Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ICT Practices of Pre service Teachers in India-Case Study of a State

Owing to favorable IT policies at the school level and to the encouraging approach of the various state governments in India, classrooms have become technologyenabled learning environments. It has become necessary for teachers to be accustomed to using technology in a variety of ways as technology has become an important resource for teachers and learners alike. How teachers use technology depends on their attitudes towards this resource, their readiness and willingness to exploit its pedagogical advantages and the infrastructure of the school. In this context, Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) become very important places in which to mould future teachers. As such these institutions need to address the goals of technology enabled learning and teaching. Teacher education institutions are therefore faced with the challenge of preparing a new generation of teachers to effectively use the new learning tools in their teaching practices. For many teacher education programs, this daunting task requires the acquisition of new resources and expertise as well as careful planning (UNSECO, 2008). To reap the full benefits of technology in learning, it is essential that preservice and in-service teachers have basic technology skills and competencies. Teacher education institutions and programmes must provide leadership for preservice and inservice teachers and model new pedagogies and tools for learning. They must also provide leadership in determining how the new technologies may best be used in the context of the culture, needs and economic conditions within the country in question. To accomplish these goals, teacher education institutions must work closely and effectively with secondary school teachers and administrators, national and state educational agencies, teacher unions, business and community organizations, politicians and other important stakeholders in the educational system. Teacher education institutions also need to develop strategies and plans to enhance the teaching and learning process within teacher education programmes and to ensure that all future teachers are well prepared to use the new tools for learning. (UNESCO, 2008)
Maternal methadone dose and neonatal withdrawal.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine whether maternal methadone dosage correlates with neonatal withdrawal in a large heroin-addicted pregnant population. STUDY DESIGN A retrospective review of all maternal/neonatal records of pregnancies that were maintained on methadone therapy in our institution was conducted. After in-hospital stabilization, women were given daily methadone therapy under direct surveillance, with liberal dosage increases according to maternal withdrawal symptoms. Neonatal withdrawal was assessed objectively by the neonatal abstinence score. The average methadone dose in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy and the last methadone dose before delivery (cutoffs of 40, 60, or 80 mg) were correlated to various objective measures of neonatal withdrawal. RESULTS One hundred mother/neonate pairs on methadone therapy were identified. Women who received an average methadone dose of <80 mg (n=50 women) had a trend toward a higher incidence of illicit drug abuse before delivery than women who received doses of >/=80 mg (n=50 women; 48% vs 32%; P=.1). Women who received an average methadone dose of <80 mg had similar highest neonatal abstinence score, need for neonatal treatment for withdrawal, and duration of withdrawal compared with women whose condition was maintained with dosages of >/=80 mg (score, 11.1 vs 11.5; 68% vs 66%; and 13.3 vs 13.6 days, respectively; all P>.5). For all cutoffs that were used for high versus low dose and for both the average and last methadone dosage analyses, neonatal withdrawal was similar. CONCLUSION The maternal methadone dosage does not correlate with neonatal withdrawal; therefore, maternal benefits of effective methadone dosing are not offset by neonatal harm.
Eye-Head Coordination in Monkeys: Evidence for Centrally Patterned Organization

Eye-head coordination was investigated by recording from the neck and eye muscles in monkeys. The results show that (i) during eye-head turning, neural activity reaches the neck muscles before the eye muscles, and (ii) all agonist neck muscles are activated simultaneously regardless of the initial head position. Since overt movement of the eyes precedes that of the head, it was concluded that the central neural command initiates the eye-head sequence but does not specify its serial order. Furthermore, it was determined that the compensatory eye movement is not initiated centrally but instead is dependent upon reflex activation arising from movement of the head.
Employment opportunities at entry into the labor market in Spain since the mid- 1970s.

The objectives of the research are: 1) to determine whether young people’s job opportunities at the beginning of their careers have improved or worsened in Spain between 1976 and 2005, 2) to find out what individual characteristics favor or impede a good entry into the world of work, and 3) to find out how inequality according to gender, social class and educational level has evolved in a context where entry into the labor market is increasingly flexible. To this end, all of the trimesters of the Spanish Labor Force Survey were used, from the third trimester of 1976 to the third trimester of 2005. Two files were created, one with the typical ages at entry into the labor market according to level of studies and birth cohort, and the other with ages five years older than the previous ones. Logistic regressions and the artificial cohort method were used to analyze the likelihood of being employed, of having a fixed-term contract, and of being employed in an unskilled job for both of these life moments (entry into the labor market and the first steps in the labor market). With respect to the likelihood of being employed, the results show that entry into the labor market depends largely on the economic cycle. Insofar as concerns the quality of employment, young people today must face a reality that was unknown before the mid-eighties, namely temporary employment, despite the fact that the likelihood of working with a fixed-term contract has decreased slightly for the youngest cohorts. Similarly, the analyses show that temporary employemnt is, in most cases, a transitory state. As for the likelihood of occupying an unskilled position, the balance of the last thirty years is positive, because the change in the productive structure has favored young people’s access to better positions, compared to their parents. Also, gender inequality has decreased, and social and educational level inequalities have not generally increased, although the results show nuances that will be further developed in the text. 8 Labor market entries and early careers in Spain since the mid-1970 Juan Ignacio Martinez-Pastor, Fabrizio Bernardi and Luis Garrido
Ownership Structure and Firm Value: Empirical Study on Corporate Governance System of Indian Firms

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between ownership structure and value in Indian firms by testing for "Monitoring and Expropriation" hypothesis, as well as "Convergence of Interest" and "Entrenchment hypothesis". This study provides evidences in support of monitoring hypothesis. But we could not find any evidence in support of expropriation hypothesis. This paper reports evidence in support of both "convergence of interest" and "entrenchment hypothesis". We find that though there is no evidence of "Expropriation" by significant shareholders in Indian firms but at a certain range of insider ownership, Indian managers get entrenched and firm value gets affected negatively.
Farm Family Business: The Relevance of District-Contexts in the Consumption of Rural Development Policies

Farm family business is the most relevant of the Italian agriculture. Recent rural development policies of the European Union aim at improving competitiveness of family farms and diversification of their economic activity in rural areas, by offering a set of financial opportunities. These opportunities are not always well exploited by family farms. The purpose of this article is to verify the existence of a "district effect" in the consumption of rural development policies. To this end, the authors analyse demand and funding obtained by fruit and vegetable farms within an Italian region, distinguishing between district and off-district areas. A deepening of farms’ socio-demographic characteristics is proposed, to emphasize the district dimension in the access to rural development policies. The results confirm the existence of the district effect and call for a strengthening of relational asset within territories to improve policy access.
PCAOB Inspections and Market Repercussions; Is The re A Relationship?

This study tests whether the PCAOB achieves its goals of issuing inspection reports that provide meaningful and value-adding information for external investment decisions, as measured by investor reaction. The study measures informative value by examining cumulative abnormal stock returns of all companies that had an auditor inspected in 2012. Also tested was 'Big Four' versus other annually inspected firms, as well as 12 significant industries. This study provides statistical evidence that investors respond to PCAOB inspection reports, the responses of which are typically positive. These results demonstrate that investors recognize inspection reports as value-relevant, and consquently use them to make informed investment decisions.
Which Resources to Accumulate? Firm Dynamics in a Changing Industry

During the long-run evolution of an industry there are often periods with substantial changes to entry and exit rates. Several factors lead to these turbulent firm dynamics. for instance technological development, that affect the resources available to firms. I develop a model in which firms have two resources to potentially accumulate so as to consider the effect on firm dynamics of technological shocks that: change the speed at which firms may accumulate the resources; and alter the substitutability/complementarity across resources. I focus on the transition from an initial equilibrium to a new, eventual long-run equilibrium. The firm dynamics are strongly affected by the interplay of resource substitutability/complementarity, slow-moving resource stocks, and firm forward-looking decisions. Increases in the speed of a accumulation for a resource leads to spikes in entry, and periods of zero entry, such as while incumbents gradually change or exit. Increases in substitutability lead firms in the long run to focus on one resource to accumulate, though near-term response varies across incumbents: smaller firms switch to focus on one resource, whereas larger firms continue to focus on both resources. Thus the transition equilibrium firm dynamics are neither a smooth change from the initial to final stationary states, nor a sudden change at a point in time.
Learning Deep Generative Models With Doubly Stochastic Gradient MCMC

Deep generative models (DGMs), which are often organized in a hierarchical manner, provide a principled framework of capturing the underlying causal factors of data. Recent work on DGMs focussed on the development of efficient and scalable variational inference methods that learn a single model under some mean-field or parameterization assumptions. However, little work has been done on extending Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to Bayesian DGMs, which enjoy many advantages compared with variational methods. We present doubly stochastic gradient MCMC, a simple and generic method for (approximate) Bayesian inference of DGMs in a collapsed continuous parameter space. At each MCMC sampling step, the algorithm randomly draws a mini-batch of data samples to estimate the gradient of log-posterior and further estimates the intractable expectation over hidden variables via a neural adaptive importance sampler, where the proposal distribution is parameterized by a deep neural network and learnt jointly along with the sampling process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of learning various DGMs on a wide range of tasks, including density estimation, data generation, and missing data imputation. Our method outperforms many state-of-the-art competitors.
The influence of service environments on customer emotion and service outcomes

Purpose – Previous research on the relationship between service environments and customer emotions and service outcomes has focused on the physical environment. Among studies exploring the social environment, the emphasis has been on service employees, ignoring the impact of other customers. Recent research has further called for the need to include displayed emotion within the social environment. Therefore, this study aims to develop and test a more comprehensive model that focuses on the relationship between the social environment (employee displayed emotion and customer climate) and the physical environment (ambient and design factors) and resulting customer emotion and service outcomes.Design/methodology/approach – Based on past research, a theoretical framework was developed to propose the links between social/physical environments and customer emotion/perceptions. Extant research from various academic fields, including environmental psychology, was reviewed, deriving 11 hypotheses. Data collected fr.
Bank Reactions After Capital Shortfalls

This paper investigates whether European banks have capital targets and how deviations from the target impact their equity composition and activity mix. Using quarterly data for a sample of large European banks between 2004 and 2011, we show that there are notable asymmetries in banks’ reactions to deviations from optimal capital levels. Banks prefer to reshuffle risk-weighted assets or increase asset holdings when being above their optimal Tier 1 ratio, whereas they rather try to increase equity levels or reshuffle risk-weighted assets without changing asset holdings when being below target. At the same time, focusing instead on a unweighted equity ratio target, we find evidence of deleveraging and lower loan growth for undercapitalized banks during the recent financial crisis, whereas in the pre-crisis periods banks primarily reacted to deviations from their optimal target by adjusting equity levels.
High-density lipoproteins protect endothelial cells from tumor necrosis factor-alpha-induced apoptosis.

High-density lipoproteins (HDL) levels have been shown to be inversely correlated with coronary heart disease, but the mechanisms of the direct protective effect of HDL on endothelial cells are not fully understood. The apoptosis of endothelial cells induced by cytokines and/or oxidized low-density lipoproteins, etc. may provide a mechanistic clue to the "response-to-injury" hypothesis of atherogenesis. Here we report that HDL prevent the apoptosis of human umbilical venous endothelial cells (HUVECs) induced by tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) via an inhibition of CPP32-like protease activity. The incubation of HUVECs with TNF-alpha significantly increased the CPP32-like protease activity, and induced apoptosis. Preincubation of HUVECs with HDL before incubation with TNF-alpha significantly suppressed the increase in the CPP32-like protease activity, preventing apoptosis in a concentration-dependent manner. These results suggest that HDL prevent the suicide pathway leading to apoptosis of endothelial cells by decreasing the CPP32-like protease activity and that HDL thus play a protective role against the "response-to-injury" hypothesis of atherogenesis.
Marketing Performance Measurement Systems: Does Comprehensiveness Really Improve Performance?

Comprehensive performance measurement systems such as the balanced scorecard have received considerable attention in marketing. However, whether and under which circumstances comprehensiveness as a performance measurement system property is desirable and contributes to firm performance is still a subject of debate in research and practice. To address this issue, the authors use dyadic field data from marketing managers and management accounting executives and extend prior work by developing and testing a more complex, contingency-based model. The empirical results confirm the developed framework. In particular, the results show that the relationship of comprehensiveness in a marketing performance measurement system to firm performance is conditional. Marketing alignment and market-based knowledge mediate this relationship, depending on marketing strategy, marketing complexity, and market dynamism. These insights explain mixed findings of previous research and provide important implications for research and managerial practice.
Recent Life Events in Elderly Suicide: A Nationwide Study in Finland

The primary objectives of this study were to examine recent stressful life events and to explore possible social interaction factors across age groups in a population of suicides. Life events during the last 3 months preceding suicide (32 items) and factors related to social interaction (6 items) among 219 suicide victims aged 60 years and older were compared with those of 803 victims aged 20 to 59 years. The study population comprised all adult suicides who had life events interview data assessed as reliable by the interviewers in a nationwide total suicide population (1,397) of 1 year in Finland. Differences in life events were found across age groups: Family discord, loss (separation, death), financial trouble, job problems, unemployment, and residence change were more common among younger victims, and somatic illness was more common among elderly victims. Age groups were similar with regard to proportions of persons living alone, availability of confidants and friends with common interests, and reports of loneliness. Similarly, few differences were found among persons aged 60–74 compared to age 75+ with regard to rates of life events, living alone, opportunities for social interaction, and complaints of loneliness. Loneliness was reported for persons who experienced loss among both younger and older suicides. In terms of age differences, younger men were more likely to have experienced job-related events,whereas older men were more likely to have had a somatic illness. Somatic illness appeared to be the most important stressor in elderly suicides, particularly for men. Living alone and diminished opportunity for social interaction were not common factors in late-life suicides. Controlled studies with age matched comparisons are needed to further investigate how life events and social interaction factors vary in their risk for suicide across the life course.
Nutritional and Health Benefits of Inulin and Oligofructose Nondigestibility Characteristics of Inulin and Oligofructose in Humans 1

The ileostomy model is considered to be a reliable model to reflect small bowel absorption. Studies in ileostomy subjects have shown that inulin and oligofructose pass through the small bowel without degradation and without influencing the absorption of nitrogen, fat, starch, calcium, magnesium or zinc. Inulin and oligofructose do not have any considerable effect on cholesterol absorption or bile acid excretion. J. Nutr. 129: 1428S–1430S,
Intravenous Tramadol Versus Epidural Morphine for Postthoracotomy Pain Relief: A Placebo-Controlled Double-Blind Trial

Tramadol, an analgesic deriving only part of its effect via opioid agonist activity, might provide postoperative pain relief with minimal risk of respiratory depression.We, therefore, evaluated it for the control of postthoracotomy pain. In this randomized, double-blind study, a single intravenous (IV) bolus dose of 150 mg tramadol (Group T) was compared to epidural morphine administered as an initial 2-mg bolus and subsequent continuous infusion at a rate of 0.2 mg/h (Group M). Patients in each group could receive morphine IV from a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) device. Pain scores, morphine consumption, arterial blood gases, and vital capacity values were recorded at regular intervals postoperatively until 8:00 AM on the first postoperative day. Both groups obtained adequate pain relief, and there were no between-group differences in pain scores or PCA morphine consumption. PaO2 was significantly higher in Group T at 2 h and PaCO2 significantly higher in Group M at 4 h postoperatively. There were no other significant respiratory differences. We conclude that a single dose of 150 mg tramadol given at the end of surgery provided postoperative analgesia equivalent to that provided by this dosage regimen of epidural morphine for the initial postoperative period. (Anesth Analg 1996;83:87-91)
Cardiopulmonary adaptations to pneumonectomy in dogs. III. Ventilatory power requirements and muscle structure.

Static and dynamic mechanical characteristics of the respiratory system were measured in five adult foxhounds 6-15 mo after right pneumonectomy (R-PNX) and in five matched foxhounds that underwent right thoracotomy without pneumonectomy (Sham). In R-PNX dogs, elastic recoil was lower than that in the left lung of Sham dogs. On exercise, absolute ventilatory power requirements of the lung and its components were measured, i.e., power requirements to overcome elastic and viscous resistances of the lung as well as power requirements during inspiration and expiration. All components were higher for a given minute ventilation in R-PNX dogs than in both lungs of Sham dogs. Ventilatory power requirements after R-PNX were also higher than in three adult foxhounds after left PNX studied previously by the same techniques. After R-PNX, the mass of the right costal diaphragm and total mass of inspiratory muscles were greater than in Sham dogs. There were no significant differences in ultrastructural features of the costal diaphragm. The unilateral increase in muscle mass is likely the result of chronic elevation and stretch of the right costal diaphragm after R-PNX.
Cell Phone Use While Driving and Attributable Crash Risk

Objectives: Prior research has estimated that crash risk is 4 times higher when talking on a cell phone versus not talking. The objectives of this study were to estimate the extent to which drivers talk on cell phones while driving and to compute the implied annual number of crashes that could have been avoided if driver cell phone use were restricted. Methods: A national survey of approximately 1200 U.S. drivers was conducted. Respondents were asked to approximate the amount of time spent driving during a given day, number of cell phone calls made or received, and amount of driving time spent talking on a cell phone. Population attributable risk (PAR) was computed for each combination of driver gender, driver age, day of week, and time of day. These were multiplied by the corresponding crash counts to estimate the number of crashes that could have been avoided. Results: On average, drivers were talking on cell phones approximately 7 percent of the time while driving. Rates were higher on weekdays (8%), in the afternoon and evening (8%), and for drivers younger than 30 (16%). Based on these use rates, restricting cell phones while driving could have prevented an estimated 22 percent (i.e., 1.3 million) of the crashes in 2008. Conclusions: Although increased rates of cell phone use while driving should be leading to increased crash rates, crash rates have been declining. Reasons for this paradox are unclear. One possibility is that the increase in cell phone use and crash risk due to cell phone use have been overestimated. Another possibility is that cell phone use has supplanted other driving distractions that were similarly hazardous.