Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural and Behavioral Antecedents of Change

This study investigates what determines social actors’ motivations and opportunities to risk changing their current courses of action and the extent to which they are likely to change, by integrating structural and behavioral perspectives on decision making. Behavioral perspectives argue that performance relative to aspirations determines the actors’ risk preference and motivation to change, while structural perspectives suggest that the actors’ choices and actions are enabled and constrained by the opportunities surrounding their structural positions to form exchange relations with the external audiences. We propose a theoretical model of how the actors’ status, distinctiveness, and relative performance interact to influence their motivations and opportunities to change, resulting in differential responsiveness to relative performance in terms of the degree of change. This model is empirically examined and supported in the context of the U.S. feature film industry between 1986 and 2006, where film directors decide the distances of change in the genre repertoires for their next film project. Overall, this study shows the importance of considering the interactions between the structural and behavioral antecedents to understand when and how social actors make decisions to change in an attempt to survive and prosper in dynamic environments.
An investigation of the validity and reliability of psychometric characteristics of five facet mindfulness questionnaire in Iranian non-clinical samples

Introduction: Mindfulness has been an area of increasing interest and research to psychologists during recent decades. Considering the importance of this construct, authors have been striving to make an evaluating questionnaire. The purpose of the present study was to investigate validity and reliability of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) through Iranian non-clinical samples. Method: 435 students of Shahed University participated in this study. To calculate the reliability, internal consistency and test- retest were used. To calculate the validity, Neo-FFI (Costa & Mccrae, 1992), Emotion Intelligence Questionnaire (1992), Well-being Questionnaire (Tabasi, 2004), and the Scl-25 (Najarian & Davoodi, 2001) were used. The questionnaires were selected in terms of literature and the relationship between their concepts and mindfulness. Result: Results show good reliability (α = .55-.83), adequate convergent and discriminate validity as for Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire in Iranian non-clinical samples. Results also suggest positive correlation between mindfulness and a number number of 5 personality factors, emotional intelligence, well-being and psychological symptoms plus negative correlation with other factors. Results show that we can use the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire for other Iranian non-clinical research samples. Conclusion: Given the much research support for the findings of the present study and the confirmed validity and reliablelity, Accordingly FFMQ can be utilized for measuring mindfulness in the Iranian sample.
Pattern of inbreeding depression, condition dependence, and additive genetic variance in Trinidadian guppy ejaculate traits

In polyandrous species, a male's reproductive success depends on his fertilization capability and traits enhancing competitive fertilization success will be under strong, directional selection. This leads to the prediction that these traits should show stronger condition dependence and larger genetic variance than other traits subject to weaker or stabilizing selection. While empirical evidence of condition dependence in postcopulatory traits is increasing, the comparison between sexually selected and ‘control’ traits is often based on untested assumption concerning the different strength of selection acting on these traits. Furthermore, information on selection in the past is essential, as both condition dependence and genetic variance of a trait are likely to be influenced by the pattern of selection acting historically on it. Using the guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a livebearing fish with high levels of multiple paternity, we performed three independent experiments on three ejaculate quality traits, sperm number, velocity, and size, which have been previously shown to be subject to strong, intermediate, and weak directional postcopulatory selection, respectively. First, we conducted an inbreeding experiment to determine the pattern of selection in the past. Second, we used a diet restriction experiment to estimate their level of condition dependence. Third, we used a half-sib/full-sib mating design to estimate the coefficients of additive genetic variance (CVA) underlying these traits. Additionally, using a simulated predator evasion test, we showed that both inbreeding and diet restriction significantly reduced condition. According to predictions, sperm number showed higher inbreeding depression, stronger condition dependence, and larger CVA than sperm velocity and sperm size. The lack of significant genetic correlation between sperm number and velocity suggests that the former may respond to selection independently one from other ejaculate quality traits. Finally, the association between sperm number and condition suggests that this trait may mediate the genetic benefits of polyandry which have been shown in this species.
How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking: Myths and Reality

Search engines have greatly influenced the way people access information on the Internet, as such engines provide the preferred entry point to billions of pages on the Web. Therefore, highly ranked Web pages generally have higher visibility to people and pushing the ranking higher has become the top priority for Web masters. As a matter of fact, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has became a sizeable business that attempts to improve their clients’ ranking. Still, the lack of ways to validate SEO’s methods has created numerous myths and fallacies associated with ranking algorithms. In this article, we focus on two ranking algorithms, Google’s and Bing’s, and design, implement, and evaluate a ranking system to systematically validate assumptions others have made about these popular ranking algorithms. We demonstrate that linear learning models, coupled with a recursive partitioning ranking scheme, are capable of predicting ranking results with high accuracy. As an example, we manage to correctly predict 7 out of the top 10 pages for 78% of evaluated keywords. Moreover, for content-only ranking, our system can correctly predict 9 or more pages out of the top 10 ones for 77% of search terms. We show how our ranking system can be used to reveal the relative importance of ranking features in a search engine’s ranking function, provide guidelines for SEOs and Web masters to optimize their Web pages, validate or disprove new ranking features, and evaluate search engine ranking results for possible ranking bias.
IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND THE ACQUISITION OF L2 GRAMMAR

This article reviews previous studies of the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on SLA, pointing out a number of methodological problems. It then reports on a new study of the effects of these two types of corrective feedback on the acquisition of past tense -ed. In an experimental design (two experimental groups and a control group), low-intermediate learners of second language English completed two communicative tasks during which they received either recasts (implicit feedback) or metalinguistic explanation (explicit feedback) in response to any utterance that contained an error in the target structure. Acquisition was measured by means of an oral imitation test (designed to measure implicit knowledge) and both an untimed grammaticality judgment test and a metalinguistic knowledge test (both designed to measure explicit knowledge). The tests were administered prior to the instruction, 1 day after the instruction, and again 2 weeks later. Statistical comparisons of the learners' performance on the posttests showed a clear advantage for explicit feedback over implicit feedback for both the delayed imitation and grammaticality judgment posttests. Thus, the results indicate that metalinguistic explanation benefited implicit as well as explicit knowledge and point to the importance of including measures of both types of knowledge in experimental studies.This research was funded by a Marsden Fund grant awarded by the Royal Society of Arts of New Zealand. Researchers other than the authors who contributed to the research were Jenefer Philip, Satomi Mizutami, Keiko Sakui, and Thomas Delaney. Thanks go to the editors of this special issue and to two anonymous SSLA reviewers of a draft of the article for their constructive comments.
Mission Impossible: Learning How a Classroom Works Before It's Too Late!

IT MAY BE POSSIBLE to identify certain at-risk students merely by observing teachers talking in the lounge. When a teacher bemoans having a certain boy in her class but is smiling, shaking her head and looking skyward, you can expect remarks such as &dquo;He’s all boy, a character, drives me crazy, etc.&dquo; and other genial, albeit, negative comments. You can also stop worrying about this child. He probably knows just how far to push that teacher and yet stay in her good graces. Be alert, however, to the unsmiling, sighing teacher who complains about the child she obviously does not like. This is the at-risk student who does not know the rules, perhaps, for operating as an appropriate member of that classroom. He may feel persecuted, moreover, because he does not appreciate the differences in his behavior and that of the &dquo;character&dquo; mentioned above. He does not know why he incurs the wrath of the teacher while his mischievous counterpart simply elicits a mild rebuke.
Women in Advertisements: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract This article provides a comprehensive review of research and commentary on the use and reaction to women in advertisements in the last decade for the purpose of projecting future trends. Specifically, trends in sex-role differentiation and sex in advertising are examined and discussed. The authors conclude that the 1980's will exhibit a larger proportion of advertisements featuring women in work-related settings in parity occupations with men. Sex in advertising is expected to become more explicit. However, use of women as sex objects will decline.
The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO's Post—Cold War Transformation

This article invokes a combination of analytical and normative arguments that highlight the leading role of practices in explaining the expansion of security communities. The analytical argument is that collective meanings, on which peaceful change is based, cognitively evolve — i.e. they are established in individuals' expectations and dispositions and they are institutionalized in practice — because of communities of practice. By that we mean like-minded groups of practitioners who are bound, both informally and contextually, by a shared interest in learning and applying a common practice. The normative argument is that security communities rest in part on the sharing of rational and moral expectations and dispositions of self-restraint. This thesis is illustrated by the example of the successful expansion of security-community identities from a core of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states to Central and Eastern European countries during the 1990s, which was facilitated by a `cooperative-security' community of practice that, emerging from the Helsinki Process, endowed NATO with the practices necessary for the spread of self-restraint.
A Family of Single-Switch PWM Converters With High Step-Up Conversion Ratio

A new family of a single-switch three-diode dc-dc pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) converters operating at constant frequency and constant duty cycle is presented in this paper. The proposed converters are different from the conventional dc-dc step-up converters, and they posses higher voltage gain with small output voltage ripples. Other advantages of the proposed converters include lower voltage stress on the semiconductor devices, simple structure, and control. Moreover, the reduced voltage stress on the diodes allows using Schottky diodes for alleviating the reverse-recovery current problem, as well as decreasing the switching and conduction losses. The principle of operation, theoretical analysis, and experimental results of one prototype rated 40 W and operating at 94 kHz are provided in this paper to verify the performance of this new family of converters.
When Brands Seem Human, Do Humans Act Like Brands? Automatic Behavioral Priming Effects of Brand Anthropomorphism

This research examines automatic behavioral effects of priming brands that are anthropomorphized. It posits that anthropomorphized brands trigger people's goals for a successful social interaction, resulting in behavior that is assimilative or contrastive to the brand's image. Three studies show that consumers are more likely to assimilate behavior associated with anthropomorphized partner brands that they like, consistent with the goal of drawing in the liked coproducer, and servant brands that they dislike, consistent with the goal of pushing the disliked would-be helper away by signaling self-sufficiency. Results also show a contrastive behavior when primed with disliked partner brands and liked servant brands. These effects are observed in contexts unrelated to the brand prime. For example, priming Kellogg's, a liked partner brand associated with healthfulness, led to greater willingness to take the stairs than the elevator in a purportedly unrelated study. No effects were observed of priming brands that were not anthropomorphized.
Investigating the effect of emetic and aversive compounds on Dictyostelium identifies a novel non-sentient model for bitter tastant research

Novel chemical entities (NCEs) may be investigated for emetic liability in a range of unpleasant experiments involving retching, vomiting or conditioned taste aversion/food avoidance in sentient animals. We have used a range of compounds with known emetic /aversive properties to examine the possibility of using the social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, for research into identifying and understanding emetic liability, and hence reduce adverse animal experimentation in this area. Twenty eight emetic or taste aversive compounds were employed to investigate the acute (10 min) effect of compounds on Dictyostelium cell behaviour (shape, speed and direction of movement) in a shallow chemotactic gradient (Dunn chamber). Compound concentrations were chosen based on those previously reported to be emetic or aversive in in vivo studies and results were recorded and quantified by automated image analysis. Dictyostelium cell motility was rapidly and strongly inhibited by four structurally distinct tastants (three bitter tasting compounds denatonium benzoate, quinine hydrochloride, phenylthiourea, and the pungent constituent of chilli peppers capsaicin). In addition, stomach irritants (copper chloride and copper sulphate), and a phosphodiesterase IV inhibitor also rapidly blocked movement. A concentration-dependant relationship was established for five of these compounds, showing potency of inhibition as capsaicin (IC50=11.9±4.0μM) > quinine hydrochloride (IC50=44.3±6.8μM) > denatonium benzoate (IC50=129±4μM) > phenylthiourea (IC50=366±5μM) > copper sulphate (IC50=1433±3μM). In contrast, 21 compounds within the cytotoxic and receptor agonist/antagonist classes did not affect cell behaviour. Further analysis of bitter and pungent compounds showed that the effect on cell behaviour was reversible and not cytotoxic, suggesting an uncharacterised molecular mechanism of action for these compounds. These results therefore demonstrate that Dictyostelium has potential as a non-sentient model in the analysis of the molecular effects of tastants, although it has limited utility in identification of emetic agents in general.
Energy Efficient Smartphone-Based Activity Recognition using Fixed-Point Arithmetic

In this paper we propose a novel energy efficient approach for the recog- nition of human activities using smartphones as wearable sensing devices, targeting assisted living applications such as remote patient activity monitoring for the disabled and the elderly. The method exploits fixed-point arithmetic to propose a modified multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) learning algorithm, allowing to better pre- serve the smartphone battery lifetime with respect to the conventional floating-point based formulation while maintaining comparable system accuracy levels. Experiments show comparative results between this approach and the traditional SVM in terms of recognition performance and battery consumption, highlighting the advantages of the proposed method.
An Investigation of Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition in Relation to Learner Proficiency Level and Word Frequency

This study examined the relationship between learners' incidental vocabulary acquisition and their level of proficiency, and between acquisition and word frequency in a text. Participants were Turkish learners of English at three proficiency levels. One reading text and four vocabulary tests were administered over a two-week period. Analyses of the data revealed that lexical gains from reading were significant for each group (p < .05). The higher proficiency groups were able to acquire more words than lower level groups. Word frequency in the text was also a signijicant fac tor in vocabulary acquisition (p <,051, with 29% of the variance in acquisition being accounted for by frequency. However, frequency did not play a greater role in the vocabulary acquisition of lower level learners than in that of higher level learners.
Using accelerometers to determine the calling behavior of tagged baleen whales

Low-frequency acoustic signals generated by baleen whales can propagate over vast distances, making the assignment of calls to specific individuals problematic. Here, we report the novel use of acoustic recording tags equipped with high-resolution accelerometers to detect vibrations from the surface of two tagged fin whales that directly match the timing of recorded acoustic signals. A tag deployed on a buoy in the vicinity of calling fin whales and a recording from a tag that had just fallen off a whale were able to detect calls acoustically but did not record corresponding accelerometer signals that were measured on calling individuals. Across the hundreds of calls measured on two tagged fin whales, the accelerometer response was generally anisotropic across all three axes, appeared to depend on tag placement and increased with the level of received sound. These data demonstrate that high-sample rate accelerometry can provide important insights into the acoustic behavior of baleen whales that communicate at low frequencies. This method helps identify vocalizing whales, which in turn enables the quantification of call rates, a fundamental component of models used to estimate baleen whale abundance and distribution from passive acoustic monitoring.
EVALUATION OF QUANTITATIVE ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISTIC DISORDERS IN VARIOUS CONDITIONS BASED ON SPECTROGRAM

Objective: to evaluate the brain signals in children with autism disorder in many different conditions of quantitative Electroencephalography (qEEG) recordings in order to highlight abnormalities and to characterize this group. Method: In this study, spectrogram was used as a tool for evaluating qEEG in 15 children with autism disorders (13 boys and 2 girls aged between 6 to 11 years old) and in 11 normal children (7 boys and 4 girls with the same age range). Signals of the two groups were recorded in nine conditions. Results: The recorded signals with the relaxed eye-opened condition in alpha band, those recorded with looking at a stranger’s picture condition in beta band, and the ones obtained with children looking at inverted stranger’s picture in the same beta band show the best discrimination of 92.3%, 88,9% and 88.9% respectively using spectrogram . Conclusion: Among the several different EEG recordings, the relaxed eyeopened condition in alpha band had been the best condition for discriminating the two groups using spectrogram. More abnormalities were observed in the prefrontal lobe and the left brain hemisphere in children with autism disorders.
Children Literature Based Program for Developing EFL Primary Pupils' Life Skills and Language Learning Strategies.

This study examines the effectiveness of a proposed English language program based on integrating two forms of children literature, mainly short stories and songs, in developing the needed life skills and language learning strategies of primary school students. Besides, it emphasized the importance of providing EFL fifth year primary students with activities and opportunities to raise their awareness of their learning, as it helped students understand how to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. The study targeted ten life skills distributed under four main categories: cognitive, personal, social and linguistic skills. Ninety fifth grade primary students participated in the present study. Five instruments were used: the needed life skills and language learning strategies checklists, a criterion for selecting the stories and songs, the pre/post life skills measures (situation test, questionnaire, oral interpersonal communication test), language learning strategies questionnaire and the students’ satisfaction/dissatisfaction questionnaire. The program was taught over a period of two months (two sessions per week). Data collected were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methodology. Qualitative methods were used to assess students’ development over the 8 weeks. Results revealed that life skills and language learning strategies can be taught effectively through the medium of children literature. As a whole, this study contributed to the ESL/EFL field by providing information about the importance of skill building for life at young age and that fundamental changes needed for language instruction. Furthermore, the study presents a detailed teaching strategy for teaching life skills through children literature.
On the articulatory classification of (alveolo)palatal consonants

Linguopalatal and sagittal vocal tract configuration data from a large number of languages reveal that the so-called palatal consonants (i.e. [ç ʎ c ɲ j]), as well as the vowel [i], are often realized simultaneously at the alveolar and palatal zones. Moreover, while some of these sound categories may also exhibit a palatal constriction ([ç c ɲ j i]), others are exclusively alveolar or alveolopalatal in line with the manner of articulation characteristics involved ([ʎ], also [ɕ] and [tʃ]). Consonants may favor one or more places of articulation and differ in fronting degree depending on the language taken into consideration; moreover, there appears to be a symmetry requirement by which consonants differing in manner, such as [c] and [ɲ], may agree in place. The data reported in this paper argue in favor of a revision of the articulatory classification of palatal consonants by the International Phonetic Alphabet involving their subdivision into two classes, an alveolopalatal and a palatal one.