Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE ORIGIN OF LARGE PECULIAR MOTIONS OF STAR-FORMING REGIONS AND SPIRAL STRUCTURES OF OUR GALAXY

Recent Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) observations determined the distances and proper motions of star-forming regions in spiral arms directly. They showed that star-forming regions and young stars have large peculiar motions as large as 30 km s−1 with complex structures. Such a large peculiar motion is incompatible with the prediction of the standard theory of quasi-stationary spiral arms. We use a high-resolution, self-consistent N-body+hydrodynamical simulation to explore how the spiral arms are formed and maintained, and how star-forming regions move. We found that arms are not quasi-stationary but transient and recurrent, as suggested in alternative theories of spiral structures. Because of this transient nature of the spiral arms, star-forming regions exhibit a trend of large and complex non-circular motions, which is qualitatively consistent with the VLBI observations. Owing to this large non-circular motion, a kinematically estimated gas map of our Galaxy has large systematic errors of ∼2–3 kpc in the distance from the Sun.
Experiences with the evaluation of CVE applications

We present our experience with a usability evaluation of two prototype CVE applications being developed by the COVEN project. The applications are a teleconferencing system aimed at future business users of CVEs, and a holiday planning environment for the use of the general public. Our concerns in the evaluations were three fold: to refine the design of these applications, to gain further understanding of the component technologies of CVEs, and to reflect upon methodologies for evaluation. We report upon two main threads of investigation: a usability inspection of the applications, and a series of network trials. We discuss some important outstanding issues for the system designer, and suggest several guidelines for the application builder. Finally we reflect upon the methodologies chosen and suggest a focus for future CVE evaluations.
Road pricing: theory and evidence

Theory. The Rationale for Road Pricing: Standard Theory and Latest Advances. Second-Best Marginal Cost Pricing for Imperfect Substitutes in Urban Networks. The Impact on Network Performance of Drivers Response to Alternative Road Pricing Schemes. Optimal Locations and Charges for Cordon Schemes. Time-Varying Road Pricing and Choice of Toll Locations. Road Pricing and Public Transport. Marginal Social Cost Pricing for all Transport Modes and the Effects of Modal Budget Constraints. Evidence. Transport Policies in Singapore. Norwegian Urban Tolls. Road Pricing in the UK. The US Experience: Pilot Projects. Welfare and Distributional Effects of Road Pricing Schemes for Metropolitan Washington DC.
Improving TTS synthesis for emotional expressivity by a prosodic parameterization of affect based on linguistic analysis

Several experiments have been carried out that revealed weaknesses of the current Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems in their emotional expressivity. Although some TTS systems allow XML-based representations of prosodic and/or phonetic variables, few publications considered, as a pre-processing stage, the use of intelligent text processing to detect affective information that can be used to tailor the parameters needed for emotional expressivity. This paper describes a technique for an automatic prosodic parameterization based on affective clues. This technique recognizes the affective information conveyed in a text and, accordingly to its emotional connotation, assigns appropriate pitch accents and other prosodic parameters by XML-tagging. This pre-processing assists the TTS system to generate synthesized speech that contains emotional clues. The experimental results are encouraging and suggest the possibility of suitable emotional expressivity in speech synthesis.
IMPROVING TWO RESULTS IN MULTIPLE TESTING

Two known results in multiple testing, one relating to the directional error control of augmented step-down procedure proved by Shaffer (1980) and the other on the monotonicity of the critical values of step-up procedure proved by Dalal and Mallows (1992), are revisited and improved in this article. Shaffer’s result on the directional error control property of augmented step-down procedure with independent test statistics is improved by relaxing the sufficient conditions; whereas, the improvement of Dalal and Mallows’ result on the increasing property of the critical values of step-up procedure with independent test statistics is made by establishing it for generalized step-up-step-down procedure.
The Multidimensional Nature of Social Capital: An Empirical Investigation for Older People in Europe

Social capital is a rapidly expanding research theme within economics and has become a popular concept with policy makers in both developed and developing countries. Despite this growth in popularity, social capital remains a controversial concept among economists. We argue that this is largely due to a fundamental mismatch between the theoretical coverage and the vast majority of empirical work. Utilising data from a large cross-Europe survey of older people we use principal components analysis to demonstrate that social capital has multiple dimensions, and then explore the extent to which these latent dimensions coincide with the theoretical constructs of social capital. We use the association between social capital and a number of measures of health and well-being to demonstrate the importance of taking account of the multiple dimensions of social capital in empirical work. As well as showing that all the underlying constructs of social capital are significantly associated with health and well-being, our results also reveal that while in general this association is positive, close bonding in the form of household ties is inversely related to health and well-being; this contradicts the implicit assumption, often made in the literature that, in relation to social capital, more is always better.
Identifying intrusions in computer networks with principal component analysis

Most current anomaly intrusion detection systems (IDSs) detect computer network behavior as normal or abnormal but cannot identify the type of attacks. Moreover, most current intrusion detection methods cannot process large amounts of audit data for real-time operation. In this paper, we propose a novel method for intrusion identification in computer networks based on principal component analysis (PCA). Each network connection is transformed into an input data vector. PCA is employed to reduce the dimensionality of the data vectors and identification is handled in a low dimensional space with high efficiency and low use of system resources. The normal behavior is profiled based on normal data for anomaly detection and models of each type of attack are built based on attack data for intrusion identification. The distance between a vector and its reconstruction onto those reduced subspaces representing the different types of attacks and normal activities is used for identification. The method is tested with network data from MIT Lincoln labs for the 1998 DARPA intrusion detection evaluation program and testing results show that the model is promising in terms of identification accuracy and computational efficiency for real-time intrusion identification.
Job satisfaction and organisational commitment: a comparative study between academic and support staff at a higher education institution in the Western Cape

Research suggests that increasing employee commitment and satisfaction impacts on employee productivity and job performance, and has implications for job related behaviours such as absenteeism, turnover and tardiness. Moreover, literature also suggests that downsizing and cost-cutting negatively impacts on the satisfaction and commitment of employees and impacts on the effectiveness of organisations. The contention is that in order to reconcile the need to achieve high quality and organisational effectiveness in an environment of declining per capita resources and change, it will be necessary to secure a high level of commitment and satisfaction from all those employed in the higher education sector. This study therefore seeks to investigate the factors that produce commitment and satisfaction in academic and support staff respectively and to understand any important similarities and differences that may exist. The sample group consists of 111 support staff and 132 academic staff (N=243) at a higher education institution in the Western Cape. Two staff members did not indicate the category of staff they belonged to. A biographical questionnaire, the Job Descriptive Index (illI) questionnaire and the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) were administered to the respondents. Statistical analysis includes Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, multiple regression analysis and analysis of variance. The results of the study demonstrate no significant difference in organisational commitment between academic and support staff, although job satisfaction is higher in academic staff than in support staff. Furthermore, academic staff in the sample are relatively satisfied with the nature of the work that they perform, as well as with their co-workers and opportunities for
A Fuzzy-based Prior Knowledge Diagnostic Model with Multiple Attribute Evaluation

Prior knowledge is a very important part of teaching and learning, as it affects how instructors and students interact with the learning materials. In general, tests are used to assess students’ prior knowledge. Nevertheless, conventional testing approaches usually assign only an overall score to each student, and this may mean that students are unable to understand their own specific weaknesses. To address this problem, previous work has presented a prior knowledge diagnosis model with a single attribute to assist instructors and students in diagnosing and strengthening prior knowledge. However, this model neglects the fact that a diagnostic decision might involve multiple attributes. In order to provide more a precise diagnosis to instructors and students, this study thus proposes a fuzzy prior knowledge diagnosis model with a multiple attribute decision making technique for diagnosing and strengthening students’ prior knowledge. The experimental results from an interdisciplinary bioinformatics course have demonstrated the utility and effectiveness of this innovative approach.
Political Appointments and Coalition Management in Brazil, 2007-2010

Studies on coalition management in presidential systems usually focus on two types of goods used by the president and formateur party to hold together coalitions: exchange goods (such as individual budget amendments) and coalition goods (such as ministries). This research notes analyzes, with an original dataset of party members and political appointees in Brazil, a different type of good: presidential political appointments. Our study shows that partisan political appointees vary greatly among Brazilian ministries and within them. We also found that there is a disconnect between how many seats a political party holds in Congress and the number of political appointment offices it controls. This has implications for the literature on bureaucracy and politics and the literature on coalition management.
War and Shadows: The Haunting of Vietnam

1. The Problem 2. Foundations 3. Revelations 4. The Living and the Dead 5. Afterlives 6. Problem Solving 7. "Superstition" in a Secular State 8. Revivals 9. Conclusion Epilogue Appendix 1: Table of Suffering Appendix 2: Chronology oft he War Notes References Index
CEO Power, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Firm Value: A Test of Agency Theory

This study explores whether firms with powerful CEOs tend to invest (more) in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as the over-investment hypothesis based on classical agency theory predicts. In addition, this paper tests an alternative hypothesis that if CSR investment is indeed an agency cost like the over-investment hypothesis suggests, then those activities may destroy firm value. Using CEO pay slice (Bebchuck, Cremers, and Peyer, 2011), CEO tenure, and CEO duality to measure CEO power, we show that CEO power is negatively correlated with firm’s choice to engage in CSR and with the level of CSR activities in the firm. Furthermore, our results suggest that CSR activities are in fact value-enhancing in that as firms engage in more CSR activities their value increases.
Users' perceptions and uses of financial reports of small and medium companies (SMCs) in transitional economies: Qualitative evidence from Vietnam

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an exploratory study examining users' perceptions and uses of SMC financial reports in the transitional economy of Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a wide range of users of financial information. Findings – The range of users of financial information was limited, mainly the tax authorities and government agencies. Banks were considered to be another important user, but only by a minority of the companies interviewed. External users were concerned with the reliability of information provided by SMCs. In addition to the main indicators in the financial statements, cash flow information and forecasts were seen as important, but these were normally unavailable or poorly presented. Research limitations/implications – As the study focuses on a small sample of users of financial information, the generalisability of the findings is restricted. Appropriately designed quantitative studies could be conducted to verify the findings of this study. Practical implications – Accounting expertise was seen as the main concern in the directors' use of information. The study also found a low awareness of cost-benefit considerations amongst the directors of SMCs. Auditing was regarded as infeasible because of the low quality of the audits available and inadequate capacity of auditors to supply the small company market. Originality/value – The study offers rich data on the users' perceptions and uses of financial information of SMCs. This is the first time this type of research has been conducted in Vietnam.
Marine boundary layer clouds at the heart of tropical cloud feedback uncertainties in climate models

The radiative response of tropical clouds to global warming exhibits a large spread among climate models, and this constitutes a major source of uncertainty for climate sensitivity estimates. To better interpret the origin of that uncertainty, we analyze the sensitivity of the tropical cloud radiative forcing to a change in sea surface temperature that is simulated by 15 coupled models simulating climate change and current interannual variability. We show that it is in regimes of large‐scale subsidence that the model results (1) differ the most in climate change and (2) disagree the most with observations in the current climate (most models underestimate the interannual sensitivity of clouds albedo to a change in temperature). This suggests that the simulation of the sensitivity of marine boundary layer clouds to changing environmental conditions constitutes, currently, the main source of uncertainty in tropical cloud feedbacks simulated by general circulation models.
CD18 (ITGB2) expression in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia is regulated by DNA methylation-dependent and -independent mechanisms

The integrin lymphocyte function-associated antigen 1 (LFA-1; CD11A/CD18; ITGAL/ITGB2), is a key regulator of lymphocyte trafficking, activation and prolonged lymphocyte residence in lymph nodes (LNs) (Reichardt et al, 2013); yet, little is known about the regulation of ITGAL (CD11A) and ITGB2 (CD18) transcription.
Effects of valsartan on ventricular arrhythmia induced by programmed electrical stimulation in rats with myocardial infarction

The impact of angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) on electrical remodelling after myocardial infarction (MI) remains unclear. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of valsartan on incidence of ventricular arrhythmia induced by programmed electrical stimulation (PES) and potential link to changes of myocardial connexins (Cx) 43 expression and distribution in MI rats. Fifty‐nine rats were randomly divided into three groups: Sham (n = 20), MI (n = 20) and MI + Val (20 mg/kg/day per gavage, n = 19). After eight weeks, the incidence of PES‐induced ventricular tachycardia (VT) and fibrillation (VF) was compared among groups. mRNA and protein expressions of Cx43, angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1R) in the LV border zone (BZ) and non‐infarct zone (NIZ) were determined by real‐time PCR and Western blot, respectively. Connexins 43 protein and collagen distribution were examined by immunohistochemistry in BZ and NIZ sections from MI hearts. Valsartan effectively improved the cardiac function, reduced the prolonged QTc (163.7 ± 3.7 msec. versus 177.8 ± 4.5 msec., P < 0.05) after MI and the incidence of VT or VF evoked by PES (21.1% versus 55%, P < 0.05). Angiotensin II type 1 receptor expression was significantly increased in BZ and NIZ sections after MI, which was down‐regulated by valsartan. The mRNA and protein expressions of Cx43 in BZ were significantly reduced after MI and up‐regulated by valsartan. Increased collagen deposition and reduced Cx43 expression in BZ after MI could be partly attenuated by Valsartan. Valsartan reduced the incidence of PES‐induced ventricular arrhythmia, this effect was possibly through modulating the myocardial AT1R and Cx43 expression.
Foreign Exchange Rate Risk in a Small Open Economy

Resolving the forward premium puzzle requires a volatile foreign exchange rate risk premium that covaries negatively with the expected depreciation rate. Earlier work has shown how models featuring consumption habits can generate such premia when either trade costs or 'deep habits' are assumed. We show that as long as consumption habits are slow-moving and shocks are highly persistent, a standard small open endowment economy - without any additional features - can address the puzzle. Moreover endogenising the labour supply decision in the small open economy can improve the model's ability to match risk premia observations so long as it makes business cycles less synchronised.
Predicting student risks through longitudinal analysis

Poor academic performance in K-12 is often a precursor to unsatisfactory educational outcomes such as dropout, which are associated with significant personal and social costs. Hence, it is important to be able to predict students at risk of poor performance, so that the right personalized intervention plans can be initiated. In this paper, we report on a large-scale study to identify students at risk of not meeting acceptable levels of performance in one state-level and one national standardized assessment in Grade 8 of a major US school district. An important highlight of our study is its scale - both in terms of the number of students included, the number of years and the number of features, which provide a very solid grounding to the research. We report on our experience with handling the scale and complexity of data, and on the relative performance of various machine learning techniques we used for building predictive models. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to predict students at-risk of poor assessment performance with a high degree of accuracy, and to do so well in advance. These insights can be used to pro-actively initiate personalized intervention programs and improve the chances of student success.
A Multisensory Cortical Network for Understanding Speech in Noise

Abstract In noisy environments, listeners tend to hear a speaker's voice yet struggle to understand what is said. The most effective way to improve intelligibility in such conditions is to watch the speaker's mouth movements. Here we identify the neural networks that distinguish understanding from merely hearing speech, and determine how the brain applies visual information to improve intelligibility. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that understanding speech-in-noise is supported by a network of brain areas including the left superior parietal lobule, the motor/premotor cortex, and the left anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), a likely apex of the acoustic processing hierarchy. Multisensory integration likely improves comprehension through improved communication between the left temporal–occipital boundary, the left medial-temporal lobe, and the left STS. This demonstrates how the brain uses information from multiple modalities to improve speech comprehension in naturalistic, acoustically adverse conditions.
The Syntax and Semantics of Unselected Embedded Questions

The selection of clausal complement type by embedding predicates constitutes a privileged domain for the assessment of interface issues between different modules of the grammar. This article addresses the selectional problem posed by embedded if-questions (of semantic type (t, t) appearing as arguments of noninterrogative predicates like 'admit' or 'say' (which are assumed to select a that-clause of type t). We show that such UNSELECTED EMBEDDED QUESTIONS (UEQs) are semantically sensitive to the same set of elements as POLARITY SENSITIVE ITEMS, and this sensitivity constrains their distribution and interpretation. The proposal is that UEQs are headed by a semantically sensitive determiner Δ, which is covert in English (a counterpart of either) but overt in Basque. After raising, the UEQ leaves a variable of type t, thus solving the selectional problem. The interplay between s-selection, c-selection and lexical semantic specifications is argued to account for a number of other puzzles in clausal complementation.
Exploring curriculum experiences of haircare and cosmetology students at Cato Manor Technical College.

There has always been a division between technical educators and technical students and the "so called" academic educators and academic students. In the apartheid days those who pursued a technical college education were shunned as those who could not cope with the rigors of academia. Technical college education was perceived as less desirable and for slow learners. Fundamental social changes have placed new demands on the Further Education and Training sector ( FET). It has become imperative to move away from the traditional divides between academic and applied learning, theory and practice and knowledge and skills. Through the National Curriculum Framework, South African Education has been gIven a historic opportunity to strategically shape and transform the current disparate educl,ltion and training system into an integrated system that addresses the needs of the learners, the economy and the community. The new FET policy structure within which Technical Colleges operate will stimulate and empower learners to acquire knowledge and skills for employability , . and relevant values to respond to . challenges confidently. The new curriculum moves towards a flexible access to further education, lifelong learning, higher education and facilitates the transition from school to work while ensuring that education and training is a quality provision aimed at equipping learners with competencies to find jobs. This study explored the curriculum expenences of haircare and cosmetology students at the Cato Manor Technical college. The study focused on the following critical question:-