Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wiki and Threaded Discussion for Online Collaborative Activities: Students' Perceptions and Use

Investigating the affordances of different web technologies to support online collaborative learning (CL) has implications for future research and practice in online education. In addition to a threaded discussion (TD)—the predominant tool used to promote online collaboration today—we used a wiki with 15 graduate students in an online course. Students worked on two different group activities, first using the TD and then using the wiki. We investigated students’ attitudes about their CL experience, as well as differences in their CL processes, after using each technology. Our findings suggest that there are clear benefits and limitations inherent to both technologies. The TD tool was preferred, yet students recognized the potential of the wiki to support collaboration. Practical implications and future directions are discussed, including the need for instructors to support and encourage discussion as a complement to wiki writing, scaffold and model the use of wikis, and create sufficiently complex group tasks to help make wiki use attractive and appropriate.
O C ] 2 J ul 2 01 8 On non-randomized stationary optimal policies in constrained discounted Markov decision processes

Abstract. Constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) have found many applications to flow control or queueing problems (denumerable state space models), economic growth theory, finance, insurance or resource extraction problems (general state space models). We study discrete-time discounted and negative CMDPs on Borel spaces with unbounded reward functions. We assume that the transition probabilities are continuous and the reward functions are upper semicontinuous in actions and measurable with respect to the state variable. In contrast to Markov decision processes without constraints on Borel spaces, CMDPs were only studied with weakly continuous transitions. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. We prove that there exists an optimal randomized stationary policy. Then, we show that in some cases this policy can be replaced by a stationary non-randomized one. This result is proved first under condition that the Borel σ-algebra on the state space has no conditional atoms with respect to the σ-algebra generated by the transition probability density functions. A similar result is given for the case, where the transition probabilities are convex combinations of finitely many non-atomic measures with coefficients depending on the state-action pairs. Finally, we give some applications inspired by the models developed in economics and operations research.
Disproportional Ownership Devices: Reviewing the Last 25 Years of Research

The paper aims to systematize the literature on disproportional ownership devices by reviewing and classifying 148 articles published in international academic journals over the last 25 years. The findings show that the scholarly attention on disproportional ownership devices has grown over time. Most papers adopt the agency framework and examine the mechanisms for leveraging voting power and to lock-in control, especially in civil law countries. Corporate governance journals prevail as leading outlets, despite the lack of publications specialized on the topic. Finally, the literature systematization highlights a research taxonomy based on outcomes and drivers of disproportional ownership devices. The article has both theoretical and practical implications. First, it develops a literature framework that systematically outlines the main research streams on the topic and identifies under-explored issues so as to guide future scholarly efforts. Second, it highlights the implications of disproportional ownership devices for company outcomes and reporting. Thereby, on the one hand, it supports managers in selecting the appropriate combination of these mechanisms so as to attract and retain investors. On the other hand, it emphasizes the importance of proper policy making interventions to improve transparency, openness and competitiveness of financial markets.
Quantifying the intersexual and interspecific morphometric variation in two resembling sympatric lacertids: Iberolacerta horvathi and Podarcis muralis

th . Abstract. Podarcis muralis and Iberolacerta horvathi are sympatric, frequently syntop- ic, lacertids through the entire range of I. horvathi and very similar in their general body size and shape, as well as in most ecological traits. We morphologically com- pared adults from the area of sympatry using biometric measurements and performed analyses to investigate their sexual size and shape dimorphism. A total of 34 males and 24 females of I. horvathi, and 25 males and 23 females of P. muralis , all adult indi- viduals, were measured. Both species showed sexual size dimorphism with females being longer (snout-vent length, SVL) than males. After SVL correction (ANCOVA), head width, length and height and mass showed to be sexually dimorphic in both spe- cies. Males carry relatively wider, longer and higher heads and were heavier than con- specific females. I. horvathi heads were more flattened than those of P. muralis and P. muralis were heavier than I. horvathi. Both species displayed the same pattern of sexu- al dimorphism regarding body size, head size and shape not only in direction but also in magnitude. All results confirm that both species are very similar in studied biomet- ric characters and, together with their ecological similarities, these suggest in absence of other factors they are likely to interact when living together.
Cold comfort firm: Lean organisation and the empirical mirage of the comfort zone

This paper examines the provenance of the ‘comfort zone’ and argues that the claimed organisational and psychological benefits associated with moving outside this zone are illusory and unsupported by empirical evidence. Indeed, it will be suggested that such rhetoric, and the lean management practices it has informed, is based on a misreading of the theoretical models and findings from which it is derived. It is argued that this misreading reinforces a style of management based on the deliberate inducement of stress amongst employees in lean organisations. The paper concludes by considering if, how, and what employees might be able to recover from this double bind.
Using ACTH Challenges to Validate Techniques for Adrenocortical Activity Analysis in Various African Wildlife Species

Monitoring adrenocortical activity using fecal hormonal analysis can provide information on how environmental changes are affecting non-domestic species health and success in the field; however, this non- invasive method needs proper validation to ensure that analysis reflects true physiological events. Our objectives were to use adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) challenges as a physiological validation method to test the suitability of a new corticosterone enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to accurately assess the adrenocortical activity using fecal samples in four African wildlife species-the black rhinoceros (rhino; Diceros bicornis), African elephant (Loxodonta africana), chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and African lion (Panthera leo krugeri). In the rhino and elephant, fecal Glucocorticoid metabolites (GC) surged 75 and 51 h post-ACTH injection, respectively. In the chimpanzee, fecal GC metabolites peaked at 29 h post-injection. And the lion had a peak of fecal GC at 24 h post-ACTH. This study determined that adrenocortical activity was reflected in concentrations of fecal GC metabolites suggesting that this corticosterone EIA is an effective technique for the monitoring stress in four African species.
Determinants of Winning and Losing Persistence in the Polish Banking Sector

The article explores the reasons for winning and losing persistence in the Polish banking sector in the 1994–2005 period. It empirically verifies four hypotheses. They associate the performance persistence with market power, informational opacity, ownership structure, as well as with different operational and risk profiles of banks. Estimation of probit models led to the conclusion that in Poland market power related to the developed distribution channels and informational opacity make winning persistence more likely while preventing losing persistence from occurring. Furthermore, foreign-controlled banks have more chances to succeed repeatedly and avert subsequent failures. The picture of performance persistence in the Polish banking sector is biased by banks’ earnings management, especially by the avoidance of reporting small losses.
RESIDUAL LEARNING WITHOUT NORMALIZATION

Normalization layers are a staple in state-of-the-art deep neural network architectures. They are widely believed to stabilize training, enable higher learning rate, accelerate convergence and improve generalization, though the reason for their effectiveness is still an active research topic. In this work, we challenge the commonly-held beliefs by showing that none of the perceived benefits is unique to normalization. Specifically, we propose ZeroInit, an initialization motivated by solving the exploding and vanishing gradient problem at the beginning of training by properly rescaling a standard initialization. We find training residual networks with ZeroInit to be as stable as training with normalization even for networks with 10,000 layers. Furthermore, with proper regularization, ZeroInit without normalization matches or exceeds the performance of state-of-the-art residual networks in image classification and machine translation.
Is the black hole in NGC 1277 really overmassive

A claim has been made by van den Bosch et al. (2012) that NGC1277 hosts an over-massive BH with a mass larger than half its spheroid mass. We revisit this claim by examining the predictions from dynamical realisations based on new MGE models of NGC1277. We present realisations which fit the observed photometry. M/L is fixed following scaling relations which predict a Salpeter-like IMF. A model without a BH provides a surprisingly good fit of the observed kinematics outside the unresolved central region, but not, as expected, of the central dispersion and h4 values. A model with a MBH of 5 10^9 Msun allows to fit the dispersion profile, consistently with models of the same mass and M/L in vdB+12. It departs from the central h4 values by only about twice the given uncertainty. A slightly varying M/L or the addition of high velocity stars would further lower the need for a very massive BH. These results do not rule out the presence of an over-massive BH at the centre of NGC1277. However, they lead us to advocate the use of 3-sigma confidence intervals for derived MBH as better, more conservative, guidelines for such studies. We caution for the use of ill-defined spheroidal components as an input for scaling relations, and emphasise the fact that a MBH in the range 2-5 10^9 Msun would represent less than 5% of the spheroid mass of our models. This would make the BH in NGC1277 consistent or just twice as large as what a recent version of the MBH-sigma relation predicts. We examine the impact of the presence of a bar by running simulations from the same MGE model but with extreme anisotropies. An inner small bar forms, and an end-on view gets closer to fitting the central dispersion profile without the need for a central BH, while adding a black hole of 2.5 10^9 Msun, in line with the prediction from scaling relations, allows to fit the dispersion peak and h3 profiles. EDITED and ABRIDGED.
CD32 Ligation Promotes the Activation of CD4+ T Cells

Low affinity receptors for the Fc portion of IgG (FcγRs) represent a critical link between innate and adaptive immunity. Immune complexes (ICs) are the natural ligands for low affinity FcγRs, and high levels of ICs are usually detected in both, chronic viral infections and autoimmune diseases. The expression and function of FcγRs in myeloid cells, NK cells and B cells have been well characterized. By contrast, there are controversial reports about the expression and function of FcγRs in T cells. Here, we demonstrated that ~2% of resting CD4+ T cells express cell surface FcγRII (CD32). Analysis of CD32 expression in permeabilized cells revealed an increased proportion of CD4+CD32+ T cells (~9%), indicating that CD4+ T cells store a CD32 cytoplasmic pool. Activation of CD4+ T cells markedly increased the expression of CD32 either at the cell surface or intracellularly. Analysis of CD32 mRNA transcripts in activated CD4+ T cells revealed the presence of both, the stimulatory FcγRIIa (CD32a) and the inhibitory FcγRIIb (CD32b) isoforms of CD32, being the CD32a:CD32b mRNA ratio ~5:1. Consistent with this finding, we found not only that CD4+ T cells bind aggregated IgG, used as an IC model, but also that CD32 ligation by specific mAb induced a strong calcium transient in CD4+ T cells. Moreover, we found that pretreatment of CD4+ T cells with immobilized IgG as well as cross-linking of CD32 by specific antibodies increased both, the proliferative response of CD4+ T cells and the release of a wide pattern of cytokines (IL-2, IL-5, IL-10, IL-17, IFN-γ, and TNF-α) triggered by either PHA or anti-CD3 mAb. Collectively, our results indicate that ligation of CD32 promotes the activation of CD4+ T cells. These findings suggest that ICs might contribute to the perpetuation of chronic inflammatory responses by virtue of its ability to directly interact with CD4+ T cells through CD32a, promoting the activation of T cells into different inflammatory profiles.
Returns to scale and curvature in the presence of spillovers: evidence from European countries

Drawing on a recent development on the interpretation of spatial econometric models, we extend two classic characteristics of production (returns to scale and diminishing marginal productivity of factor inputs) to the spatial case. In the context of a spatial translog production function we define internal (i.e., direct), external (i.e., indirect), and total (direct plus indirect) returns to scale. The spatial production function gives rise to direct, indirect, and total productions functions so we set out empirical checks to establish if these functions are concave. The ideas of spatial returns to scale and spatial concavity/convexity can easily be applied to other technologies (e.g., cost and distance functions) and other functional forms (e.g., Cobb-Douglas). We apply these ideas to aggregate production of European countries using balanced panel data for the period 1990–2011.
Detection of stress and emotion in speech using traditional and FFT based log energy features

In this paper, a novel system for detection of human stress and emotion in speech is proposed. The system makes use of FFT based linear short time log frequency power coefficients (LFPC) and TEO based nonlinear LFPC features in both time and frequency domains. The performance of the proposed system is compared with the traditional approaches which use features of LPCC and MFCC. The comparison of each approach is performed using SUSAS (speech under simulated and actual stress) and ESMBS (emotional speech of Mandarin and Burmese speakers) databases. It is observed that proposed system outperforms the traditional systems. Results show that, the system using LFPC gives the highest accuracy (87.8% for stress, 89.2% for emotion classification) followed by the system using NFD-LFPC feature. While the system using NTD-LFPC feature gives the lowest accuracy.
Socio-Economic Effects of Low and High Employment

Both low and high employment, as currently measured, have far-reaching serious consequences affecting the health and well-being of large masses of the population and seriously disrupting the environment. The criterion of public policies, including employment, must be the assurance ofsocio-economic reproduction for the maintenance of human life, health and survival, not maximum output and employ ment without regard for genuine individual and social needs. Social and environmental indicators and substantive norms, defined in terms of minimum requirements and social ob jectives, need to be made the guidelines of public action. In this sense, genuine full employment must be made a con tinuous objective and will remain a fundamental challenge to developed and underdeveloped countries.
Habitat and diversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi in forests of South Cameroon

Information is lacking on habitat and diversity of ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi of African humid forests. For three years, mushroom excursions were carried out in four sites with contrasted soil and altitude characteristics of South Cameroon, during wet seasons. Collected fungi were described in fresh state and dried exsiccates examined for microscopic description before morpho-anatomical identification. ECM fungi abundantly fruited exclusively in mixed caesalp, monodominant Gilbertiodendron and Uapaca forest clumps, independently of elevation, rainfall, topography and soil texture. 21 ECM tree species in 11 genera belonging to two families, Ceasalpiniaceae and Phyllanthaceae, dominated ECM forest clumps. More than 100 putative ECM fungal species in 27 genera were identified and assigned to seven families and one super family group. Members of Russulaceae and Amanitaceae recruited the highest number of ECM taxa, followed by species of Boletoids and Cantharellaceae. Paxillus, Clavulina , Coltricia , Scleroderma , Cortinarius and Inocybe genera contained limited species. 12 ECM fungal species were locally edible, including Lactarius gymnocarpus and all chanterelles. Though, species richness was very large in a mountainous area, all four sites shared a substantial large number of ECM mushroom species. Low plant diversity but high fungal richness recommends ECM forest clumps for biodiversity sanctuaries.
Realizing the Need for Rework: From Task Interdependence to Social Networks

Design rework is a core phenomenon in new product development (NPD). Yet carrying out design rework presupposes recognizing the need for it. I characterize the types of interpersonal knowledge transfer that help developers realize the need for design rework in NPD. As predicted by the NPD literature, I find that individuals who interact frequently with colleagues to address their task interdependences are more likely to realize the need for rework. I also learn that interacting with colleagues who have different expertise in process‐related knowledge (as opposed to product‐related knowledge) facilitates realizing the need for rework. However, to develop a deeper understanding of how individuals recognize the need for rework when interacting with others, we must expand our views beyond task interdependence and expertise‐related factors. In particular, organizational variables—both formal and informal—play a significant role. With respect to formal hierarchical structures, actors of superior rank are less likely to realize the need for rework regardless of whether or not their interacting partner is of superior rank; however, actors of superior rank are more likely to trigger realizing the need for rework when interacting with partners of subordinate rank. By examining an organization's informal structure, I discover that the social “embeddedness” of developers (i.e., the energy and attention invested in a dyadic relationship) significantly influences their propensity to realize the need for rework. Several hypotheses are tested in a sociometric study conducted within the development department of a software company, and I discuss the implications for behavioral operations in NPD.
The XMM–Newton view of Plaskett's star and its surroundings★

XMM–Newton data of Plaskett's star (HD 47129) are used in order to analyse its X-ray spectrum and variability and hence to derive further constraints on the wind interaction in this early-type binary (O6 I + O7.5 I) system. Conventional models fail to provide a consistent fit of the European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) and Reflexion Grating Spectrometer (RGS) spectra. The lines seen in the RGS spectrum have a temperature of maximum emissivity between 0.18 and 1.4 keV. The EPIC and RGS spectra are best fitted by a non-equilibrium model consisting of a bremsstrahlung continuum at 2.2 ± 0.1 keV and a number of independent emission lines. Our tests also suggest that an overabundance in nitrogen by a factor of ∼6 might be indicated to best represent the RGS spectrum. On the other hand, a short-term variability study of the light curves of the system indicates that the X-ray flux of Plaskett's star did not display any significant variability during our observation. This result holds for all time-scales investigated here (from a few minutes to about one hour). Combining our XMM–Newton data with ROSAT archival observations, we find, however, a significant variability on the orbital time-scale. If this behaviour is indeed phase locked, it suggests a minimum in the X-ray flux when the primary star is in front. This might be attributed to an occultation of the colliding wind region by the body of the primary. Finally, 71 other X-ray sources have been detected in the field around Plaskett's star and most of them have a near-infrared (near-IR) counterpart with colours that are consistent with those of slightly reddened main-sequence objects. Actually, a sizeable fraction of the X-ray sources in the EPIC images could be either foreground or background sources with no direct connection to HD 47129.
Out of sight, out of mind? The education outcomes of children with parents working abroad

Impact of parental emigration on educational outcomes of children is theoretically ambiguous. Using novel data I collected on migration experience and its timing, family background and school performance of lower secondary pupils in Poland, I analyse the question empirically. Migration is mostly temporary in nature, with one parent engaging in employment abroad. As many as 63% of migrant parents have vocational qualifications, 29% graduated from high school, 4% have no qualifications and the remaining 4% graduated from university. Almost 18% of children are affected by parental migration. Perhaps surprisingly, estimates suggest that parental employment abroad has a positive immediate impact on a pupil's grade. Parental education appears pivotal; children of high school graduates benefit most. Longer term effects appear more negative, however, suggesting that a prolonged migration significantly lowers a child's grade. Interestingly, siblings foreign experiences exert a large, positive impact on pupils grades.
Shifts in the dominant populations of ammonia-oxidizing ß subclass Proteobacteria along the eutrophic Schelde estuary

The community structure of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria of the β-subclass Proteobacte- ria was investigated with respect to environmental gradients along the Schelde, a eutrophic estuary system. A dominance of Nitrosomonas-like sequences was detected using molecular techniques tar- geting the 16S rRNA gene on 3 separate sampling dates, and different Nitrosomonas-like populations were most dominant at different locations along the estuary. The most frequently detected ammonia oxidizer-like sequences in the freshwater part of the estuary were associated with a sequence cluster previously designated as Nitrosomonas Cluster 6a. This group, which is closely affiliated with the cul- tured species N. ureae, has previously been detected as the dominant ammonia-oxidizer group in various freshwater systems, and was also the dominant recovered sequence cluster from a contribu- tory, untreated sewage effluent sample. The 16S rDNA recovered from brackish locations further downstream was dominated by a group of novel Nitrosomonas-like sequences. Nitrosospira-like sequences represented only a small minority of those detected for all samples. The shift in dominant ammonia-oxidizer populations occurred in the estuarine region with the sharpest observed gradients in salinity, oxygen, and ammonia. These results provide evidence in support of the differential selec- tion of physiologically distinct Nitrosomonas-like groups according to the environmental gradients encountered along the estuary