Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information and Communication Technologies as a Didactic Tool for the Construction of Meaningful Learning in the Area of Mathematics

The main objective of the research is to analyze the cognitive attributes offered by Information and Communication Technologies to promote mathematical software as a model of teaching and learning. In the study, the software was used as a motivating didactic resource for the construction of meaningful learning. One hundred students of the first semester of Universidad Iberoamericana of Ecuador participated in this research. For the selection of the sample it was applied a non-probabilistic participatory type technique. The study was developed according to the approach of mixed methods of sequential explanatory design. The researcher organized the article in two phases: the first phase was quantitative. Quantitative results were obtained by applying a questionnaire to the students. The data demonstrated the need for change in university mathematics education. For students in the first semester, it was implemented the Wiris and Geogebra operational program during the qualitative phase. Moreover, the observation guide made it possible to collect qualitative information. The results of both phases were joined through the triangulation method. In conclusion, it is proposed the use of software as a model of teaching-learning process. It is highlighted the importance of active group knowledge sharing.
The Impact of a Primary Care Psychology Training Program on Medical Utilization in a Community Sample

THE IMPACT OF A PRIMARY CARE PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING PROGRAM ON MEDICAL UTILIZATION IN A COMMUNITY SAMPLE By Autumn Marie Lanoye, B.A. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014 Major Director: Bruce Rybarczyk, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology Mental illness and psychological distress is associated with higher rates of medical service usage and treatment of these issues results in more appropriate medical utilization rates. Little research has been conducted in an integrated care clinic, wherein health psychologists or behavioral health specialists work together with physicians to provide patient care. The current study examines the effects of brief behavioral and mental health interventions on patient medical utilization in this setting with care delivered by medical residents and doctoral psychology trainees. Access to the health system’s electronic billing records allowed for objective measures of annual healthcare utilization in terms of inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department use. A quasi-control group was constructed using propensity score matching in order to compare patients who had received a primary care psychology intervention to those who had not. Rates of inpatient utilization decreased significantly among treated patients overall as well as among treated patients identified as frequent attenders; there was no change in inpatient utilization among patients in the control group overall nor among frequent attenders in the control group, indicating that there is likely an effect of behavioral and mental health treatment on rates of inpatient visits. Rates of emergency department use and specialty outpatient visits were comparable between treated and control group patients, suggesting the lack of a treatment effect in these areas. Strengths, limitations, possible mechanisms, and implications for future research are discussed.
Does Institutional Context Affect CSR Disclosure? A Study on Eurostoxx 50

We propose to investigate the relationship between corporate social responsibility disclosure and institutional/environmental factors among a sample of European listed companies. We find that, by using several traditional explicative variables, institutional factors affect the level of CSR disclosure, in a context where the EU Commission has been paying growing attention to social and environmental accountability of listed companies (see the EU Dir. 95/2014). Our findings are further supported by multivariate regression, where ESG score (measure of CSR disclosure) is regressed on nine variables which represent the expression of institutional factors. By looking at the institutional determinants of CSR disclosure, we are seeking to pose a challenge for future research agenda, in order to understand whether CSR does actually reflect an effective commitment of firms to accounting practices and rules, as a form of social behavior, or whether it is just a tool to manage stakeholders’ perception and to comply with regulation.
The effect of 24-hour presence of emergency medicine specialists on the performance of emergency department of Shahid Bahonar hospital, Kerman/Iran, 2013

Objective: Emergency department is the most important part of a hospital and it seems that 24-hour presence of emergency medicine specialist can be effective in improving the performance of this ward. Therefore, the present study was performed with the aim of studying the effect of 24-hour presence of emergency medicine specialists in the emergency department of Shahid Bahonar hospital, Kerman/Iran. Methods: In this mixed methods study, data collection was done through studying various related documents and semi-structured interview. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis. Results: The presence of emergency medicine specialists resulted in a decrease in waiting time, hospital’s revenue growth, increase in number of requested laboratory tests, improvement of decision-making for patients and decrease of first 24-hour mortality rate. Economic benefits, improvement of the quality of services and emergency department management were among qualitative results of the present study. Conclusion: In whole, 24-hour presence of emergency medicine specialists in the emergency department of Kerman Shahid Bahonar hospital has been effective in improving the performance and quality of services.
Sequential Auctions with Informational Externalities and Aversion to Price Risk: Decreasing and Increasing Price Sequences

A large body of empirical research has shown that prices of identical goods sold sequentially sometimes increase and often decline across rounds. This article introduces a tractable form of risk aversion, called aversion to price risk, and shows that declining prices arise naturally when bidders are averse to price risk. When there are informational externalities, there is a countervailing effect which pushes prices to raise along the path of a sequential auction, even if bidder's signals are independent. The article shows how to decompose the effect of aversion to price risk from the effect of informational externalities.
ISOLATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF SALMONELLA SPP. FROM POULTRY FARMS BY USING DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES AND EVALUATION OF THEIR ANTIMICROBIAL SUSCEPTIBILITIES

This study aimed to isolate and identify Salmonella spp. from various sources of poultry farms by using four different techniques (conventional biochemical tests, API 20E system, serology and polymerase chain reaction) the total number of isolates was 44(9%). The Salmonellae including 4 species, S. gallinarum 9(1.85%), S. typhimurium 7(1.44%), S. newport 21(4.3%) and S. ohio 1(0.21%). The highest isolation rate was in first week of chicks life 18(25.7%), however, the highest isolation rate of salmonella was from liver 13(28.8%). There are similarity in identification rate of Salmonella spp. between API 20 E system and PCR assay using flic gene. In this study using PCR amplification of rfbsg and rfbsp genes in differentiation of Salmonella serovar gallinarum into S. gallinarum and S. pullorum biovars very useful. Results of antimicrobial susceptibility revealed high resistance of isolates against seven antibiotics arranged in descending from high to low resistance (Azithromycin, Florfenicol, Trimethoprime-sulphamethaxezole, Tetracycline, Ciprofloxacin, Ampicillin and Gentamycin).
Technology, Trade Costs and Export Sophistication

This paper uses a disaggregated version of the Eaton and Kortum (Econometrica, 70, 2002, 1741) model to analyse the relative importance of technology and trade costs for export sophistication and welfare in a general equilibrium framework. It uses a structural estimation method to identify key parameters of the model that fit the observed trade pattern. The calibrated parameters vary across commodities consistent with their expected level of sophistication. The results are robust to alternative specifications of the calibration. Using fitted data, it also show that export sophistication is highly correlated with GDPper capita. Overall, the parameters are comparable with estimates from other studies. Finally, counterfactual experiments are conducted to quantify the effects of changes in technology and trade costs for the countries in the bottom quintile. The findings imply that these countries have a huge technological disadvantage, particularly in more sophisticated commodities.
Oral Application of Charcoal and Humic Acids Influence Selected Gastrointestinal Microbiota, Enzymes, Electrolytes, and Substrates in the Blood of Dairy Cows Challenged with Glyphosate in GMO Feeds

The present study was initiated to investigate the influence of oral application of charcoal, sauerkraut juice and humic acids on specific gastrointestinal microbiota and selected enzymes, electrolytes, and substrates in the blood of dairy cows fed GMO feeds containing glyphosate. A total of 380 Schleswig Holstein cows suffering from symptoms of chronic botulism were fed sequentially with 400 g/animal charcoal daily for 4 weeks (weeks 1-4 of the study), 200 g/ animal charcoal (weeks 5-10 of the study), 200 g charcoal and 500 ml Sauerkraut juice/animal (weeks 11-14 of the study), 120 g/animal humic acids (weeks 15-18 of the study) 200 g charcoal and 100 mL Aquahumin/animal (weeks 19- 20 the of study), or 100 g charcoal and 50 mL Aquahumin (weeks 21-22 of the study) followed by 4 weeks without any supplementation. There was a significant reduction of glyphosate in urine following supplementation with a combination of 200g charcoal plus either 500 mL sauerkraut juice or humic acid. From all of the parameters investigated in blood and urine, distinctive effects were only seen as a lack of manganese and cobalt and a significant reduction of creatinine excretion by urine. All other measured parameters such as creatine kinase (CK), alkaline phosphatase (AP), glutamate dehydrogenase (GLDH), glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT), and cholesterol, urea, and blood creatinine) were not significantly changed. A significant increase of fecal Gram-negative bacteria and enterococci were only seen at week 8 (200 g charcoal/d) and week 20 (200 g charcoal+100 mL Aquahumin). In conclusion, a charcoal-sauerkraut juice combination and humic acids reduced glyphosate excretion by urine and led to the improved health of animals.
Doing Well or Doing Good: The Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Profit in Romanian Companies

The traditional goal of a company is to earn profit to pay its shareholders, but, nowadays, for the business to be sustainable in the long term, a strategy of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities is needed to meet stakeholder demands, respect ethical principles and give an appropriate answer to organizational stakeholders. The objective of the paper is to identify how strong the correlation between CSR and profit is, and how companies behave in the periods they have losses, whether they continue to do CSR activities, they reduce the activities, or they give them up. Thus, CSR is attributed to the concept of “doing good” and profit to the expression of “doing well”, from which a “positive business” can be built. Our empirical research consists of a panel data econometric model using logistics regressions to highlight the correlation between profit and the decision to do CSR activities and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) regressions to identify the correlations between the level of CSR activities and the dimension of profit, an expression of financial performance. The main results emphasize that the companies which implement CSR activities in a greater extent are more profitable in economic terms.
Corporate Sustainability Management and Its Market Benefits

An increasing number of firms around the world are applying corporate sustainability management (CSM) to their business operations, and the research interest on the effect of CSM in terms of the capital market benefit has grown rapidly under the different research settings across various countries. This study investigates whether CSM contributes to increasing firm value and improving the market response to earnings disclosure, using Korean firms as the sample. The test results show that firms with CSM reporting outperform the other firms in terms of Tobin’s Q and the market-adjusted stock returns over a year. Further, investors respond more strongly to the earnings announcement events of the CSM firms than the non-CSM firms, which is more likely to be attributed to the enhanced corporate disclosure practice of the CSM firms than an improvement in earnings quality. Our findings indicate that the shareholders of firms with CSM reporting can enjoy relatively higher market valuations and enhanced information content of earnings disclosures. In conclusion, the results show that the CSM activities in pursuit of a harmonious relationship with the various stakeholders bring different forms of market benefits to shareholders as well.
Testing pre-main-sequence models: the power of a Bayesian approach

Pre-main-sequence (PMS) models provide invaluable tools for the study of star-forming regions as they allow us to assign masses and ages to young stars. Thus, it is of primary importance to test the models against observations of PMS stars with dynamically determined masses. We developed a Bayesian method for testing the present generation of PMS models, which allows for a quantitative comparison with observations, largely superseding the widely used isochrones and tracks qualitative superposition. Using the available PMS data, we tested the newest PISA PMS models, establishing good agreement with the observations. The data cover a mass range from ∼0.3 to ∼3.1 M⊙, temperatures from ∼3 × 103 to ∼1.2 × 104 K and luminosities from ∼3 × 10−2 to ∼60 L⊙. Masses are correctly predicted within 20 per cent of the observed values in most of the cases, and for some of them the difference is as small as 5 per cent. Nevertheless, some discrepancies are also observed and critically discussed. By means of simulations, using typical observational errors, we evaluated the spread of log τsim− log τrec, i.e. simulated − recovered age distribution of the single objects. We also found that stars in binary systems simulated as coeval might be recovered as non-coeval, due to observational errors. The actual fraction of fake non-coevality is a complex function of the simulated ages, masses and mass ratios. We demonstrated that it is possible to recover the systems’ ages with better precision than for single stars using the composite age–probability distribution, i.e. the product of the components’ age distributions. Using this valuable tool, we estimated the ages of the presently observed PMS binary systems.
Comparative study of 5 G waveform candidates for below 6 GHz air interface

5G will have to cope with a high degree of heterogeneity in terms of services and requirements. Among these latter, flexible and efficient use of all available non-contiguous spectrums for different network deployment scenarios is one challenge for the future 5G. To maximize spectrum efficiency, the 5G air interface technology will also need to be flexible and capable of mapping various services to the best suitable combinations of frequency and radio resources. In this work, a fair comparison of several 5G waveform candidates (UFMC, FBMC, and GFDM) has been proposed under a common framework. Spectral efficiency, power spectral density, peak to average power ratio and robustness to asynchronous multi-user uplink transmission are assessed. The benefits of these new waveforms for the foreseen 5G use cases are clearly highlighted and it is also underlined that some concepts still need to be improved to achieve the full range of expected benefits of 5G. Keywords— waveform; spectral efficiency; PAPR; multi— user access scheme; GFDM; UFMC; FBMC
The Effect of Marital Therapy on Physical Affection

The Effect of Marital Therapy on Physical Affection Tiffany Ann Migdat School of Family Life, BYU Master of Science Research indicates that marital satisfaction is associated with levels of physical affection between partners. This is important because there is evidence of physical and mental health benefits of physical affection. Although past research has shown that marital therapy increases levels of marital and sexual satisfaction, the association between marital therapy and physical affection has not been explored. This study used a treatment group and a control group of 108 married couples to assess the relationship between marital therapy and physical affection over a course of 12 weeks. Using structural equation modeling and an actor partner analytic model, results indicated that marital therapy was significantly associated with increases in physical affection for husbands, but not wives.
Semantic face segmentation from video streams in the wild

Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona (FIB) Facultat de Matemàtiques (UB) Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeria (URV) Master of Artificial Intelligence Semantic face segmentation from video streams in the wild by Deividas SKIPARIS Semantic segmentation of faces in the wild is a challenging task, despite the fact there has already been extensive amount of research in this field. Most of the more advanced approaches require high computational resources, which are not always available, e.g. in remote machines or mobile devices. This paper presents a nondeep approach to segment faces in video streams in the wild and to extract representative colors of each semantic region. This is achieved by a combination of handpicked methods, fine-tuned to work in tandem to produce accurate color extractions. Firstly, the face is located using a HOG detector and fitted with facial landmarks for alignment and eye region localization. The located face is then subtracted from the background and later segmented into hair and skin regions, by using two bipartite graph cut stages for each operation separately. Colors from each of the semantic regions are then extracted with the help of histogram analysis. Temporal feature has been added to mitigate errors from isolated frame segmentations. The proposed method operates at 5fps on a standard CPU and achieves mean color extraction error of around 11% in CIELAB color space. It was shown, that 11% error, although noticeable, perceptually has very little difference, and is more than sufficient for the application purpose of extracting accurate colors of semantic face regions from video streams.
SUBMICROSCOPIC STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN JOINT CARTILAGE

H 0 r k yD. : SubmicroscopicStructure of the Human Joint Cartilage. Acta vet. Brno, 49, 1980: 145-176. Using a transmission and scanning electron microscope the joint cartilage was studied in 43 persons of the age from 5 to 75 years. As far as possible the present study gives a finished survey of the ultrastructure of chondrocytes of the super­ ficial, middle and deep layers of the articular cartilage, arrangement of the inter­ cellular substance; presented are basic data on the formation of the surface of the cartilage with regard to the age of the object. Special attention is given to carti­ lage intercellular substance which - from the point of view of electron micro­ scopy - has been studied only little. The components of intercellular substance are arranged in such a way that we can distinguish the specialized areas near the chondrocytes as the pericellular matrix on the one hand, and the other intercellular substance, the intercellular matrix, on the other. The surface of the cartilage is covered with a specialized layer designated as lamina splendens. Results of the study proper are confronted with published data not only with regard to human joint cartilage but data on these structures have been studied also in lower mammals as much knowledge holds generally true for this type of tissue. The study summa­ rizes the known facts about joint cartilage and provides a necessary basis for judging the degrees of changes occurring during some of their injuries. Ultrastructure, hip joint cartilage, chondrocytes, intercellularmatrix, SEM.
Doing Good Is Not Enough, You Should Have Been Authentic: Organizational Identification, Authentic Leadership and CSR

Previous studies on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational performance have emphasized how CSR influences the external stakeholders such as shareholders, customers, and local communities to explain the association. Thus, it is relatively less studied how CSR influences internal stakeholders, which ultimately accrue to organizational performance. Grounded on institutional theory which proposes that institutional enablers such as CSR activities affect macro-level outcomes (i.e., organizational performance) through micro-level mechanisms (i.e., attitudes or behaviors of members), we argue that internal processes are critical to explaining the CSR–performance link. Using 2-wave time-lagged survey data of 301 employees from various companies in South Korea, we first investigate how organizational identification (OI) mediates the CSR–performance link. In addition, we also investigate how authentic leadership moderates the link between CSR and OI. The results showed that OI is an important internal process that CSR enhances for organizational performance. In addition, authentic leadership positively moderated the effect of CSR on OI. Our results suggest that we need to understand “internal” intermediating mechanisms as well as critical contextual factors to elaborately explain the relationship.
Red giants in the Small Magellanic Cloud - II. Metallicity gradient and age-metallicity relation

We present results from the largest Ca II triplet line metallicity study of Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) field red giant stars to date, involving 3037 objects spread across approximately 37.5 deg 2 , centred on this galaxy. We find a median metallicity of [Fe/H] =− 0.99 ± 0.01, with clear evidence for an abundance gradient of −0.075 ± 0.011 dex deg −1 over the inner 5 ◦ . We interpret the abundance gradient to be the result of an increasing fraction of young stars with decreasing galactocentric radius, coupled with a uniform global age–metallicity relation. We also demonstrate that the age–metallicity relation for an intermediate-age population located 10kpc in front of the north-east of the cloud is indistinguishable from that of the main body of the galaxy, supporting a prior conjecture that this is a stellar analogue of the Magellanic Bridge. The metal-poor and metal-rich quartiles of our red giant branch star sample (with complementary optical photometry from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey) are predominantly older and younger than approximately 6Gyr, respectively. Consequently, we draw a link between a kinematical signature, tentatively associated by us with a disc-like structure, and the upsurges in stellar genesis imprinted on the star formation history of the central regions of the SMC. We conclude that the increase in the star formation rate around 5–6Gyr ago was most likely triggered by an interaction between the SMC and Large Magellanic Cloud.
New entropy estimates for the Oldroyd-B model and related models

This short note presents the derivation of a new {\it a priori} estimate for the Oldroyd-B model. Such an estimate may provide useful information when investigating the long-time behaviour of macro-macro models, and the stability of numerical schemes. We show how this estimate can be used as a guideline to derive new estimates for other macroscopic models, like the FENE-P model.