Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Post-civil war democratization: promotion of democracy in post-civil war states, 1946–2005

Post-civil war democratization is a critical element of building sustainable peace in post-civil war states. Yet studies of democratic transition and survival suggest that the post-civil war environment is not hospitable to either the transition toward or the survival of democracy. This inhospitality may be due to the fact that post-civil war environments are contentious. After a civil war, the former protagonists fear for their security and also want to protect their political and economic interests. The central argument of this study is that former rivals can agree to a transition toward democracy to the extent that a stable balance of power exists between the government and rebel groups; a balance that eliminates the sort of security dilemma that would encourage one or both parties to resume armed conflict. Such a balance should ensure access to political power and economic resources. This study identifies factors that contribute to the establishment of a balance of power between former protagonists and factors that affect its stability. The presence of these factors should affect the decision of former protagonists on whether or not they can achieve their political and economic interests if they agree to a transition toward democracy once the civil war ends. Based on this theoretical argument, I have derived empirically testable hypotheses. In the survival analysis performed, I find support for the theoretical arguments. The findings of this study have some policy implications.
Co-Witnesses, Confederates, and Conformity: Effects of Discussion and Delay on Eyewitness Memory

This study investigated the effects of co-witness discussion and delay on eyewitness memory. Participants viewed crime videos and then after a delay (20 min or 2 weeks) their memories for the videos were tested using a recognition questionnaire. They were then randomly assigned to one of three conditions: discussion in groups with a confederate providing misinformation about the videos, discussion in groups with no confederate, or no discussion. Finally, all participants were given another copy of the recognition questionnaire to complete individually. Participants in the confederate discussion condition reported information supplied by the confederate, regardless of the information accuracy. The post-event misinformation had a particularly strong effect on memory accuracy when it was presented after a longer delay. There was no difference in memory accuracy between the groups without confederates and the no-discussion control condition, suggesting that discussion is neither harmful nor beneficial to memory accuracy when no misinformation is supplied.
Suhrid: A Collaborative Mobile Phone Interface for Low Literate People

The design of accessible mobile phone interfaces for low literate people usually assumes an individual model of use, and are often limited by the low technical expertise and/or cognitive ability of users in marginal communities of developing countries. Drawing on previous ICTD scholarship around shared and intermediated use of technology and our own ethnographic field study, we introduce a collaborative model of use in the design of Suhrid, a mobile phone interface that helps low literate users perform common phone tasks by receiving remote help from higher-literacy members of their community. The results of our six week long deployment of Suhrid among 10 low literate rickshaw pullers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, indicate the potential of collaborative use models to help low-literate people more effectively use mobile phones while strengthening bonds between them and the people in their community who provide help.
Does Environmental Management Improve Financial Performance? A Meta-Analytical Review

The relationship between corporate environmental performance and financial performance has received a high degree of attention in research literature and the results are still contradictory. Most of the findings have shown that environmental performance improves financial performance while others have suggested that the relationship is neutral or even negative. Our article integrates prior research studying this relationship and identifies the potential moderators that may have played a role in the apparent inconsistent results observed to date. We conducted a meta-analysis of 52 studies over a 35-year period that confirms a positive relationship between environmental performance and financial performance. Moderators’ analysis reveals that the relationship is significantly influenced by the environmental and financial performance measures, the regional differences, the activity sector and the duration of the studies. After discussing the theoretical and managerial implications, this meta-analysis tries to answer the question: “When and how does it pay to be green? ”
Consider the Opposite: Opening Minds through in-Class Debates on Course-Related Controversies

When considering a complex and controversial issue, students may engage in a biased assimilation of the evidence and strengthen their existing attitudes rather than become appreciative of both sides of the issue. However, a consider-the-opposite strategy in which students argue a position contrary to their current opinion may eliminate this biased assimilation. We conducted in-class debates in 3 different courses and randomly assigned students to argue for or against their current attitude on an issue. Our results indicate that arguing a position consistent with one's opinion does produce biased assimilation but that arguing for a position inconsistent with one's opinion reduces this tendency. We discuss how best to design in-class debates to maximize their educational value.
Social Network Research in Organizational Contexts

A large body of research has examined social networks in organizational contexts. While this work has enhanced scholars’ understanding of the antecedents and consequences of networks, missing from this literature is a comprehensive framework that simplifies and clarifies this complex body of work. In response, the authors develop a framework that classifies network research into four major categories, with the purpose of guiding scholars’ choices among the various theories, constructs, measures, research designs, and analytic strategies inherent in the social network literature. The authors also provide recommendations for future work aimed at advancing the state of network research in organizational contexts.
The Current Insurance Crisis and Modern Tort Law

This paper is an effort to understand the source of the crisis in insurance that has recently disrupted product and service markets in the United States. From press accounts, the crisis seemed to peak in the early months of 1986, when reports became common of extraordinary changes in commercial casualty insurance markets. Insurers had increased premiums drastically for an unusual set of products, such as vaccines,1 general aircraft,2 and sports equipment,' and for an equally diverse set of services, such as obstetrics,4 ski lifts,5 and commercial trucking.8 In still other cases-intrauterine devices, wine tasting,' and day care, 9-insurers had refused to offer coverage at any premium, forcing these products and services to be withdrawn from the market. The crisis extended beyond commercial enterprises. Municipalities and other governmental entities faced similarly extreme premium increases or the unavailability of market insurance coverage altogether. Some cities closed jails and suspended police patrols until insurance coverage was ob-
Spontaneous resistance switching and low-frequency noise in quantum point contacts.

The kinetics of charge transport in quantum point contacts has been studied by low-frequency noise spectroscopy. Temperature and frequency (Lorentzian and 1/f) dependences of the noise spectral density are found to vary strongly from device to device, but the low-T conductance dependence universally exhibits a strong quantum size effect. Based on the direct observation in the time domain of spontaneous resistance switching, the noise is identified to be due to trapping processes which affect the local electrostatic potential. A model is presented which explains the main experimental observations
Approximately Counting H-Colorings is $\#\mathrm{BIS}$-Hard

We consider the problem of counting H-colourings from an input graph G to a target graph H. We show that if H is any fixed graph without trivial components, then the problem is as hard as the well-known problem #BIS, which is the problem of (approximately) counting independent sets in a bipartite graph. #BIS is a complete problem in an important complexity class for approximate counting, and is believed not to have an FPRAS. If this is so, then our result shows that for every graph H without trivial components, the H-colouring counting problem has no FPRAS. This problem was studied a decade ago by Goldberg, Kelk and Paterson. They were able to show that approximately sampling H-colourings is #BIS-hard, but it was not known how to get the result for approximate counting. Our solution builds on non-constructive ideas using the work of Lovasz.
Increased Expression of Regeneration and Tolerance Factor in Individuals with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

ABSTRACT Regeneration and tolerance factor (RTF) plays a pivotal role in successful pregnancy outcome and has potent immunomodulating properties. During pregnancy, it is abundantly expressed in the placenta and on peripheral B lymphocytes. Several lines of evidence suggest that both successful pregnancy outcome and progression from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection to AIDS are associated with a Th2-type response. As a result, we hypothesized that the cellular expression of RTF may also be increased during infection with HIV. Using flow cytometric analysis, we showed a significantly (P < 0.01) increased expression of RTF on CD3+ cells obtained from individuals with HIV over that for individuals without HIV. On average, 32.1% of the CD3+cells from individuals with HIV expressed high levels of RTF. In contrast, an average of only 6.7% of the CD3+ cells from individuals without HIV expressed high levels of RTF. Similar results were obtained when CD19+ cells from individuals with (mean, 44.1%) and without (mean, 25.8%) HIV were evaluated. Linear regression analysis suggested that high levels of RTF expression by CD3+ cells correlated better with viral load (rvalue, 0.46) than with absolute CD4 count (r value, 0.09). While additional experiments are necessary to delineate the precise immunologic role of RTF, our current data suggest that RTF expression during HIV infection may be a useful marker of immune activation.
The Positive Social and Self Concept Consequences of Sports Team Identification

As a result of increased geographic mobility, industrialization, and the like, traditional social and community ties have declined. Conversely, sports spectatorship has continued to flourish. We argue that strong identification with a specific sports team provides a buffer from feelings of depression and alienation, and at the same time, fosters feelings of belongingness and self worth. In effect, sports team identification replaces more traditional family and community-based attachments to the larger social structure. Three studies find support for these notions, using basketball and baseball fans. The relationship between degree of team identification and team success was also examined; it was only significant for individuals who identify with teams geographically removed from themselves. Discussion focuses on the positive implications of sports team identification for self-esteem maintenance and the social ties it creates.
Validity of the Learning Styles Questionnaire

The most widely documented measure of learning styles, the Learning Style Inventory, has frequently been criticized for lack of reliability and validity. A possible alternative is the Learning Styles Questionnaire. Although its temporal stability and internal consistency are well established, more evidence of its validity is required. The three studies reported here confirm its dual factor structure and provide further evidence of its construct validity. Its concurrent validity and predictive validity, however, are still open to question. Until these have been confirmed, the questionnaire cannot be regarded as a significant improvement upon the Learning Style Inventory.
The use of encrypted functions for mobile agent security

Mobile agent technology is a new paradigm of distributed computing that can replace the conventional client-server model. However, it has not become popular due to some problems such as security. The fact that computers have complete control over all the programs makes it very hard to protect mobile agents from untrusted hosts. In this paper we propose a security approach for mobile agents, which protect mobile agents from malicious hosts. Our new approach prevents privacy attacks and integrity attacks to mobile agents from malicious hosts. This approach is an extension of mobile cryptography, as proposed by Sander and Tschudin, and it removes many problems found in the original idea of mobile cryptography while preserving most of the benefits. Although the original idea of mobile cryptography allowed direct computations without decryptions on encrypted mobile agents, it did not provide any practical ways of implementation due to the fact that no homomorphic encryption schemes are found for their approach. Our approach provides a practical idea for implementing mobile cryptography by suggesting a hybrid method that mixes a function composition technique and a homomorphic encryption scheme that we have found. Like the original mobile cryptography, our approach will encrypt both code and data including state information in a way that enables direct computation on encrypted data without decryption.
High-Level Ciprofloxacin Resistance from Point Mutations in gyrA and parC Confined to Global Hospital-Adapted Clonal Lineage CC17 of Enterococcus faecium

ABSTRACT To substantiate a common genetic background of ciprofloxacin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, 32 ciprofloxacin-resistant (Cipr) and 31 ciprofloxacin-susceptible (Cips) isolates from outbreaks, clinical infections, surveillances, and animals from 10 different countries were genotyped by multilocus sequence typing. Additionally, susceptibilities to ampicillin and vancomycin and the presence of esp were determined and the quinolone resistance-determining regions of parC, gyrA, parB, and gyrE were sequenced. High-level Cipr (MIC ≥ 64 μg/ml) due to point mutations in the quinolone resistance-determining region was unique to a distinct hospital-adapted genetic complex in E. faecium, previously designated CC17. Low-level Cipr (MIC = 4 μg/ml) in non-CC17 strains is not attributable to point mutations in any subunit of the topoisomerase genes, and the mechanism of resistance remains unclear. Acquisition of mutations in parC and gyrA, leading to high-level Cipr, is, in addition to ampicillin resistance and the presence of a putative pathogenicity island, another cumulative step in hospital adaptation of CC17.
The general views of Bamasaba of Eastern Uganda about their oral narratives and cultural songs

In this study, the researcher investigated the functions, themes and the performance of the Bamasaba oral narratives and cultural songs. The researcher did that because he wanted to establish how these two genres of Literature relate to each other. The intention of the researcher was to show why the two need to be given equal treatment by the Bamasaba. In this study, the researcher investigated how storytelling and singing of the cultural songs among the BaMasaaba affect each other, and why oral narratives are disappearing in that community, while the cultural songs are prospering. An additional aim of the study was to find out how the obstacles in promoting oral narratives and cultural songs can be addressed.The specific objectives of the study were: to find out the functions of both the oral narratives and cultural songs of BaMasaaba in Bududa District; the underlying themes in oral narratives and cultural songs of BaMasaaba; how oral narratives and cultural songs are performed, the reasons why the BaMasaaba cultural songs have prospered in that society more than the oral narratives, and what measures can be taken in order to revive the culture of storytelling among the BaMasaaba in Bududa District. According to the findings of the study, oral narratives are disappearing because with storytelling, there is no free eating and drinking of alcohol whereas with cultural songs, there is a lot of free eating and drinking of alcohol. With storytelling, drumming and dancing are usually limited but with cultural songs, there is a lot of drumming and dancing. With storytelling, usually there is no serious planning and organization whereas with Cultural Songs, the performances are highly planed and organized. Finally, the findings of the study have shown that oral narratives among the BaMasaaba can be revived and promoted by: setting up social centres, establishing special committees to organize sessions for storytelling, give awards to best storytellers, include storytelling on the schools’ curriculum, introduce storytelling in Universities as a career, provide employment to the best storytellers, carry out massive sensitization using media houses, storytelling should be made a condition for people who want to join politics, publish the best storytellers and their works, storytelling should not be confined at family level, storytellers should be facilitated and non-storytellers should be taxed. These findings address the reseacher’s concern about which measures can be taken in order to revive and promote oral narratives among the BaMasaaba. Key words: Oral, narratives, oral narratives, circumcision, circumcision songs,Bamasaba.
Entirely harmonic domain calculation of multiphase nonsinusoidal steady state

This paper proposes an algorithm for obtaining the periodic steady-state solution of a multiphase network including nonlinear, switching, and frequency dependent elements. Unlike existing methods which deal with nonlinear and switching elements in the time domain, the approach presented is entirely in the harmonic domain. The method will be used for the harmonic analysis of power systems and for steady-state initialization in electromagnetic transient analysis. The algorithm takes rigorously into account the inter-harmonic couplings in the Jacobian matrix of the proposed Newton-Raphson iteration process so that a quadratic convergence rate is achieved. Linear, nonlinear, switching, and frequency dependent elements are modeled in a modular approach, and any network topology can be handled by extending the Modified Nodal Equations approach to the harmonic domain case. First the algorithm is described and then applied to a test case to demonstrate its computational performance.
The impact of infertility diagnosis on psychological status of women undergoing fertility treatment

Despite the great number of studies conducted to examine the impact of infertility on the psychological status of women undergoing infertility treatment, little is known about the psychological impact of infertility when it is due to male or female factors and its role in the cause of higher levels of anxiety and stress. The aim of this cross‐sectional study was to assess the impact of infertility diagnosis on infertile women's levels of anxiety, depression and fertility‐related stress. The study involved 404 women undergoing fertility treatment in a public clinic in Athens. The research instruments were three self‐administrated questionnaires. State and trait anxiety, infertility‐related stress (personal, social and marital domain) and depression were measured. Most of the women in this sample had low levels of infertility‐related stress and a low score for depression, but higher scores of state and trait anxiety than the published normative scores. Women with male factor infertility had higher levels of state anxiety (p = 0.007) and social stress (p = 0.007) than women with female, mixed and unknown infertility. Women with idiopathic infertility also had higher levels of trait anxiety (p = 0.001). Thus, the psychological status of women is strongly related to the aetiology of the infertility problem, and as a result it is necessary for women undergoing treatment for infertility to have an individualised psychological support, based on their infertility problem.
The nature and causes of bullying at work

The present paper reviews and summarises the research and literature on the nature and causes of bullying at work. Bullying occurs when someone at work is systematically subjected to aggressive behaviour from one or more colleagues or superiors over a long period of time, in a situation where the target finds it difficult to defend him or herself or to escape the situation. Such treatment tends to stigmatise the target and may even cause severe psychological trauma. Empirical studies on the causes of bullying have concentrated on the personality of the victim and psychosocial factors at work. Most studies treat bullying as a unified phenomenon, in spite of the fact that different kinds of behaviours are involved. The concepts of dispute‐related and predatory bullying are introduced in an effort to broaden the perspectives used in future investigations on both the nature and the causes of bullying at work.
Mechanical Characterization and Modeling of a Powder-In-Tube MgB2 Strand

The strain dependence of superconducting material is known to be responsible for the degradation of the electrical performance of cables. As such, their electrical optimization requires an understanding of their mechanical behavior. This paper introduces a method for elasto-plastic modeling of commercial MgB2 multifilamentary strands manufactured by the ex situ powder-in-tube method. The model is based on a simplified representation of the structure, built using components' volume fractions and nanoindentation test data. Monotonic and cyclic tension-compression tests were performed on the strands before and after chemical dissolution of the Monel outer layer to provide a multiscale experimental database. These tests were used to identify the parameters of the kinematic and isotropic hardening laws of the elasto-plastic model. The model intends to be subsequently used to simulate the electrical behavior of cables and define guidelines for the manufacturing process, cabling process, and end-product operating condition.
The will to mobility: life-space satisfaction and distress in people with dementia who live alone

ABSTRACT Increasing numbers of people with dementia reside in single-person households, yet little is known of their experiences and priorities. This exploratory Australian study elicited perceptions of seven people with dementia living alone, regarding their domestic environment and its surroundings. The general aim was to identify unmet service needs in this vulnerable population. Drawing upon the theoretical concepts of ‘the will to mobility’ and ‘life-space’, we identified four factors of particular salience to our respondents. These were access to public space, social distance and proximity, changing meanings of space and objects, and imaginative co-presence. Participants provided useful insights into a soon-to-be-common scenario in which increased numbers of people with dementia will be living without a resident carer. The findings have implications for the development of more personalised and targeted dementia care in the domestic setting, more inclusive public planning and more extensive public education programmes.