Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low-Power Design of Pipeline A/D Converters

In this paper, low-power design techniques of highspeed A/D converters are reviewed and discussed. Pipeline and parallel-pipeline architectures are treated as these are dominant architectures when required high sampling rate and high resolution with reasonable power dissipation. A power optimization of pipeline and parallel pipeline ADCs based on models of noise analysis and response time of a building block in the multiple-stage pipeline ADC is also presented. Finally, the theoretical minimum of required power in pipeline ADCs is discussed
Inverted Preferences and Skewed Norms

This paper analyzes a trade-obetween succumbing to a so- cial norm and being true to one's private opinion. The social pressure in society and ultimately the very existence and location of a social norm are not simply assumed but arise endogenously through the statements that all individuals make in equilibrium. In such a setting skewed norms will be more sustainable than non-skewed norms. Furthermore, the norm will be …ctitious in the sense that few actually believe in it and that it will be upheld by those who despise it the most. These results may explain the existence of skewed norms in autocratic societies and in various social and religious settings.
Intelligibility assessment of Japanese accents

Jenkins (2000, 2002, 2006) attempts to establish the Lingua Franca Core features of English, or phonological features crucial to achieving mutual intelligibility in a lingua franca situation, but she does not focus upon Japanese-influenced variations of English. This paper aims to identify phonological “errors” found in Japanese science major student-researchers’ speech which might lead to miscommunication. Through the analysis of the transcription of Japanese-influenced speech, we argue that the following three types of mispronunciation would seriously impede intelligibility: (1) mispronunciation of consonants such as plosives and liquids; (2) vowel length alternation; (3) misplaced or absence of word stress. These findings may offer implications for English language teaching, especially the prioritization of phonological instructions.
Atmospheric sulfur cycling in the southeastern Pacific – longitudinal distribution, vertical profile, and diel variability observed during VOCALS-REx

Abstract. Dimethylsulfide (DMS) emitted from the ocean is a biogenic precursor gas for sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) and non-sea-salt sulfate aerosols (SO 4 2− ). During the VAMOS-Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study Regional Experiment (VOCALS-REx) in 2008, multiple instrumented platforms were deployed in the Southeastern Pacific (SEP) off the coast of Chile and Peru to study the linkage between aerosols and stratocumulus clouds. We present here observations from the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown and the NSF/NCAR C-130 aircraft along ~20° S from the coast (70° W) to a remote marine atmosphere (85° W). While SO 4 2− and SO 2 concentrations were distinctly elevated above background levels in the coastal marine boundary layer (MBL) due to anthropogenic influence (~800 and 80 pptv, respectively), their concentrations rapidly decreased west of 78° W (~100 and 25 pptv). In the remote region, entrainment from the free troposphere (FT) increased MBL SO 2 burden at a rate of 0.05 ± 0.02 μmoles m −2 day −1 and diluted MBL SO 4 2 burden at a rate of 0.5 ± 0.3 μmoles m −2 day −1 , while the sea-to-air DMS flux (3.8 ± 0.4 μmoles m −2 day −1 ) remained the predominant source of sulfur mass to the MBL. In-cloud oxidation was found to be the most important mechanism for SO 2 removal and in situ SO 4 2− production. Surface SO 4 2− concentration in the remote MBL displayed pronounced diel variability, increasing rapidly in the first few hours after sunset and decaying for the rest of the day. We theorize that the increase in SO 4 2− was due to nighttime recoupling of the MBL that mixed down cloud-processed air, while decoupling and sporadic precipitation scavenging were responsible for the daytime decline in SO 4 2− .
Impacts of School Structural Factors and Student Factors on Employment Outcomes for Youth With Disabilities in Transition

This study aimed to examine school structural factors (i.e., free/reduced lunch percentage, proportion of minority student enrollment, and student–teacher ratio) that may contribute to employment outcomes for transitioning youth with disabilities beyond individual student factors through hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses. The secondary data for 3,289 students were obtained from the Bridges From School to Work Program, and the school structural data for 121 schools were drawn from the Common Core of Data. The major types of disabilities for the student participants included learning disabilities (73.1%), emotional and behavioral disabilities (4.7%), sensory disabilities (2%), and others (20.2%). Around 41% of participants were female. The study found that employment outcomes (i.e., whether a participant secured a paid job and weekly job earnings) were primarily attributed to student individual factors rather than school structural factors, particularly prior paid work experience. The finding suggests the potential importance of effective transition interventions to improve employment outcomes for all youth with disabilities. Implications for rehabilitation professionals are discussed.
Facilitating Learning from Formative Feedback in Level 3 Assessment

This paper presents the development, through action research, of formative elements in assessment in a level 3 compulsory module of the BSc Health Studies and BSc Nursing programmes at the University of Sunderland. The paper reviews three cycles of planning, implementing and evaluating change in assessment strategy and is written in the first person to emphasise the connections between the writer and the material. From a consideration of the format and characteristics of the assessment within the module, the action research is reported through the implementation of actions taken to facilitate more effective use of formative feedback. The evaluation of these actions through my own reflections, student performance, dialogue with team colleagues and student feedback through the production of short narrative accounts of their learning experience is outlined. The paper demonstrates that through explicitly using the learning potential within assessment, learning can be facilitated through challenging students to move from 'doing' assignments, to reflexive thinking about their writing.
Long‐term collective assistance for the bereaved following a disaster: A Scandinavian approach

Objective: This paper describes an approach where disaster-bereaved families gather over three weekends to process and learn about grief together (a collective approach). Method: The article is based on experience related to several disasters in Norway and Finland, using a maritime disaster in which 16 persons lost their lives as a case example. Conclusions: This approach provides an opportunity to help numerous persons simultaneously. It facilitates support, communality and help within a group setting, provides access to self-help methods and allows screening of those in need of further help. Three weekend gatherings were held during the first year following loss of family members. Using plenary sessions, small groups and rituals during weekends, important themes within normal grief reactions over time were addressed.
The development of the aesthetic experience of music: Preference, emotions, and beauty

From an early age, children are attracted to the aesthetics of music. Employing a cross-sectional design including school-aged children, the present exploratory study aimed to investigate the effects of age, gender, and music education on three important aspects of the aesthetic experience of music: musical preference, musical emotion recognition, and the use of the aesthetic categories for music. To this aim, we developed an experimental procedure suitable to quantify children’s musical preferences and their judgment of musical emotions and aesthetics. The musical material consisted of three short piano pieces: a piece in major mode, a piece in minor mode, and a free tonal piece. The responses of 78 children were analyzed, whereby the children were assigned to two age groups: 6–7-year-olds (n = 38) and 8–9-year-olds (n = 40). Children preferred the piece in major mode to the one in minor. Except for 6–7-year-olds without music education, children gave the highest happiness ratings for the major piece. Only 8–9-year-olds found the minor piece sadder than the major piece, and the major piece more beautiful than the piece in minor. The ratings of the free tonal piece were mostly indifferent and probably reflect children’s difficulty in judging music that does not yet belong to their short musical history. Taken together, the current data imply that school-aged children are able to make emotional and aesthetic judgments about unfamiliar musical pieces.
Factorial Invariance of the Academic Amotivation Inventory (AAI) Across Gender and Grade in a Sample of Canadian High School Students

Motivation deficits are common in high school and constitute a significant problem for both students and teachers. The Academic Amotivation Inventory (AAI) was developed to measure the multidimensional nature of the academic amotivation construct (Legault, Green-Demers, & Pelletier, 2006). The present project further examined the consistency of the metric properties of AAI scores by testing their factorial structure for invariance across gender and grade (2 [genders] × 5 [grades] = 10 [groups]) in a sample of 3,417 high school students. Factorial invariance of latent means was also examined as a complementary substantive objective. Configural, metric, and scalar invariance were successfully substantiated across all 10 groups. Results revealed well-fitting models for each group. Moreover, constraining factor loadings and intercepts had no meaningful impact on model fit. Findings are discussed in terms of an increased conceptual and psychometric understanding of scholastic motivational problems.
The negotiations of involved fathers and intensive mothers around shared-bed sleeping with infants (co-sleeping)

This article discusses some emerging issues that arose during a much wider evaluative investigation of the Western Australian Health Department's bed-sharing policy and how effectively health professionals provided advice to parents. The broader evaluation report was developed for a clinical and health bureaucratic, policy-making audience. In contrast, this article adopts an approach that is more sociologically informed to tease out some of the social and cultural discourses that influence how bed-sharing advice was interpreted and used by the mothers interviewed for the study. We ponder the influence of current parenting discourses on parental decision-making, including those that construct fathers as ‘involved’ and mothers as ‘intensive’, as well as the theory of ‘attachment parenting’, which has enjoyed something of a resurgence in Australia. We also touch on and alert to the differences in responses to this information reported by the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women interviewed for the study. This article highlights areas that may require further consideration and investigation by social and health researchers in maternal and child health, as well as practitioners involved in the development or delivery of bed-sharing information for parents.
Analysis of lower limb bradykinesia in Parkinson's disease patients

Aim: Bradykinesia of the lower limb is an important limiting factor of the quality of life in parkinsonian patients. This study aims to develop quantitative measures of bradykinesia and to investigate the possible dissociation of amplitude and velocity measures and their dependence on movement direction during toe‐tapping.
Theories of Transitional Object Attachment: An Overview

In 1953, Donald Winnicott introduced the term 'transitional object' to describe those blankets, soft toys, and bits of cloth to which young children frequently develop intense, persistent attachments. Winnicott theorized that such T.O. attachments represent an essential phase of ego development leading to the establishment of a sense of self. Subsequent psychological theorists have linked the T.O. to the processes of: separation-individuation; ego and body ego development; the birth of memory, libidinal object constancy, and the capacity for symbolization, creativity; and the capacity for object relations and empathy. This paper reviews the major theories concerning the origin, development and psychological meaning of T.O. 's, and examines their validity in light of current empirical knowledge of T.O. behavior. An argument is made for viewing the T.O. as a developmental facilitator which may acquire different qualities and serve different psychological functions as the child moves toward physical and emotional independence.
Inhibition of collagen IV deposition promotes regeneration of injured CNS axons

Scarring impedes axon regrowth across the lesion site and is one major extrinsic constraint to effective regeneration in the adult mammalian central nervous system. In the present study we determined whether specific biochemical or immunochemical modulation of one major component of the scar, the basal membrane (BM), would provide a means to stimulate axon regeneration in the mechanically transected postcommissural fornix of the adult rat. Basal membrane developed within the first 2 weeks after transection in spatiotemporal coincidence with the abrupt growth arrest of spontaneously regrowing axons. Local injection of anticollagen IV antibodies or α, α′‐dipyridyl, an inhibitor of collagen triple helix formation and synthesis, significantly reduced lesion‐induced BM deposition. This treatment allowed massive axon elongation across the lesion site. Anterograde tracing provided unequivocal evidence that regenerating axons follow their original pathway, reinnervate the appropriate target, the mammillary body, and become remyelinated with compact myelin. Presynaptic electrophysiological recordings of regenerated fibre tracts showed recovery to nearly normal conduction properties. Our results indicate that lesion‐induced BM is an impediment for successful axonal regeneration and its reduction is a prerequisite and sufficient condition for regrowing axons to cross the lesion site.
Task-Based Decomposition of Factored POMDPs

Recently, partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP) solvers have shown the ability to scale up significantly using domain structure, such as factored representations. In many domains, the agent is required to complete a set of independent tasks. We propose to decompose a factored POMDP into a set of restricted POMDPs over subsets of task relevant state variables. We solve each such model independently, acquiring a value function. The combination of the value functions of the restricted POMDPs is then used to form a policy for the complete POMDP. We explain the process of identifying variables that correspond to tasks, and how to create a model restricted to a single task, or to a subset of tasks. We demonstrate our approach on a number of benchmarks from the factored POMDP literature, showing that our methods are applicable to models with more than 100 state variables.
Evaluation of ergocalciferol or cholecalciferol dosing, 1,600 IU daily or 50,000 IU monthly in older adults.

CONTEXT Whether ergocalciferol (D(2)) and cholecalciferol (D(3)) are equally effective to increase and maintain serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentration is controversial. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of daily and once monthly dosing of D(2) or D(3) on circulating 25(OH)D and serum and urinary calcium. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS In a university clinical research setting, 64 community dwelling adults age 65+ were randomly assigned to receive daily (1,600 IU) or once-monthly (50,000 IU) D(2) or D(3) for 1 yr. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Serum 25(OH)D, serum calcium, and 24-h urinary calcium were measured at months 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and 12. Serum PTH, bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, and N-telopeptide were measured at months 0, 3, 6, and 12. RESULTS Serum 25(OH)D was less than 30 ng/ml in 40% of subjects at baseline; after 12 months of vitamin D dosing, levels in 19% of subjects (n = 12, seven receiving daily doses and five monthly doses) remained low, despite compliance of more than 91%. D(2) dosing increased 25(OH)D(2) but produced a decline (P < 0.0001) in 25(OH)D(3). Substantial between-individual variation in 25(OH)D response was observed for both D(2) and D(3). The highest 25(OH)D observed was 72.5 ng/ml. Vitamin D administration did not alter serum calcium, PTH, bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, N-telopeptide, or 24-h urine calcium. CONCLUSIONS Overall, D(3) is slightly, but significantly, more effective than D(2) to increase serum 25(OH)D. One year of D(2) or D(3) dosing (1,600 IU daily or 50,000 IU monthly) does not produce toxicity, and 25(OH)D levels of less than 30 ng/ml persist in approximately 20% of individuals. Substantial between-individual response to administered vitamin D(2) or D(3) is observed.
Taking Tough Choices Seriously: Public Administration and Individual Moral Agency

Using the concepts of thick and thin relationships as the basis for ethical behavior, this paper critiques the emphasis on discretion in the mainstream administrative ethics literature and argues that moral and other dilemmas facing public administrators provide a more useful frame. Two examples drawn from the UK Hutton Investigation into the death of David Kelly are used to demonstrate the relevance and usefulness of this approach.
Exploring task difficulty in EFL reading assessment: The case of multiple matching tasks

This thesis investigates the relationship between characteristics of multiple matching reading tasks and learners’ performance on EFL reading comprehension tests. Multiple matching tasks are one of the testing techniques most commonly used in recent tests of reading in a second or foreign language. Such tasks are also included in the Hungarian School-leaving Examination as an innovative way of assessing Hungarian students’ foreign language reading abilities. However, a review of relevant literature suggests that no previous research has investigated the effect of task and item features specific to such test techniques. In the research reported in this thesis, three studies were conducted to explore the nature of multiple matching task techniques. This research investigated multiple matching reading tasks developed and pre-tested/piloted by the British Council-supported Hungarian English Examinations Reform Project. Study One used content analysis to identify item characteristics likely to affect performance on the tasks under investigation. Study Two, relying on think-aloud protocols generated by the subjects involved in the research, explored the skills, knowledge and processes students actually used when responding to the tasks and items. Study Three investigated the relationship between the item characteristics identified through content analysis and those revealed by the verbal protocols, on the one hand, and the item characteristics and the empirical item difficulties, on the other. As a result of the various analyses, nine of the 15 item characteristic variables identified were shown to have important effects on the difficulty of the reading items examined. The study showed that many of the variables underlying performance on the items were identified through content analysis, which suggests that test developers should carefully examine the content of test items. In line with previous research into item difficulty, the study also revealed that, on the one hand, different reading items are differentially difficult for individual test takers and, on the other hand, test takers may arrive at the same correct or incorrect answers using very different processes. One of the most important findings of the research is that students’ verbal reports showed that they often failed to select the correct answer to an item despite demonstrating the skill or knowledge intended to be assessed by the item in question, and that, on the other hand, there were cases where students responded to the item correctly despite an apparent failure to understand the meaning of relevant sections of the reading text. The general conclusion drawn from the findings of the three studies is that further research using multiple data sources, including content analysis and introspective data, is required to further explore the effects of item characteristic variables on the difficulty of reading test items in general, and the type of reading items investigated in this research, in particular.
DNMTs as potential therapeutic targets in high-risk pediatric embryonal brain tumors

Malignant brain tumors, which are the leading cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality in children, span a wide spectrum of diseases with distinct clinical phenotypes but may share remarkably similar morphologic features. Until recently, few molecular markers of childhood brain tumors have been identified, which has limited therapeutic advances. Recent global genomic studies have enabled robust molecular classification of childhood brain tumors and the identification and consolidation of rare, seemingly disparate clinical entities. It is now increasingly evident that deregulation of epigenetic processes contributes substantially to heterogeneity in tumor phenotypes and comprise significant drivers of cancer initiation and progression. Specifically, DNA hypermethylation and silencing of critical tumor suppressor genes by DNA methyltransferases (DNMT) has emerged as an important and fundamental mechanism in brain tumor pathogenesis. These observations have been underscored by the recent discovery of TTYH1-C19MC gene fusions in an aggressive pediatric embryonal brain tumor, which results in deregulation and increased expression of a neural-specific DNMT3B isoform in C19MC-associated brain tumors. Our observations that pharmacological inhibitors of DNMTs and histone deacetylases significantly inhibit growth of cells derived from C19MC-associated tumors indicate targeting of epigenomic modifiers as a novel therapeutic approach for these highly treatment-resistant tumors.
Young Children With Challenging Behavior

Using the five intervention elements described by Dunlap et al. (2006) as a guide, the authors of this article reviewed the functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and function-based intervention research of the past 17 years (1990-2007), focusing on a component analysis of FBA and function-based intervention procedures. Thirty-five studies were coded for FBA procedures, intervention procedures, routines and activities targeted for FBA or intervention maintenance, and generalization. Findings indicate that young children with challenging behavior have benefited from FBA and function-based interventions. However, despite identification of recommended FBA and function-based intervention practices (Dunlap et al., 2006), a variety of procedures were used, many lacking these important elements. More than half of the studies used analogue testing in a non-natural setting rather than testing the hypothesis in the natural environment. A limited number of studies included teachers and parents in the entire FBA and intervention process. Future directions are discussed.