. This system is primarily oriented towards the analysis of biological macromolecules, but could also be used for non-biological isotropic and partially ordered objects (nanoparticle systems, colloidal solutions, polymers in solution and bulk). Recent developments in the programs included in ATSAS 2.1 are highlighted. The main programs run on multiple hardware platforms, including Windows PC, Linux RedHat and Suse, DEC Alpha, SGI IRIX and Mac OSX.
Constructivist Grounded Theory

In meinem Beitrag greife ich zuruck auf den ausgezeichneten und inspirierenden Artikel von CHARMAZ zu konstruktivistischer Grounded Theory, um an diesem Beispiel zu diskutieren, dass und warum die Grounded Theory kein konstruktivistisches Unterfangen ist. Ich versuche zu zeigen, dass "konstruktivistische Daten" bzw. konstruktivistische Anwendungen der Grounded Theory, sofern sie uberhaupt existieren bzw. sinnvoll sein konnten, nur einen verschwindend kleinen Teil der Grounded Theory ausmachen. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0203125
CEO Compensation, Director Compensation, and Firm Performance: Evidence of Cronyism

We model CEO and director compensation using firm characteristics, CEO characteristics, and governance variables. We find that director compensation is related to variables that proxy for the level of monitoring and effort required by directors. After controlling for monitoring proxies, we find a significant positive relation between CEO and director compensations. We hypothesize that this relation could be due to unobserved firm complexity (omitted variables), and/or to excessive compensation of directors and managers. We find that these excessive compensations are associated with firm underperformance. Thus, we conclude that excessive compensation may be associated with an environment of ineffective monitoring, which we term cronyism.
Multispectral brain tumor segmentation based on histogram model adaptation

Brain tumor segmentation and quantification from MR images is a challenging task. The boundary of a tumor and its volume are important parameters that can have direct impact on surgical treatment, radiation therapy, or on quantitative measurements of tumor regression rates. Although a wide range of different methods has already been proposed, a commonly accepted approach is not yet established. Today, the gold standard at many institutions still consists of a manual tumor outlining, which is potentially subjective, and a time consuming and tedious process. We propose a new method that allows for fast multispectral segmentation of brain tumors. An efficient initialization of the segmentation is obtained using a novel probabilistic intensity model, followed by an iterative refinement of the initial segmentation. A progressive region growing that combines probability and distance information provides a new, flexible tumor segmentation. In order to derive a robust model for brain tumors that can be easily applied to a new dataset, we retain information not on the anatomical, but on the global cross-subject intensity variability. Therefore, a set of multispectral histograms from different patient datasets is registered onto a reference histogram using global affine and non-rigid registration methods. The probability model is then generated from manual expert segmentations that are transferred to the histogram feature domain. A forward and backward transformation of a manual segmentation between histogram and image domain allows for a statistical analysis of the accuracy and robustness of the selected features. Experiments are carried out on patient datasets with different tumor shapes, sizes, locations, and internal texture.
Joint modeling of RNase footprint sequencing profiles for genome-wide inference of RNA structure

Recent studies have revealed significant roles of RNA structure in almost every step of RNA processing, including transcription, splicing, transport and translation. RNase footprint sequencing (RNase-seq) has emerged to dissect RNA structures at the genome scale. However, it remains challenging to analyze RNase-seq data because of the issues of signal sparsity, variability and correlations among various RNases. We present a probabilistic framework, joint Poisson-gamma mixture (JPGM), for integrative modeling of multiple RNase-seq profiles. Combining JPGM with hidden Markov model allows genome-wide inference of RNA structures. We apply the joint modeling approach for inferring base pairing states on simulated data sets and RNase-seq profiles of the double-strand specific RNase V1 and single-strand specific RNase S1 in yeast. We demonstrate that joint analysis of V1 and S1 profiles outputs interpretable RNA structure states, while approaches that analyze each profile separately do not. The joint modeling approach predicts the structure states of all nucleotides in 3196 transcripts of yeast without compromising accuracy, while the simple thresholding approach misses 43% of the nucleotides. Furthermore, the posterior probabilities outputted by our model are able to resolve the structural ambiguity of ≈300 000 nucleotides with overlapping V1 and S1 cleavage sites. Our model also generates RNA accessibilities, which are associated with three-dimensional conformations.
Depression Duration But Not Age Predicts Hippocampal Volume Loss in Medically Healthy Women with Recurrent Major Depression

This study takes advantage of continuing advances in the precision of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to quantify hippocampal volumes in a series of human subjects with a history of depression compared with controls. We sought to test the hypothesis that both age and duration of past depression would be inversely and independently correlated with hippocampal volume. A sample of 24 women ranging in age from 23 to 86 years with a history of recurrent major depression, but no medical comorbidity, and 24 case-matched controls underwent MRI scanning. Subjects with a history of depression (post-depressed) had smaller hippocampal volumes bilaterally than controls. Post-depressives also had smaller amygdala core nuclei volumes, and these volumes correlated with hippocampal volumes. In addition, post-depressives scored lower in verbal memory, a neuropsychological measure of hippocampal function, suggesting that the volume loss was related to an aspect of cognitive functioning. In contrast, there was no difference in overall brain size or general intellectual performance. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, there was no significant correlation between hippocampal volume and age in either post-depressive or control subjects, whereas there was a significant correlation with total lifetime duration of depression. This suggests that repeated stress during recurrent depressive episodes may result in cumulative hippocampal injury as reflected in volume loss.
Improving Dependency Parsing with Subtrees from Auto-Parsed Data

This paper presents a simple and effective approach to improve dependency parsing by using subtrees from auto-parsed data. First, we use a baseline parser to parse large-scale unannotated data. Then we extract subtrees from dependency parse trees in the auto-parsed data. Finally, we construct new subtree-based features for parsing algorithms. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach, we present the experimental results on the English Penn Treebank and the Chinese Penn Treebank. These results show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline systems. And, it achieves the best accuracy for the Chinese data and an accuracy which is competitive with the best known systems for the English data.
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 5-2-2012 INFORMATION SECURITY CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR COMPANIES

For companies and their employees, social media allows new ways to communicate with customers and colleagues. Vast amounts of information are being exchanged in social media. Information is a highly valuable asset, and therefore questions concerning information security become more and more important. Companies are becoming increasingly worried about information security in social media, but so far, this issue has not been studied. The present research closes this gap by studying the information security challenges social media represents for organizations. The research was conducted as a qualitative multiple case study for which information security managers from eleven public and private companies in one European country were interviewed. The study has three main findings. First, challenges arising from employees’ actions or unawareness in social media (especially reputation damage) seem to represent bigger threats to information security than threats caused by outside attacks. Second, the confusion of private and professional roles in social media represents an information security risk, and distinguishing between these roles becomes more difficult the higher an employee’s position in the company. Third, communication with employees and colleagues represents an information security challenge especially when communication is not steered by the company. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Correlation-Based and Model-Based Blind Single-Channel Late-Reverberation Suppression in Noisy Time-Varying Acoustical Environments

This paper considers suppression of late reverberation and additive noise in single-channel speech recordings. The reverberation introduces long-term correlation in the observed signal. In the first part of this work, we show how this correlation can be used to estimate the late reverberant spectral variance (LRSV) without having to assume a specific model for the room impulse responses (RIRs) while no explicit estimates of RIR model parameters are needed. That makes this correlation-based approach more robust against RIR modeling errors. However, the correlation-based method can follow only slow time variations in the RIRs. Existing model-based methods use statistical models for the RIRs, that depend on one or more parameters that have to be estimated blindly. The common statistical models lead to simple expressions for the LRSV that depend on past values of the spectral variance of the reverberant, noise-free, signal. All existing model-based LRSV estimators in the literature are derived assuming the RIRs to be time-invariant realizations of a stochastic process. In the second part of this paper, we go one step further and analyze time-varying RIRs. We show that in this case the reverberance tends to become decorrelated. We discuss the relations between different RIR models and their corresponding LRSV estimators. We show theoretically that similar simple estimators exist as in the time-invariant case, provided that the reverberation time T60 and direct-to-reverberation ratio (DRR) of the RIRs remain nearly constant during an interval of the order of a few frames. We show that the reverberation time can be taken frequency-bin independent in DFT-based enhancement algorithms. Experiments with time-varying RIRs validate the analysis. Experiments with additive nonstationary noise and time-invariant RIRs show the influence of blind estimation of the reverberation time and the DRR.
Feeding frequency for lactating cows: diurnal patterns of hormones and metabolites in peripheral blood in relation to milk-fat concentration

1. The present paper reports the effects of dietary modifications on the diurnal pattern of concentrations of certain metabolites and hormones in the peripheral blood of lactating dairy cows. The cows were given fixed rations of hay and high-cereal concentrates in the proportions of 30:70 or 10:90 (w/w). The concentrates were given in either two or six equal meals daily; the hay was given twice daily. 2. Previous reports of the same experiment had shown that milk-fat yield and concentration were reduced by increasing the proportion of concentrates in the diet and increased by more frequent feeding of the concentrates. These changes could be explained in part by changes in rumen volatile fatty acid (VFA) proportions and mean daily concentrations of VFA, particularly propionic acid, and insulin in the peripheral blood, but these factors failed to explain all the increase in milk-fat concentration caused by more frequent feeding. 3. Analysis of blood samples taken at hourly intervals for 24 h at two stages of lactation showed that, in the cows fed six times daily, the concentrations of metabolites and hormones remained relatively constant over the day. In the cows fed twice daily, the concentrations of VFA, 3-hydroxybutyric acid and insulin all increased after both meals whereas the concentrations of glucose and growth hormone tended to fall. The concentration of non-esterified fatty acids tended to increase overnight and fall rapidly after the morning feed. The concentrations of glucagon, thyroxine and prolactin showed no clear pattern in relation to meals. The postprandial responses of propionate, insulin and growth hormone were greater with the higher concentrate diet. 4. The maximum concentration and the diurnal range of concentrations were reduced by more frequent feeding of both diets in the case of propionic acid and of the higher concentrate diet in the case of insulin, but the effects on insulin concentrations of more frequent feeding of the lower concentrate diet were smaller and not significant. The maximum concentration and the diurnal range of concentrations of growth hormone were unaffected by meal frequency. 5. It is concluded that the severity of milk-fat depression in cows fed twice daily is increased by the rapid rise in propionic acid concentration in the peripheral blood after a meal, which in turn increases insulin secretion and may be accompanied by a suppression of growth hormone release. This causes lipogenesis to be diverted towards adipose tissue at the expense of the mammary gland. In cows fed more frequently, VFA absorption is more evenly spread over the day and is not closely associated with changes in insulin or growth hormone concentrations.