Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corrupt Practices among Academics as Perceived by Undergraduates: Implication for Counselling and National Development

This study investigated the various corrupt practices engaged in by academic staff in Nigerian universities as perceived by undergraduates. The sample was 1200 respondents of 600 males and 600 females who were purposively selected from all the faculties in Imo State University. One research question and one hypothesis guided the study. The mean score and z-test were used to respectively analyze the research question and hypothesis. The findings reveal that academic staffs in Nigerian universities to a large extent engage in different types of corrupt practices. There was no gender variation in the perception of the respondents. It is recommended that counselling center/unit be established in all universities. It was also recommended that defaulters be penalized in accordance with the stipulated penalty (ies) no matter how highly placed. Keywords : Corrupt Practices; Academic Indiscipline International Journal of Educational Research Vol. 4 (1) 2008: pp. 141-150
Micronucleus induction by 915 MHz Radiofrequency Radiation in Vicia faba root tips

The mutagenic effect of radiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) is evaluated by the micronucleus (MN) test in secondary roots of Vicia faba seedlings. Root exposures were carried out with 915 MHz continuous wave (CW) radiation for 72h, at power densities of 25, 38, 50 W/m$^2$. The specific absorption rate (SAR) corresponding to the experimental exposures was measured with a calorimetric method and fall in the range 0.3-1.8 W/kg. Results show a significant increase of MN frequency up to ten fold, correlated with the increasing power densities values.
Extensive Genetic Analysis of 10 Candidate Genes for Hypertension in Japanese

The identification of genes that contribute to essential hypertension has been hampered because of a lack of statistical power and problems with multiple testing. In the present study, we performed association analyses between the 161 single nucleotide polymorphisms of 10 candidate genes and hypertension in a Japanese population recruited from the Suita Study (n=3654). We found that 5 polymorphisms in the 3 genes (SLC9A2, UMOD, and ELN) were associated with hypertension status, and 4 of these 5 polymorphisms were also associated with blood pressure values with a classical criterion of P<0.05. However, when a Bonferroni correction for multiple testing was applied, none of the polymorphisms were associated with blood pressure levels. We also performed association analyses between these 5 polymorphisms and intermediate phenotypes corresponding with the functions of candidate genes, including the renin/aldosterone profile, plasma uric acid levels, and pulse wave velocity. The ELN 3′-untranslated region (−/A) polymorphism was found to significantly affect pulse wave velocity, an indicator of arterial stiffness. Associations of the ELN 3′-untranslated region (−/A) polymorphism with hypertension and pulse wave velocity were reconfirmed in another set of the study population. Thus, ELN seems to contribute to blood pressure regulation by affecting arterial stiffness in Japanese.
[work in progress, please do not quote without the explicit permission of the authors] Uncovering Minority Power Under Majority Rule

A new simulation technique enables us to compute the size, shape and location of the uncovered set, and, thus, to estimate the set of feasible outcomes in ‘real world’ legislative bodies (Bianco et. Al 2004, Bianco and Sened 2005). The uncovered set is a well known but under-exploited solution concept in the literature on spatial voting games and collective choice mechanisms. We explain this solution concept in non-technical terms, submit some theoretical observation to improve our theoretical and intuitive grasp of it and then use the new simulation technique to provide original findings on the role of minority groups in legislative political bodies governed by simple majority rule. 1 Prepared for presentation at the Conference on Spatial Voting, UC-Irvine, December, 09-11, 2005.
Multiyear validation of the NRL-G2S wind fields using infrasound from Yasur - art. no. D23110

The Yasur volcano in the Vanuatu archipelago is an outstanding source of infrasonic waves due to its regular activity. This volcano is permanently monitored by the IS22 infrasound station located in New Caledonia, about 400 km from it, and by one microbarometer installed close to its crater. A multiyear monitoring of Yasur is proposed to validate consistently the Naval Research Laboratory Ground to Space (NRL-G2S) semiempirical atmospheric model up to the stratosphere. The results of propagation modeling accurately explain seasonal changes as well as small short-timescale variations of the infrasonic observables. The azimuthal deviation is predicted with an uncertainty in general lower than 0.5°. The fluctuations of the trace velocity and the celerity are simulated with errors as large as 5 m/s. This study demonstrates that the use of appropriate propagation tools along with the NRL-G2S specifications provides accurate enough results for most of the long-range observations for the purpose of operational infrasound monitoring.
Influence of addition of hydroxyl-terminated liquid nitrile rubber on dielectric properties and relaxation behavior of epoxy resin

Epoxy resin is one of the most popular insulation materials used in power equipment, whereas it is easy to crack when used in some large equipment due to its poor toughness. In order to increase the toughness of epoxy resin, adding liquid rubber into epoxy resin is a common way employed in industrial production. However, the dielectric properties of epoxy resin changes while the toughness increases. In this paper, hydroxyl-terminated liquid nitrile rubber (HTBN) was used as the filler to toughen the epoxy resin. Through comparing and analyzing the glass transition temperature and permittivity of composites with different filler contents, the influence of rubber particles on the mechanical and dielectric properties of epoxy resin was studied. The results indicate that the glass transition temperature decreases with the increase of filler content. When HTBN content is more than 15%, the toughness of composites is enhanced. With the increasing content of HTBN, the volume resistivity decreases, while the relative permittivity and dielectric loss tangent increase. The breakdown strength reveals little change. The addition of HTBN has a certain effect on the dielectric relaxation behaviors of epoxy resin, and the dielectric relaxation which caused by the interfacial polarization between rubber particles and epoxy matrix appears at the temperature above 5 °. Therefore, the influences of fillers on the dielectric properties should be considered while toughening the epoxy through adding liquid rubber during the formula design.
A comparison of low IQ scores from the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition.

Twenty people with suspected intellectual disability took the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales (RIAS; C. R. Reynolds & R. W. Kamphaus, 1998) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-3rd Edition (WAIS-III; D. Wechsler, 1997) to see if the 2 IQ tests produced comparable results. A t test showed that the RIAS Composite Intelligence Index scores were significantly higher than WAIS-III Full Scale IQ scores at the alpha level of . 01. There was a significant difference between the RIAS Nonverbal Intelligence and WAIS-III Performance Scale, but there was no significant difference between the RIAS Verbal Intelligence Index and the WAIS-III Verbal Scale IQ. The results raise questions concerning test selection for diagnosing intellectual disability and the use of the correlation statistic for comparing intelligence tests.
Multi-view Recurrent Neural Acoustic Word Embeddings

Recent work has begun exploring neural acoustic word embeddings---fixed-dimensional vector representations of arbitrary-length speech segments corresponding to words. Such embeddings are applicable to speech retrieval and recognition tasks, where reasoning about whole words may make it possible to avoid ambiguous sub-word representations. The main idea is to map acoustic sequences to fixed-dimensional vectors such that examples of the same word are mapped to similar vectors, while different-word examples are mapped to very different vectors. In this work we take a multi-view approach to learning acoustic word embeddings, in which we jointly learn to embed acoustic sequences and their corresponding character sequences. We use deep bidirectional LSTM embedding models and multi-view contrastive losses. We study the effect of different loss variants, including fixed-margin and cost-sensitive losses. Our acoustic word embeddings improve over previous approaches for the task of word discrimination. We also present results on other tasks that are enabled by the multi-view approach, including cross-view word discrimination and word similarity.
EntiTables: Smart Assistance for Entity-Focused Tables

Tables are among the most powerful and practical tools for organizing and working with data. Our motivation is to equip spreadsheet programs with smart assistance capabilities. We concentrate on one particular family of tables, namely, tables with an entity focus. We introduce and focus on two specifc tasks: populating rows with additional instances (entities) and populating columns with new headings. We develop generative probabilistic models for both tasks. For estimating the components of these models, we consider a knowledge base as well as a large table corpus. Our experimental evaluation simulates the various stages of the user entering content into an actual table. A detailed analysis of the results shows that the models' components are complimentary and that our methods outperform existing approaches from the literature.
The role of mental health problems in explaining violent behaviors in children and adolescents over the lifecourse: An exploratory study

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY Associate Professor, April 2010-present, Program in Criminology, UT Dallas Associate Chair/Graduate Director, August 2009-April 2010, Program in Criminology, UT Dallas Assistant Professor, August 2006-April 2010, Program in Criminology, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas Adjunct Instructor, August 2004-May 2006; August 2000-May 2001, Criminology Department, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida Assistant Undergraduate Advisor, August 2004-February 2006, Criminology Department, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida Graduate Research Assistant to USF Interim Dean & Professor Kathleen M. Heide, August 2001-August 2004, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida Level 4 Secure-Facility Juvenile Counselor, January-June 1999, Family Continuity Program, Plant City, Florida U.S. Border Patrol Agent Trainee, June 1996-December 1996, Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States Department of Justice, FLETC Training Center, Glynco, Georgia
Database state generation via dynamic symbolic execution for coverage criteria

Automatically generating sufficient database states is imperative to reduce human efforts in testing database applications. Complementing the traditional block or branch coverage, we develop an approach that generates database states to achieve advanced code coverage including boundary value coverage(BVC) and logical coverage(LC) for source code under test. In our approach, we leverage dynamic symbolic execution to examine close relationships among host variables, embedded SQL query statements, and branch conditions in source code. We then derive constraints such that data satisfying those constraints can achieve the target coverage criteria. We implement our approach upon Pex, which is a state-of-the-art DSE-based test-generation tool for . NET. Empirical evaluations on two real database applications show that our approach assists Pex to generate test database states that can effectively achieve both BVC and LC, complementing the block or branch coverage.
Relationship between glycated hemoglobin, Intensive Care Unit admission blood sugar and glucose control with ICU mortality in critically ill patients

Background and Aims: The association between hyperglycemia and mortality is believed to be influenced by the presence of diabetes mellitus (DM). In this study, we evaluated the effect of preexisting hyperglycemia on the association between acute blood glucose management and mortality in critically ill patients. The primary objective of the study was the relationship between HbA1c and mortality in critically ill patients. Secondary objectives of the study were relationship between Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission blood glucose and glucose control during ICU stay with mortality in critically ill patients. Materials and Methods: Five hundred patients admitted to two ICUs were enrolled. Blood sugar and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) concentrations on ICU admission were measured. Age, sex, history of DM, comorbidities, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score, sequential organ failure assessment score, hypoglycemic episodes, drug history, mortality, and development of acute kidney injury and liver failure were noted for all patients. Results: Without considering the history of diabetes, nonsurvivors had significantly higher HbA1c values compared to survivors (7.25 ± 1.87 vs. 6.05 ± 1.22, respectively, P < 0.001). Blood glucose levels in ICU admission showed a significant correlation with risk of death (P < 0.006, confidence interval [CI]: 1.004–1.02, relative risk [RR]: 1.01). Logistic regression analysis revealed that HbA1c increased the risk of death; with each increase in HbA1c level, the risk of death doubled. However, this relationship was not statistically significant (P: 0.161, CI: 0.933–1.58, RR: 1.2). Conclusions: Acute hyperglycemia significantly affects mortality in the critically ill patients; this relation is also influenced by chronic hyperglycemia.
Perspectives on active learning and collaboration: JavaWIDE in the classroom

The Java Wiki Integrated Development Environment (JavaWIDE) is an innovative environment that promotes active learning and collaboration in programming courses. This paper surveys how JavaWIDE's features have been used to promote active and collaborative learning in both traditional and distance education (synchronous) in four different environments: high school, summer enrichment courses, and at two- and four-year colleges. The authors describe the context of each teaching and learning environment and the parts of JavaWIDE that are particularly well suited in each context. After discussing the active learning and collaboration techniques employed, student responses to the experience are summarized. This collection of case studies illustrates how the concurrent editing, shared environment awareness and other features of JavaWIDE can be used to promote active learning and collaboration within a heterogeneous set of teaching and learning environments.
Post-Transplant Immunosuppression: Regulation of the Efflux of Allospecific Effector T Cells from Lymphoid Tissues

A functional sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) receptor antagonist specifically inhibited the egress of activated allospecific T cells from draining popliteal lymph nodes in alloantigen-sensitised mice. The level of S1P receptor 1 (S1PR1) mRNA was similarly reduced 1 and 3 days after mitogenic activation of T cells. However, the response of these cells to the S1PR1-specific agonist SEW2871 was only reduced on the first day after T cell activation with normal receptor-mediated Akt-phosphorylation restored by day 3. Longitudinal analysis of CD69 expression showed that almost all T cells expressed this antigen on days 1 and 3 after activation. However, the absolute level of cell-surface expression of CD69 peaked on undivided T cells and was then halved by each of the first 3 cycles of mitosis. CD69-specific small interfering RNA (siRNA) reduced the maximal level of CD69 expression by undivided, mitogen-stimulated T cells. These cells retained their capacity to phosphorylate Akt in response to stimulation with SEW2871. These data show that S1P receptors are involved in controlling the egress of activated T cells from lymph nodes, and that S1PR1 function is regulated by the level of T cell surface CD69. They suggest a potential for augmentation of this process to deplete alloreactive effector cells after organ transplantation.
The neural bases of regularity learning

The existence of two separate learning and memory systems has been proposed in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Chapter 1), specialized for complementary functions, namely (1) fast learning unique episodes (first system; Chapter 2) and (2) gradual learning regularities across multiple episodes (second system; Chapter 3). The present thesis aimed at specifying the neural and cognitive bases of the second system. Within the framework of this thesis, the term ‘regularity learning’ was introduced to define the learning process associated with the second system, namely the extraction of regularities, i.e. overlapping, invariant features of multiple episodes. The neural and cognitive processes underlying regularity learning were investigated in three experiments. Two brain regions were of main interest, the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, PFC (Chapter 4). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used as the main method (Chapter 5). In all experiments, volunteers had to learn objectposition conjunctions in several experimental trials and blocks. The design of the experiments included two conditions, a context-specific (CS) and an invariant learning (IL) condition (Chapter 6). In the CS condition, objects and positions were variably mapped across trials. In contrast, in the IL condition positions (Experiment 1A and 3B) or objects (Experiment 1B, 2, and 3A) were held constant within blocks, enabling subjects to extract regularities across trials, i.e. invariant positions or objects in object-position conjunctions, respectively. In Experiment 1A (Chapter 7) and Experiment 1B (Chapter 8), performance increased across trials within blocks of the IL condition, but not in the CS condition. In both experiments, hippocampal activity decreased as a function of learning in the IL condition. Conversely, the hippocampus was activated continuously in the CS condition. In contrast to a right-lateralized hippocampal activation decrease during learning spatial regularities (Experiment 1A), learning object regularities (Experiment 1B) was associated with a decrease of bilateral hippocampal activity. In both experiments, left lateral prefrontal and right striatal brain regions showed an increase of activity as a function of learning in the IL condition. In Experiment 2 (Chapter 9), the cognitive processes underlying learning object regularities were investigated in more detail. In six behavioral studies, the influence of object distinctiveness (Experiment 2A-2B), memory load and learning duration (Experiment 2C-2E), and the effect of simultaneous object-position bindings (Experiment 2F) on learning invariant objects in object-position conjunctions was examined. The behavioral
Circadian variations in the occurrence of cardiac arrests: initial and repeat episodes.

BACKGROUND Patterns of temporal variation of cardiac arrests may be important for understanding mechanisms leading to the onset of acute cardiovascular disorders. Previous studies reported diurnal variation of the onset of cardiac arrests, with high incidence in the morning and in the evening, lack of daily variation during the week, and some seasonal variation. The association between the time of day and recurrent cardiac arrests has not been previously examined. METHODS AND RESULTS We explored temporal variation in 6603 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests attended by the Seattle Fire Department. The data exhibit diurnal variation, with a low incidence at night and two peaks of approximately the same size (at 8 to 11 AM and 4 to 7 PM). The evening peak is attributed primarily to the patients found in ventricular fibrillation, whereas arrests that show other rhythms exhibit mainly a morning peak. Cardiac arrests associated with survival have more pronounced diurnal variation than episodes in which survival did not occur. This difference persists after adjustment for rhythm. For 597 patients who had at least two separate cardiac arrests, we found no overall association between the times of day of the recurrent arrests. For women, however, the times of day of the first and second arrests were closer to each other than one would expect if the times were entirely unrelated. CONCLUSIONS Cardiac arrests do not occur randomly during the day, but rather follow certain periodic patterns. These patterns are probably associated with patterns of daily activities. The hypothesis that cardiac arrests are triggered by a person's activity rather than by some underlying characteristics of his or her disease is supported by the lack of association between the times of the first and second arrests in the patients with recurrent arrests.
Careers in a non‐Western context: An exploratory empirical investigation of factors related to the career success of Chinese managers

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to conduct an exploratory empirical examination to determine if factors (e.g. demographic, human capital, motivational, and organizational) associated with career success in Western countries are also related to the career outcomes of Chinese managers.Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were obtained from 139 managers working in China. Correlation and regression analyses were performed to examine the relationship among common predictors of career success and the actual outcomes of Chinese managers.Findings – Predictors of two career outcomes were explored: total compensation and career satisfaction. Although some of the findings were similar to the findings of studies on the career outcomes of managers in Western countries, there were some surprising differences. The results showed that women and top‐level decision makers had higher total compensation. Furthermore, holding a middle management (as opposed to a line management) position, and perceptions that one's or.