Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Self-Efficacy on Student Performance in Calculus

Self-efficacy is an important variable that has been used to study students’ performance at all educational levels and in many content areas. In the report, we discuss the results of a quantitative study considering self-efficacy in college Calculus and its correlation to other variables available in a large scale study. Ultimately, our findings contradict existing findings regarding the effect of self-efficacy on class performance. We add to these results an interesting finding regarding the effect of self-efficacy on student's study habits: while time spent on course homework does not mediate the effect of self-efficacy, more time spent on course preparation by students with high self-efficacy tends to decrease their expected final course grade. Results contribute to math instructors’ understanding of their teaching and may help with the construction of more effective instruction.
Spectral mapping of the mal c ductivity through nanosc le ballistic tr nsport

The time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR) experiments measure the transient thermoreflectance response of metallic heaters in the short time domain (0~6 ns), with subpicosecond temporal resolution. Since the change in thermoreflectance is linearly proportional to the change in temperature, measuring thermoreflectance is equivalent to measuring the temperature of the metallic heaters [1]. To gain insight into the thermal transport in the experiments, we numerically solve the full spectral Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) under the relaxation time approximation and compare the BTE solution to the Fourier prediction to obtain the effective thermal conductivities across a wide range of length scales [2]. The simulation geometry consists of a periodic heater array sitting on top of the underlying substrate, mimicking the experimental sample configurations. Since the structure is periodic, the system can be studied by looking at the thermal transport in one single pitch of the repeated structure by applying periodic boundary conditions. Both the BTE and Fourier simulations are performed under transient heating conditions.
Role conflict and ambiguity among physicians and nurses in the public health care sector in Crete

OBJECTIVE To identify role conflict and role ambiguity in the public health care facilities in Crete, as perceived by physicians and nurses. METHOD A descriptive comparative study was conducted in the 5 public general hospitals, one university hospital and 7 of the 14 health centers in Crete, randomly selected. A sample of 75 physicians and 81 nurses completed anonymously the Greek version of the Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict Scales. Their responses were analyzed using multivariate methods. RESULTS The total score was 3.20±1.30 for role ambiguity and 4.75±1.19 for role conflict. Women presented a higher mean ambiguity score (r=0.203, p<0.05), as did participants in the younger age group (p<0.001). Nurses presented a higher mean ambiguity score (3.48±0.14) and physicians a higher mean conflict score (4.91±0.16). Analysis by health care level reveals statistically significant difference, with staff in the primary care health centers recording a higher mean ambiguity score (3.29 vs 2.14, p<0.001). A statistically significant difference was also found between physicians and nurses (p<0.001), with nurses presenting a higher mean ambiguity score than physicians (3.48 vs 2.90, p=0.020). CONCLUSIONS Role ambiguity and role conflict in doctors and nurses can lead to lowered health service performance and efficiency. Awareness of the degree of role conflict and role ambiguity among health personnel has implications for future research and efficient management. To reduce role ambiguity and conflict, managers of health care facilities should introduce interdisciplinary projects aimed at improving job satisfaction and providing quality patient-centered care. M. Rovithis, M. Linardakis, N. Rikos, A. Merkouris, E. Patiraki, A. Philalithis
1 BOARD CHARACTERISTICS AND AUDIT FEES : WHEN DOES OWNERSHIP MATTER ?

We develop a contingency approach to explain how firm ownership influences the monitoring function of the board—measured as the magnitude of external audit fees contracted by the board—by extending agency theory to incorporate the resource dependence notion that boards have distinct incentives and abilities to monitor management. Analyses of data on Continental European companies reveal that while board independence and audit services are complementary when ownership is dispersed, this is not the case when ownership is concentrated–suggesting that ownership concentration and board composition become substitutes in terms of monitoring management. Additional analysis shows that the relationship between board composition and external audit fees is also contingent upon the identity of the controlling shareholder.
A Complex-Network Approach to the Generation of Synthetic Power Transmission Networks

The application of complex-network techniques to the analysis of power grids can provide interesting complementary insights into power studies such as the generation of synthetic power grids. Synthetic power grids are realistic, albeit nonreal, case studies that are topologically consistent with respect to real power networks. As a preliminary step to the generation of synthetic power grids, we use complex-network techniques to analyze several European power networks from a topological point of view. We observe that real topologies are markedly heterogeneous. Then, we present our main contribution: a novel model that generates synthetic spatial power networks that mimics the historical evolution of power systems by taking into account economic and technical factors. The model is articulated in two steps—the first step focused on economic efficiency in which power demand is met and the second one is targeted at increasing network robustness while achieving topological attributes. The resulting synthetic networks are topologically consistent with real power grids. The parametrical nature of the proposed model allows the generation of different instances of consistent power networks, a very interesting feature for grid generation.
Language Use in Mother-Adolescent Dyadic Interaction: Preliminary Results

This preliminary study applied a computer-assisted quantitative linguistic analysis to examine the effectiveness of language-based classification models to discriminate between mothers (n = 140) with and without history of treatment for depression (51% and 49%, respectively). Mothers were recorded during a problem-solving interaction with their adolescent child. Transcripts were manually annotated and analyzed using a dictionary-based, natural-language program approach (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count). To assess the importance of linguistic features to correctly classify history of depression, we used Support Vector Machines (SVM) with interpretable features. Using linguistic features identified in the empirical literature, an initial SVM achieved nearly 63% accuracy. A second SVM using only the top 5 highest ranked SHAP features improved accuracy to 67.15%. The findings extend the existing literature base on understanding language behavior of depressed mood states, with a focus on the linguistic style of mothers with and without a history of treatment for depression and its potential impact on child development and trans-generational transmission of depression.
A novel gene signature combination improves the prediction of overall survival in urinary bladder cancer

Objectives: Bladder carcinoma is a clinical heterogeneous disease, which is with significant variability of the prognosis and high risk of death. This revealed prominently the need to identify high-efficiency cancer characteristics to predict clinical prognosis. Methods: Gene expression profiles of 93 bladder tumor patients from Gene Expression Omnibus data sets was performed in this study, along with 408 bladder tumor patients retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. The relationship of gene signature and overall survival was analyzed in the training cohort (n = 46). The validation for that was performed in an internal validation cohort (n = 47) and an external validation cohort (n = 408). Results: Four genes (TMPRSS11E, SCEL, KRT78, TMEM185A) were identified by univariable and multivariable Cox regression analysis. According to a risk score on the bases on the four-gene signature, we grouped these patients in high-risk group and low-risk group with significantly different overall survival in the training series and successfully validated it in both the internal and external validation cohorts. Subsequent studies demonstrated that the four-gene expression risk score was independent of radical cystectomy stage, chemotherapy and lymph node status. Higher rates of FAT4 mutation and MACF1 mutation in bladder tumors with high risk score were found compared with tumors with low risk score. Gene set enrichment analysis revealed high-risk score was associated with some tumor progression and recurrence associated pathways. Conclusions: This four-gene risk score might have potential clinical implications in the selection of high-risk urinary bladder cancer patients for aggressive therapy. The selected four genes might become potential therapeutic targets and diagnostic markers for urinary bladder cancer.
Intraday analysis on endogenous jumps , US macroeconomic surprises and long memory property in high frequency foreign exchange rates : Cases of the USD-EUR and the JPY-USD exchange rates *

This paper investigates the volatility dynamics of high frequency 30-minute Dollar-Euro and Yen-Dollar exchange rates. Even though the FIGARCH model with normality assumption is found to be a good starting point to study the dynamics of the high frequency returns, it appears to be inappropriate to represent the underlying features of the high frequency returns due to the occurrences of jumps. Hence this paper relies on the FIGARCH model with a mixture distribution that allows for the time-varying jumps which are endogenously determined by the US macroeconomic surprises. This paper generally finds that the macroeconomic surprises induce jumps in the high frequency returns affecting the jump probability asymmetrically depending on the signs and that the jumps increase the long memory persistence of the volatility process.
Information Modalities for Procedural Instructions : The Influence of Text , Pictures , and Film Clips on Learning and Executing RSI Exercises —

Much of the empirical research on the effectiveness of different instructional designs has focused on declarative tasks, where a learner acquires knowledge about a certain topic. It is unclear to what extent findings for learning declarative tasks (which are not consistent on all aspects) carry over to learning procedural tasks, where a learner acquires a certain skill. In this paper, we describe an experiment studying a specific kind of procedural instructions, namely exercises for the prevention of repetitive strain injury (RSI), taking information modality (text versus picture versus film clip) and difficulty degree of the exercises (easy versus difficult) into account. In the experiment, participants had to learn RSI exercises and were asked to execute them. The results showed that an instruction in a picture lead to the shortest learning times followed by an instruction in a film clip. An instruction in text led to the longest learning times. For the amount of practicing the exercises during the learning phase, it was found that the participants in the film clip condition hardly engaged in practicing the exercises during the learning phase. The participants in the picture condition engaged in a moderate amount of practicing of the exercises during the learning phase. The participants in the text condition engaged in the most practicing during the learning phase. The results concerning the execution times showed that an instruction in a picture led to the lowest execution times followed by an instruction in a film clip. The instruction in text led to longest execution times. Finally, for the amount of correctly executed exercises, it was found that learning from a film clip led to the highest learning performance, both for easy and for difficult exercises. Learning from an instruction in text led to a fairly good learning performance, both for easy and difficult exercises. Learning from a picture led to a good learning performance for the easy exercises, but the performance dropped for the difficult exercises.
Fungi Isolated from Traditional and Exotic Apple Varieties from Portugal and Patulin Production

The objective of our study was to examine the effects of cultivar type on developed fungi species and evaluate the potential for patulin production by fungi. In addition, patulin diffusion was also investigated. The experiments were carried out in traditional (Bravo de Esmolfe) and exotic apples (Golden, Starking, Fuji, Reineta Parda and Gala Galaxy) varieties from Portugal. High-performance liquid chromatography with solid phase extraction and UV detection (SPEHPLC-UV) was validated and used to analyze patulin in the apple. The most prevalent fungal population was Penicillium spp and 27% of rotten fruits had patulin. Fungi of the genera Cladosporium spp. , Alternaria spp. , Fusarium spp. and Aspergillus spp. were also found even in apples without patulin production. The variety with the highest production of patulin was Bravo Esmolfe, however this variety showed the lowest prevalence of Penicillium spp. compared to other varieties of apples where was detected patulin. Patulin was not detected in any apples of Fuji and Gala varieties, despite having been identified fungi usually associated with the production of patulin. Thus, these two varieties are presented as the most suitable for the production of the apple based-foods.
SYNONYMY IN SPORTS TERMINOLOGY IN ENGLISH AND SERBIAN

The paper deals with the typology of terminological synonyms in English and Serbian, focusing on the corpus of terms relating to five ball games – basketball, football, handball, volleyball and water polo. According to this research, there are two types of synonyms in English (real synonyms and quasi-synonyms), and four types in Serbian (terminological doublets, anglicisms as hyposynonyms, and false friends). However, if extended to the level of the general lexicon, this typology falls short of defining stylistically marked terms. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to add the additional category of terminologically marked synonyms. Thus the general conclusion of this paper is that, even though unwelcome in terminology, synonymous terms are a reality which should be controlled by the process of standardization.
Some limit theorems for flows of branching processes 1

Continuous-state branching processes (CB-processes) arose as weak limits of rescaled discrete Galton-Watson branching processes; see, e.g., Jǐrina (1958) and Lamperti (1967). Continuous-state branching processes with immigration (CBI-processes) are generalizations of them describing the situation where immigrants may come from other sources of particles. Those processes can be obtained as the scaling limits of discrete branching processes with immigration; see, e.g., Kawazu and Watanabe (1971) and Li (2006). A CBI-process was constructed in Dawson and Li (2006) as the strong solution of a stochastic equation driven by Brownian motions and Poisson random measures; see also Fu and Li (2010). A similar construction was given in Li and Ma (2008) using a stochastic equation driven by time-space Gaussian white noises and Poisson random measures. In the study of scaling limits of coalescent processes with multiple collisions, Bertoin and Le Gall (2006) constructed a flow of jump-type CB-processes as the weak solution flow of a system of stochastic equations driven by Poisson random measures; see also Bertoin and Le Gall (2003, 2005). A more general flow of CBI-processes was constructed in Dawson and Li (2012) as strong solutions of stochastic equations driven by Gaussian white noises and Poisson random measures. The flows in Bertoin and Le Gall (2006) and Dawson and Li (2012) were also treated as path-valued processes with independent increments. Motivated by the works of Aldous and Pitman (1998) and Abraham and Delmas (2010) on tree-valued Markov processes, another flow of CBI-processes was introduced in Li (2012), which was identified as a path-valued branching process. From the flows in Bertoin and Le Gall (2006), Dawson and Li (2012) and Li (2012), one can define some superprocesses or immigration superprocesses over the positive half line with local and nonlocal branching mechanisms. To study the genealogy trees for critical branching processes conditioned on non-extinction, Bakhtin (2011) considered a flow of continuous CBI-processes driven by a time-space Gaussian white noise. He obtained the flow as a rescaling limit of systems of discrete Galton-Watson processes and also pointed out the connection of the model with a superprocess conditioned on non-extinction.
Scotland ' s Rural College Addressing global ruminant agricultural challenges through understanding the rumen microbiome : past , present and future

Huws, SA; Creevey, C; Oyama, LB; Mizrahi, I; Denman, SE; Popova, M; Munoz-tamayo, R; Forano, E; Waters, SM; Hess, M; Tapio, I; Smidt, H; Krizsan, S; Yanez-Ruiz, DR; Belanche, A; Guan, LL; Gruninger, RJ; McAllister, T; Newbold, J; Roehe, R; Dewhurst, RJ; Snelling, TJ; Watson, M; Suen, G; Hart, E; Kingston-Smith, A; Scollan, N; Do Prado, RM; Pilau, E; Mantovani, HC; Attwood, GT; Edwards, JE; McEwan, N; Morrison, S; Mayorga, O; Elliott, C; Morgavi, DP
SELF-EFFICACY AS DETERMINANT TO THE USE OF ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS CATALOGUE : A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED UNIVERSITIES IN NIGER DELTA REGION

The research surveyed computer self-efficacy as determinants to the use of online public access catalogue. Based on a detailed literature review, a total of three research questions were raised: What are the available access points for the use of OPAC by the library users? What are the various search methods/technique used by users to locate needed materials through the OPAC? And what is the level of the user’s computer self-efficacy? The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The population of the study is made up of 18,332 registered under -graduate library users and the sampling size of 920. The findings from the study are as follows: The major access points through which information are accessed using OPAC are Author, Title and Subject access points, Keyword search, Simple search, basic search, Boolean search method and phrase searching ranked high in the search methods applied by the respondents in searching through OPACs and also the respondents seem to exhibit a positive computer selfefficacy and as such may be more akin to using OPAC. The study thus concluded by giving the following recommendations: Efforts should be geared towards inculcating on university students a practical training of the use of computer, Universities should be equipped with the enabling infrastructure such as adequate power supply, effective Internet connectivity etc. that will encourage the use of OPAC, University libraries should formulate policies that would encourage mandatory use of OPACs.
COMPARISON OF LEVEL CROSSING TIMES FOR MARKOV AND SEMI-MARKOV PROCESSSES FÁTIMA

We address, using a sample-path approach, the level crossing ordering of stochastic processes with respect to integral stochastic orders closed for convolution. We extend results of Di Crescenzo and Ricciardi (1996) and Irle (2003), for skip-free-to-the-right semi-Markov processes, and derive sufficient conditions for the level crossing ordering of continuous time Markov chains that are similar to Kirstein’s conditions for the usual stochastic ordering of these processes.
Neurobiology of Disease Chronic Pain : Lost Inhibition ?

Luke A. Henderson,1 Chris C. Peck,2,5 Esben T. Petersen,3 Caroline D. Rae,4 Andrew M. Youssef,1 Jenna M. Reeves,1 Sophie L. Wilcox,1 Rahena Akhter,2 Greg M. Murray,2 and Sylvia M. Gustin1 1Department of Anatomy and Histology and 2Faculty of Dentistry, University of Sydney, Sydney 2006, New South Wales, Australia, 3Departments of Radiology and Radiotherapy, University Medical Center Utrecht, 3584 CX Utrecht, The Netherlands, 4Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick 2031, New South Wales, Australia, and 5School of Dentistry and Health Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Orange, New South Wales 2800, Australia
Pre-storage salicylic acid treatment affects functional properties , unsaturated / saturated fatty acids ratio and chilling resistance of pomegranate during cold storage

This research was conducted for assessment of salicylic acid (SA) effects on functional properties of pomegranate during cold storage. Pomegranate fruits were dipped in 2 mM solution of SA and stored at 2°C for 90 days. Every month, samples were taken and further stored 3 days at 20°C for shelf life study. SA-treated fruits were compared with chilled and non-chilled fruits (stored at 2 and 10°C, respectively). Arils of treated fruits exhibited higher antioxidant activity (both in hydrophilic and lipophilic fractions) than chilled and non-chilled fruits. The chilling index, ion leakage and respiration rate of treated fruits were lower than chilled fruits but higher than non-chilled fruits. Severity of damage in control fruit was related to softening and loss of fatty acids with a concomitant reduction in the ratio of unsaturated/saturated fatty acids during storage. These chilling injury symptoms reduced in SA-treated pomegranates.
Log-MelSpectrum and Excitation features based Speaker Identification using Deep Learning

In the recent years, deep learning techniques are being used to construct the Speaker Identification systems. Currently, Salient Feature Extraction plays prominent role in the Speaker Identification task. We propose the fusion of Log-MelSpectrum and Excitation Features to develop the text-independent system using simple Dilated Convolution Neural Network(CNN). To hold the huge useful information, the dilated convolution is being used by increasing the receptive area. The proposed system exhibits the overall accuracy of 91.19% under complex speech data. The performance of this end to end system with the Libri speech and 250 samples of each speaker is compared against existing baseline systems. The experiments conveys that the accuracy reaches only 80.7% using existing method and it improves significantly using the proposed framework.