Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Foreign Language Teachers’ Attitude toward Authentic Assessment in Language

Problem Statement: A rapidly increasing interest has been observed in finding alternatives to traditional forms of assessment in education. For at least three decades, teachers, curriculum developers and program administrators have been studying hard to identify appropriate procedures to assess the knowledge and abilities of students. The term “authentic assessment” has emerged from this need in the field of education, and can be described as “the multiple forms of assessment that reflect student learning, achievement, motivation, and attitudes on instructionally-relevant classroom activities” (O’Malley and Valdez Pierce, 1996, p. 4). Given that the topic is a relatively new and challenging one, it has been observed that to examine language teachers’ perceptions and attitude toward authentic assessment is quite important. Purpose of Study: In this study, a questionnaire which aims to determine the ideas and opinions of English language instructors regarding the use of authentic assessment has been applied and the results of the study have been presented and discussed. Method: In order to find answers to the research question “What are the language teaching instructors’ ideas and attitude toward authentic assessment in language teaching classes? ”, a questionnaire which is called “Authentic Assessment Inventory for Goal Setting”(O’Malley and Valdez; 1992) has been used in this study. This inventory has been applied to 37 randomly-selected instructors from Atilim University Preparatory School of English. The inventory consists of 15 questions that can be answered with three alternatives, mainly, 1 = not at all, 2 = somewhat, 3 = a great deal. Findings: Answers to the questions in the inventory where handled under two main categories: at what point the instructors are now, and where they wish to be concerning the issue of authentic assessment. Conclusion and Recommendations: As a concluding remark for the study, it will be pedagogically useful to attach more importance to authentic assessment in curriculum and educational programs of language teaching. Additionally, it is recommended that more scientific research be conducted about authentic assessment, in particular on goal-setting, educational planning and program development.
The Link between Leadership and Followership: How Affirming Social Identity Translates Vision into Action

Two experiments test the hypothesis that support for leaders is enhanced when their decisions affirm a distinct social identity that is shared with followers. In Experiment 1, participants showed less support for a leader who favored ingroup members who were relatively sympathetic to an outgroup position than for one who favored ingroup members who opposed an outgroup position. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which also showed that this pattern extended to support for the leader’s novel plans. Although participants indicated that they supported a leader who behaved evenhandedly toward all ingroup members as much as one whose behavior was identity-affirming, they were unwilling to back up the evenhanded leader with written comments and arguments. These data suggest that leaders’ capacity to engender active followership is contingent on their ability to promote collective interests associated with a shared ingroup identity.
Beyond Home-Host Dichotomies: A Comparative Examination of Gender Relations in a Transnational Mexican Community

Based on a qualitative study with women from a transnational Mexican community, the authors examine how women's perceptions of gender empowerment, adherence and practice of gender ideals, and the household division of labor vary across generations and borders. Generally, immigration scholars suggest that employment and immigration experiences empower women and create greater gender equality among families. This study problematizes these assumptions because they are based on home-host dichotomies, which suggest that “home” countries are the sites of patriarchal oppression, whereas “host” societies offer women greater equality and freedom from patriarchy. This study finds that women in the United States report higher levels of familial authority than women in Mexico but experience a greater burden with household chores and wage labor. This study also finds that although women in Mexico and older generations of women across borders discursively uphold ideas of male dominance, there are gaps between gender ideals and practices.
WIYN Open Cluster Study. XI. WIYN 3.5 meter Deep Photometry of M35 (NGC 2168)

We present deep BVI observations of the core of M35 and a nearby comparison field obtained at the WIYN 3.5 m telescope under excellent seeing conditions. These observations probe to V > 26 and display the lower main sequence in BV and VI CMDs down to V = 23.3 and 24.6, respectively. At these faint magnitudes the background Galactic field stars are far more numerous than the cluster stars, yet by using a smoothing technique and CMD density distribution subtraction we are able to recover the cluster fiducial main sequence and luminosity function to V = 24.6. We find the location of the M35 main sequence in these CMDs to be consistent with earlier work on other open clusters, specifically NGC 188, 2420, and 2477. We compare these open cluster fiducial sequences with stellar models by Baraffe et al., Siess et al., Girardi et al., and Yi et al. and find that the models are too blue in both B-V and V-I for stars less massive than ∼0.4 M⊙. At least part of the problem appears to be underestimated opacity in the bluer bandpasses, with the amount of missing opacity increasing toward the blue. M35 contains stars to the limit of the extracted main sequence, at M ≈ 0.10–0.15 M⊙, suggesting that M35 may harbor a large number of brown dwarfs, which should be easy targets for sensitive near-IR instrumentation on 8–10 m telescopes. We also identify a new candidate white dwarf (WD) in M35 at V = 21.36 ± 0.01. Depending on which WD models are used in interpreting this cluster candidate, it is either a very high mass WD (1.05 ± 0.05 M⊙), somewhat older (0.19–0.26 Gyr, 3–4 σ) than our best isochrone age (150 Myr), or it is a modestly massive WD (0.67–0.78 M⊙) that is much too old (0.42–0.83 Gyr) to belong to the cluster. Follow-up spectroscopy is required to resolve this issue.
Urinary proteomics for the study of genetic kidney diseases

ABSTRACT Despite their low prevalence, genetic kidney diseases (GKD) still represent a serious health problem. They often lead to kidney failure and to the consequent need of dialysis or kidney transplant. To date, reliable diagnosis requires laborious genetic tests and/or a renal biopsy. Moreover, only scant and non-specific markers exist for prognostic purposes. Biomarkers assayed in an easily available and low-cost sample, such as urine, would be highly valuable. Urinary proteomics can provide clues related to their development through the identification of differentially expressed proteins codified by the affected genes, or other dis-regulated species, in total or fractionated urine, providing novel mechanistic insights. In this review, the authors summarize and discuss the results of the main proteomic investigations on GKD urine samples and in urinary extracellular vesicles.
Extracting words from the speech stream at first exposure

The earliest stages of adult language acquisition have received increased attention in recent years (cf. Carroll, introduction to this issue). The study reported here aims to contribute to this discussion by investigating the role of several variables in the development of word recognition strategies during the very first hours of exposure to a novel target language (TL). Eighteen native speakers of French with no previous exposure to Polish were tested at intervals throughout a 6.5-hour intensive Polish course on their ability to extract target words from Polish sentences. Following Rast and Dommergues’ (2003) first exposure study, stimuli were designed to investigate the effect of three factors: the lexical transparency of the target word with respect to the native language (L1); the frequency of the target word in the input; the target word’s position in the sentence. Results suggest that utterance position plays an essential role in learners’ ability to recognize words in the signal at first exposure, indicating acute sensitivity to the edges of prosodic domains. In addition, transparent words (e.g. professor ‘professor’) were recognized significantly better than non-transparent words (e.g. lekarz ‘doctor’), suggesting that first exposure learners are highly dependent on L1 phonological forms. Furthermore, the frequency of a target word in the input did not affect performance, suggesting that at the very beginning stages of learning, the amount of exposure to a lexical item alone does not play a significant role in recognition.
Correlates of Perceived Parental Favoritism

Abstract A questionnaire study of over 600 male and female high school students (intact families and with at least one sibling) explored the phenomenon of parental favoritism. About half the respondents perceived the existence of favoritism on the part of one or both of their parents. Girls more often than boys were perceptive of such favoritism. The youngest child in the family was more often the favorite of the mother and the middle child was least often a parental favorite. Parental favoritism was associated with perceived parental incompatibility. Teenagers who perceived a sibling as being favored evidenced increased angry and depressive feelings as well as identity confusion. This latter effect was most pronounced when a parent of the same sex favored a sibling of the same sex as the respondent.
Asynchronous latency analysis on decentralized iterative algorithms for large scale networked systems

Decentralized methods are often desirable for solving many control and optimization problems for large scale networked systems. Convergence of the decentralized iterative method may be affected by the delay caused by communication and computation. This paper investigates the latency impact of asynchronous decentralized algorithms with the contractive property on convergence. An asynchronous decentralized algorithm is presented with its convergence conditions and the theoretical upper bound of latency is derived. Numerical examples are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm, and the testing results are analyzed.
Offset-control attenuates context conditioning induced by US-unpredictability in a human conditioned suppression paradigm

We investigated whether offset-control of the unconditioned stimulus (US) reduces context conditioning induced by US-unpredictability within a human conditioned suppression preparation. We also examined lack of control vs . loss of control. Three groups (No Controllability, NC; Controllability, C; Loss of Controllability, LC) received unsignaled USs during two learning phases (ACQ1-2). The NC group, never had offset-control, whereas the C group, always had offset-control. The LC group, had offset-control during ACQ1, but not during ACQ2. Results indicated that US-unpredictability led to contextual conditioned suppression during ACQ1, only when participants did not have offset-control; when they did, no context conditioning was established. From ACQ1 to ACQ2, contextual conditioned suppression increased in the LC group, but it was not more pronounced than in the NC group. These data suggest that offset-control attenuates context conditioning induced by US-unpredictability and – at least in this paradigm – loss of control is not worse than lack of control.
Changes in Muscle and Cerebral Deoxygenation and Perfusion during Repeated Sprints in Hypoxia to Exhaustion

During supramaximal exercise, exacerbated at exhaustion and in hypoxia, the circulatory system is challenged to facilitate oxygen delivery to working tissues through cerebral autoregulation which influences fatigue development and muscle performance. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of different levels of normobaric hypoxia on the changes in peripheral and cerebral oxygenation and performance during repeated sprints to exhaustion. Eleven recreationally active participants (six men and five women; 26.7 ± 4.2 years, 68.0 ± 14.0 kg, 172 ± 12 cm, 14.1 ± 4.7% body fat) completed three randomized testing visits in conditions of simulated altitude near sea-level (~380 m, FIO2 20.9%), ~2000 m (FIO2 16.5 ± 0.4%), and ~3800 m (FIO2 13.3 ± 0.4%). Each session began with a 12-min warm-up followed by two 10-s sprints and the repeated cycling sprint (10-s sprint: 20-s recovery) test to exhaustion. Measurements included power output, vastus lateralis, and prefrontal deoxygenation [near-infrared spectroscopy, delta (Δ) corresponds to the difference between maximal and minimal values], oxygen uptake, femoral artery blood flow (Doppler ultrasound), hemodynamic variables (transthoracic impedance), blood lactate concentration, and rating of perceived exertion. Performance (total work, kJ; −27.1 ± 25.8% at 2000 m, p < 0.01 and −49.4 ± 19.3% at 3800 m, p < 0.001) and pulse oxygen saturation (−7.5 ± 6.0%, p < 0.05 and −18.4 ± 5.3%, p < 0.001, respectively) decreased with hypoxia, when compared to 400 m. Muscle Δ hemoglobin difference ([Hbdiff]) and Δ tissue saturation index (TSI) were lower (p < 0.01) at 3800 m than at 2000 and 400 m, and lower Δ deoxyhemoglobin resulted at 3800 m compared with 2000 m. There were reduced changes in peripheral [Δ[Hbdiff], ΔTSI, Δ total hemoglobin ([tHb])] and greater changes in cerebral (Δ[Hbdiff], Δ[tHb]) oxygenation throughout the test to exhaustion (p < 0.05). Changes in cerebral deoxygenation were greater at 3800 m than at 2000 and 400 m (p < 0.01). This study confirms that performance in hypoxia is limited by continually decreasing oxygen saturation, even though exercise can be sustained despite maximal peripheral deoxygenation. There may be a cerebral autoregulation of increased perfusion accounting for the decreased arterial oxygen content and allowing for task continuation, as shown by the continued cerebral deoxygenation.
Assessing Social Participation of Students With Special Needs in Inclusive Education: Validation of the Social Participation Questionnaire

This study addresses the convergent validity of a new teacher questionnaire to assess the social participation of students with special needs in regular primary schools. The Social Participation Questionnaire (SPQ) consists of four subscales representing four key themes of social participation: friendships/relationships, contacts/interactions, student’s social self-perception, and acceptance by classmates. The study took place in Grades 1 to 3 of regular Dutch primary schools that had at least one student with an official special-needs statement. A confirmatory factor analysis using the LISREL program provided evidence for the SPQ’s convergent validity. The outcomes support the model of social participation distinguishing four key themes. The fit indexes suggest that our model is theoretically viable for Grades 1 and 2 but only partly viable for Grade 3.
Improving Decision Analytics with Deep Learning: the Case of Financial Disclosures

Decision analytics commonly focuses on the text mining of financial news sources in order to provide managerial decision support and to predict stock market movements. Existing predictive frameworks almost exclusively apply traditional machine learning methods, whereas recent research indicates that traditional machine learning methods are not sufficiently capable of extracting suitable features and capturing the non-linear nature of complex tasks. As a remedy, novel deep learning models aim to overcome this issue by extending traditional neural network models with additional hidden layers. Indeed, deep learning has been shown to outperform traditional methods in terms of predictive performance. In this paper, we adapt the novel deep learning technique to financial decision support. In this instance, we aim to predict the direction of stock movements following financial disclosures. As a result, we show how deep learning can outperform the accuracy of random forests as a benchmark for machine learning by 5.66%.
Community Structure and Science Framing of News About Local Environmental Risks

When newspapers cover stories about environmental pollution, the nature of the community they serve can indirectly influence the contents of that coverage. This article describes research showing that newspapers in pluralistic (i.e., usually larger) communities are more likely than papers in homogeneous (i.e., usually smaller) communities to interpret the pollution as a science story. Framing a pollution incident as a science story makes it more likely that the story will link the pollution to health effects, especially when (1) newspapers in pluralistic communities are dealing with a local polluter, and (2) newspapers in homogeneous communities are writing about pollution problems outside the community. These results are consistent with the Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien conflict/consensus model, which posits that the way power is distributed in a community affects the way that stories are selected and framed by local mass media.
Encoding and storage effects in 7‐year‐olds' and 10‐year‐olds' memory for faces

In an attempt to examine children's encoding and storage of faces, two experiments are reported on temporal factors in recognition memory for unfamiliar faces by 7-year-old and 10-year-old children. In Expt 1, viewing durations of 1 and 3 seconds and delay intervals of 0 and 1 week were examined. The younger children were less accurate at immediate test: no difference between the two age groups was evident after a week's interval. Faces presented for 3 s were recognized more accurately than those shown for 1 s. Experiment 2 involved a modification in design and temporal parameters: faces were shown for either 2 or 6 s and testing followed immediately, a day later, or a week later. The performance of 7-year-olds was unaffected by duration of encoding or length of interval. In contrast the 10-year-old children performed better with 6 s compared with 2 s exposure. They also made more accurate recognition at immediate test compared with intervals of 1 day or 1 week. The results of these two experiments provide the first systematically derived data on the way children process facial information as a function of viewing duration and delay interval. Theoretical and practical implications of the observations are discussed.
PerCEN: a cluster randomized controlled trial of person-centered residential care and environment for people with dementia

ABSTRACT Background: There is good evidence of the positive effects of person-centered care (PCC) on agitation in dementia. We hypothesized that a person-centered environment (PCE) would achieve similar outcomes by focusing on positive environmental stimuli, and that there would be enhanced outcomes by combining PCC and PCE. Methods: 38 Australian residential aged care homes with scope for improvement in both PCC and PCE were stratified, then randomized to one of four intervention groups: (1) PCC; (2) PCE; (3) PCC +PCE; (4) no intervention. People with dementia, over 60 years of age and consented were eligible. Co-outcomes assessed pre and four months post-intervention and at 8 months follow-up were resident agitation, emotional responses in care, quality of life and depression, and care interaction quality. Results: From 38 homes randomized, 601 people with dementia were recruited. At follow-up the mean change for quality of life and agitation was significantly different for PCE (p = 0.02, p = 0.05, respectively) and PCC (p = 0.0003, p = 0.002 respectively), compared with the non-intervention group (p = 0.48, p = 0.93 respectively). Quality of life improved non-significantly for PCC+PCE (p = 0.08), but not for agitation (p = 0.37). Improvements in care interaction quality (p = 0.006) and in emotional responses to care (p = 0.01) in PCC+PCE were not observed in the other groups. Depression scores did not change in any of the groups. Intervention compliance for PCC was 59%, for PCE 54% and for PCC+PCE 66%. Conclusion: The hypothesis that PCC+PCE would improve quality of life and agitation even further was not supported, even though there were improvements in the quality of care interactions and resident emotional responses to care for some of this group. The Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry Number is ACTRN 12608000095369.
The Effects of Vitamin D Supplementation on Glucose Control and Insulin Resistance in Patients with Diabetes Type 2: A Randomized Clinical Trial Study

Background: Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in diabetes type 2 and this vitamin may be related to insulin action. This randomized controlled trial study was done to evaluate the effect of vitamin D supplementation on glucose control and insulin resistance in patients with diabetes type 2. Methods: Participants of this randomized clinical trial study consisted of 28 patients with type 2 diabetes who received 100 microgram (4000 IU) vitamin D and 30 diabetic patients who received placebo for 2 months between September 2012 and February 2013. The effect of vitamin D on glucose control was assessed by measuring HbA1c and insulin resistance as HOMA-IR at the baseline and the end of the intervention. Results: The results showed a significant decrease in HbA1c (from 7.29 ± 0.22 % to 6.76 ± 0.18 %, P<0.001) and insulin concentration (from 8.24 ± 0.97 μIU/mL to 6.55 ± 0.28 μIU/mL, P=0.048), but a non-significant decrease in HOMA-IR in vitamin D group. Also, HDL-C level increased significantly in both of vitamin D (P=0.046) and placebo groups (P=0.028). Conclusion: It seems that vitamin D supplementation has beneficial effects on glucose homeostasis and can increases insulin sensitivity in diabetic 2 patients.
Model Error Correction for Linear Methods in PET Neuroreceptor Measurements

Graphical analysis methods are widely used in positron emission tomography quantification because of their simplicity and model independence. But they may, particularly for reversible kinetics, lead to bias in the estimated parameters. The source of the bias is commonly attributed to noise in the data. Assuming a two-tissue compartmental model for neuroreceptor studies, we investigate the bias that originates from model error. This bias is an intrinsic property of the simplified linear models used for limited scan durations, and it is exaggerated by random noise and numerical quadrature error. Conditions are derived under which Logan’s graphical method either over- or under-estimates the distribution volume in the noise-free case. The bias caused by model error is quantified analytically. The presented analysis shows that the bias of graphical methods is inversely proportional to the dissociation rate. Furthermore, visual examination of the linearity of the Logan plot is not sufficient for guaranteeing that equilibrium has been