Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Age of Exposure, Task Stimulus, and Type of Second Language Knowledge

Although grammaticality judgment tasks have been extensively used in second language (L2) research, the type of knowledge they elicit has been debated. The two major points discussed with respect to the type of L2 knowledge that GJTs examine include stimulus type and learner’s age. For stimulus type, it has been argued that grammatical sentences measure implicit knowledge (IK), while ungrammatical sentences gauge explicit knowledge (EK) (e.g., Loewen, 2009). For learner’s age, the previous research suggests that younger learners perform better on the measure of IK, while older learners score higher on instruments assessing EK (Gutiérrez, 2013). If the stimulus type argument is accurate, one important claim would follow that younger learners would perform better on the grammatical items that evoke IK than ungrammatical items that elicit EK. This would be reversed for adult learners, who would perform better on the ungrammatical items than the grammatical items; hence, they would perform better in EK than IK. However, previous research has reported varying conclusions about the type of L2 knowledge GJTs invoke, e.g., studies reporting that grammatical sentences measure IK and ungrammatical sentences tap into EK (Ellis, 2009), and those reporting that stimulus types do not render GJTs as either IK or EK factors (Vafee, Suzuki, & Kachisnke, 2016). As the controversy persists, this report, therefore, investigates the relationship between age and type of L2 knowledge as demonstrated by the grammatical and ungrammatical halves in the GJT as compared to an editing task by early and late L2 learners.
Factors Influencing Online Shopping Intention: A study among online shoppers in Oman

The role of E-commerce is inevitable in today’s business and the diffusion of the internet has spurred the growth of online shoppers (MENA Bytes, 2019). Oman ranks next to Saudi Arabia in online shopping, however, the e-commerce market in Oman in just 1% of its total sales. The objective of the research is to study the factors influencing online shopping intention in Oman focusing the B2C transactions. Using the literature review, four factors (web trust, perceived risk, privacy protection, and user experience) were identified as the determinants of Online shopping intention. The relationship between these four factors and online shopping were tested using the data collected from 104 respondents through a self-administrated questionnaire using an online survey. The data were analyzed using SEM approach. The study revealed that web-trust, perceived risk, privacy, and user experience determined consumers’ online shopping intention. The study outlines the significance of the determinants of consumers’ online shopping intention and the need for e-commerce players to explore these determinants to increase the consumers’ online shopping intention.
Mining Text in News Channels: A Case Study from Facebook

Recently, the usage of social media websites has become an attractive phenomenon in our daily life. These sites allow their users to communicate with each other through various tools. This results in learning and sharing of valuable information among their users. The nature of such information is categorized as unstructured and fuzzy text. The present study aims at analyzing textual data from Facebook and attempts to find interesting knowledge from such data and represent that knowledge in different forms. 33815 posts from 16 news channels pages over Facebook were extracted and analyzed. Findings revealed that there is a strong relationship between the Guardian and the Independent online news channels. Results indicated that there are four clusters in the study. Moreover, results showed that the overall collected data concentrated on three main topics: "Rio de Janeiro", "USA elections", and "UK leaves the European Union". These three main topics are considered as the hot topics that were discussed across all news channels provided by Facebook posts. Moreover, results depicted how the Text Parsing node can be employed to recognize terms and their examples in the dataset that involves the text. Other implications and future work are presented in the study.
The compact city and transport energy consumption

This paper challenges an emerging conventional wisdom: that transport energy consumption, and hence pollution, can be substantially reduced by promoting more compact cities. Such reasoning has quickly found its way from academic studies to official policy in many countries. Do the likely savings from such containment warrant the required draconian policies? An empirical assessment of transport energy consumption arising from decentralization is used to address this question. Two contextual reviews of the compact city case and the strength of decentralization precede the assessment. The conclusion is that energy savings will be minimal and that other policies might be more fruitful.
Asset Pricing Implications of Systemic Risk in Network Economies

This paper studies inter-temporal asset pricing in network economies when distress shocks can propagate. Two classes of equilibria exists. In the first, firm specific shocks are diversifiable and standard Lucas valuation formulas apply. In the second, shocks propagate and form cascades becoming endemic and non-diversifiable. We study a dynamic extension of the interbank network of Acemoglu, Ozdaglar and Tahbaz-Salehi (2015) and characterize the link between network topology and (i) stability, (ii) economic resilience, (iii) crisis duration. Financial sector concentration affects the tradeoffs between network stability and resilience, and between probability and duration of a crisis. Large debt levels can trigger cascades of shocks, inducing larger interbank (Libor) spreads and cost of equity capital of peripheral financial institutions. We derive closed-form solutions for equilibrium asset prices. Cascades induce a violation of the CAPM: idiosyncratic shocks affect expected excess returns, the cross-section of risk premia depends on firm exposure to network cascade risk and its distribution is negatively skewed.
A Survey on the Present Status of the Course Plans at Tehran University of Medical Sciences: A Prelude to Future Decisions

Background and Objectives The development of a course plan is an essential activity before presenting each course, which enables effective education by mapping the road ahead. For this reason, the study of the status of course plans at universities is of particular importance, such that access to the documentations in this regard can lead to the discovery of the uncertainties of the status quo. Methods This was a survey study performed in two stages. In the first stage, data about the current status of course plans was collected through a researcher-made questionnaire. Then, quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics in SPSS software. Secondly, the content of the course plans was examined. The data was collected using a researcher-made checklist based on review of the related texts. Results In total, 99 (92.52%) of the 107 academic departments completed the questionnaire. Of the 6926 responded units, 2251 units (32.5%) had a course plan. Of the 173 disciplines, 15 (8.7%) had provided a course plan on the faculty website. Of the 99 departments, 39 (39.4%) had a defined plan for course design and 34 (34.3%) departments had a monitoring committee. Qualitative analysis of course plans showed that 45.3% had an acceptable status, 6.2% were somewhat acceptable, 10.4% were incomplete and 38.1% were unacceptable. The general characteristics of the course (96.1%), the general description of the course (45.6%), the general objectives (87.0%), the specific goals (63.2%), and the introduction of resources (45.9%) had a “complete” and “fairly complete” status respectively and had the highest scores in course design. Also, students’ role and tasks components-role dimensions (66.4%), student’s assessment at the end of the course- summative evaluation (56.0%) and course timetable (51.8%) respectively, had the “incomplete” and “non-observance” status more than other components, and did not have a proper situation in course design. Conclusions The results of this study lead to the recognition of the current status of course plan in Tehran University of Medical Sciences and can be considered in future decisions.
The Role of Models and Error Correction in L2 Young Learners’ Noticing and Output

Despite the increasing interest in noticing by second language (L2) learners during the output process, little attention has been given to child L2 learners’ noticing and output. Thus, the present study investigated what child L2 learners of different English proficiency levels noticed as they composed a text and received written corrective feedback (WCF) (error correction vs. models), and how they incorporated the noticed features into their revised texts. Data were collected from twenty-six child pairs throughout three stages (composition, comparison, and revision stages) and note-taking was employed as a means of measuring learner noticing. It was found that learners were able to initiate noticing on their own when composing texts, and that highproficiency learners tended to attend to grammatical problems more frequently than medium/low-proficiency learners. WCF played a facilitative role in leading learners to notice, and their attention to language was mediated differently by different types of WCF. Learners incorporated the noticed features into their revisions, and textual revisions were mostly lexical. Error correction (EC) triggered more grammatical revisions, while the model text helped learners to notice something beyond what they could produce on their own. These findings suggest a facilitative role for output and WCF as a means of learner noticing, and the different roles of EC and model texts.
Not All Gestures Are Created Equal: Gesture and Visual Feedback in Interaction Spaces

Web Developer & Visual Designer, Harvest Mission Community Church 2012 NOW Executed iterative, user-centered design for non-profit organization’s web presence Designed and developed PHP-based web applications in a 10-15 person team Research Assistant, Natural Language Processing, University of Toronto 2009 Built acoustic language model for speech recognition Processed lecture recording and broadcast news audio data for training speech recognizer
Energy efficient dynamic virtual machine allocation with cpu usage prediction in cloud datacenters

ENERGY EFFICIENT DYNAMIC VIRTUAL MACHINE ALLOCATION WITH CPU USAGE PREDICTION IN CLOUD DATACENTERS Gökalp Urul M.S. in Computer Engineering Advisor: İbrahim Körpeoğlu January 2018 With tremendous increase in Internet capacity and services, the demand for cloud computing has also grown enormously. This enormous demand for cloud based data storage and processing forces cloud providers to optimize their platforms and facilities. Reducing energy consumption while maintaining service level agreements (SLAs) is one of the most important issues in this optimization effort. Dynamic virtual machine allocation and migration is one of the techniques to achieve this goal. This technique requires constant measurement and prediction of usage of machine resources to trigger migrations at right times. In this thesis, we present a dynamic virtual machine allocation and migration method utilizing CPU usage prediction to improve energy efficiency while maintaining agreed quality of service levels in cloud datacenters. Our proposed method, called LRAPS, tries to estimate short-term CPU utilization of hosts based on their utilization history. This estimation is then used to detect overloaded and underloaded hosts as part of live migration process. If a host is overloaded, some of the VMs running on that host are migrated to other hosts to avoid SLA violations; if a host is underloaded, all of the VMs in that host are tried to be migrated to other machines so that the host can be powered off. We did extensive simulation experiments using CloudSim to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed method. Our simulation experiments show that our method is feasible to apply and can significantly reduce power consumption and SLA violations in cloud systems.
Productive and physiological responses of lactating dairy cows supplemented with phytogenic feed ingredients1

Abstract This experiment compared milk production, milk composition, and physiological responses in lactating dairy cows supplemented with or without a mixture of condensed tannins, encapsulated cinnamaldehyde, curcumin, capsaicin, and piperine. Thirty-six lactating, multiparous, pregnant ¾ Holstein × ¼ Gir cows were maintained in a single drylot pen with ad libitum access to water and a total-mixed ration and were milked twice daily (d –7 to 84). On d 0, cows were ranked by days in milk (86 ± 3 d), milk yield (27.8 ± 1.0 kg), body weight (BW; 584 ± 10 kg), and body condition score (BCS; 3.04 ± 0.06) and assigned to receive (SUPP; n = 18) or not (CON; n = 18) 30 g/cow daily (as-fed basis) of Actifor Pro (Delacon Biotechnik GmbH; Steyregg, Austria). From d 0 to 84, SUPP cows individually received (as-fed basis) 15 g of Actifor Pro mixed with 85 g of finely ground corn through self-locking headgates before each milking of the day. Each CON cow concurrently received 85 g (as-fed basis) of finely ground corn through self-locking headgates. Throughout the experimental period (d –7 to 84), cows from both treatments were administered 500 mg of sometribove zinc at 14-d intervals and were monitored daily for morbidity, including clinical mastitis. Individual milk production was recorded daily, whereas milk samples were collected weekly for analysis of milk composition. Cow BW, BCS, and blood samples were also collected weekly. Cows receiving SUPP gained more BCS (P = 0.05) and had greater (P = 0.04) milk yield during the experiment compared with CON cows (0.22 vs. 0.07 of BCS, SEM = 0.05; 29.5 vs. 27.9 kg/d, SEM = 0.5). Milk composition did not differ (P ≥ 0.15) between SUPP and CON cows; hence, SUPP cows also had greater (P ≤ 0.02) production of fat-corrected and energy-corrected milk. Incidence of clinical mastitis did not differ (P ≥ 0.49) between SUPP and CON cows. No treatment differences were also detected (P ≥ 0.21) for serum concentrations of glucose and serum urea N. Mean serum haptoglobin concentration during the experiment was greater (P = 0.05) in CON vs. SUPP cows. Cows receiving SUPP had less (P ≤ 0.04) serum cortisol concentrations on d 21 and 42, and greater (P ≤ 0.05) serum concentrations of insulin-like growth factor-I on d 7, 35, and 63 compared with CON cows (treatment × day interactions; P ≤ 0.02). Collectively, supplementing phytogenic feed ingredients improved nutritional status and milk production of lactating ¾ Holstein × ¼ Gir cows.
The Delegation of Decision Rights: An Experimental Investigation

Despite the benefits of delegating decision rights, it is claimed that firms under delegate decision-making authority. However, to date, this claim is untested. This paper explores the choice between information elicitation and delegation. We also examine the effect of this choice on the subordinates’ incentives to gather decision facilitating information. We find that, compared to agency theory predictions, superiors do not delegate as much as they should and subordinates respond by devoting less effort to the acquisition of valuable information. Compared to the case where the decision is delegated, subordinates exert less effort when their information is elicited for both behavioral and economic reasons. This behavior results in superiors earning less profit.
Order restricted statistical inference

Isotonic Regression. Tests of Ordered Hypotheses: The Normal Means Case. Tests of Ordered Hypotheses: Generalizations of the Likelihood Ratio Tests and Other Procedures. Inferences about a Set of Multinomial Parameters. Duality. Inferences Regarding Distributions Subject to Shape Restrictions. Conditional Expectation Given a sigma-lattice: Projections in a More General Setting. Complements. Tables. Bibliography and Related References. Index. Symbols and Acronyms.
EFISIENSI PENGGUNAAN FAKTOR-FAKTOR PRODUKSI PADA USAHATANI PADI SUBAK CARIK TANGIS WONGAYA GEDE TABANAN–BALI

Pembangunan pertanian memiliki arah untuk meningkatkan produksi dalam rangka memenuhi kebutuhan pangan dan kebutuhan industri di dalam negeri, untuk meningkatkan ekspor, untuk memperluas kesempatan kerja dan untuk mendorong peluang bisnis pada saat yang sama untuk meningkatkan pendapatan petani sehingga diharapkan untuk menganalisa efek dari produksi faktor meliputi luas lahan, pupuk, pestisida, tenaga kerja dan teknologi, terhadap peningkatan hasil produksi pertanian dan untuk analisis efisiensi teknis, harga dan ekonomi, faktor produksi berpengaruh terhadap produksi padi di Subak Carik Tangis, Tabanan -Bali. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah petani di Subak Carik Tangis sebanyak 137 orang. Pengambilan sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah proporsional random sampling sebanyak 58 petani. Metode analisis data dengan menggunakan penghitungan produksi Cobb-Douglas yang diperkirakan terhadap faktor produksi dengan menggunakan analisis regresi berganda dengan regresi ordinary least square (OLS). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa secara bersamaan hampir semua faktor produksi padi dalam fungsi produksi Cobb-Douglas dalam usahatani padi memiliki pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap produksi padi. Faktor produksi benih, luas lahan, pupuk urea, dan teknologi berpengaruh nyata terhadap produksi padi. Pestisida matador dan tenaga kerja tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap produksi beras. Hasil analisis efisiensi teknis, semua faktor produksi secara teknis efisien, faktor produksi benih, luas lahan, pupuk, pestisida, dan tenaga teknis yang efisien. Dilihat dari efisiensi harga, semua faktor produksi tidak efisien atau efisien, dalam hal ini penggunaan input digunakan secara berlebihan sehingga perlu dikurangi untuk mendapatkan keuntungan maksimal. Dilihat dari efisiensi ekonomi semua faktor produksi tidak efisien yang artinya penggunaan input tidak optimal, sehingga petani belum mendapatkan keuntungan yang maksimal. Jika petani ingin hasil panen padi berpengaruh nyata, maka petani padi di Subak Carik Tangis Wongaya Gede Tabanan perlu memikirkan faktor-faktor produksi yang akan digunakan untuk mendapatkan keuntungan yang akan meningkatkan produksi padi secara maksimal. Dalam melakukan usahatani padi, pemerintah perlu memperhatikan faktor-faktor yang akan mempengaruhi produksi padi sehingga mencapai efisiensi dalam usahatani padi. Penggunaan faktor produksi perlu dilakukan secara tepat, agar petani mampu mencapai tingkat efisiensi. Untuk peneliti selanjutnya yang akan melakukan penelitian di Subak Carik Tangis, perlu dilakukan penelitian lebih lanjut tentang "Efisiensi penggunaan faktor produksi padi organik" dan "strategi pemasaran hasil produksi padi khususnya Beras Merah".
Nonlinear Coordinated Steering and Braking Control of Vision-Based Autonomous Vehicles in Emergency Obstacle Avoidance

The main aim of the project is to dynamic control design for automated driving of vision-based autonomous vehicles, with a particular focus on the coordinated steering and braking control in emergency obstacle avoidance. An autonomous vehicle uses a complex multi-input and multi-output structure, which possesses the features of parameter uncertainties and strong nonlinearities, and the fixed phenomena of lateral and longitudinal dynamics are clear in a combined cornering and braking movement. The effective coordinated control system for automated driving is wished-for to deal with these coupled and nonlinear features and eliminate the disturbances. First, a vision algorithm is constructed to detect the orientation path and offer the local location information between vehicles and reference path in real time. Then, a novel coordinated steering and braking control approach is proposed based on the nonlinear back stepping control theory and the adaptive fuzzy sliding-mode control method. Finally, experimental tests evident that the proposed control strategy possesses encouraging tracking performance and enhances the riding comfort and constancy of autonomous vehicles.
Making a little go a long way: A corpus-based analysis of a high-frequency word and some pedagogical implications for young Spanish learners

This study explores the different uses of the word little, its equivalents in Spanish and its teaching to young Spanish learners. First, it aims at analyzing the lexico-grammatical behavior of little in a corpus of children’s short stories, where its prevailing use, preceding countable nouns, has been found to be much more frequent than in other domains and registers. A contrastive study follows, which examines how little has been translated in an English-Spanish parallel corpus; the results show that diminutives constitute an important equivalent. Finally, some didactic implications are proposed, with the application of corpus-based findings to the teaching of English to young Spanish learners from an approach that combines lexical syllabi and story-based methodologies.
Modelling digital library success using the DeLone and McLean information system success model

This is an exploratory study to model the determinants of actual use of a digital library system. To do so, a research model was developed using Delone and McLean’s information system success model and explained as an empirical study. Data were collected from 978 respondents using a structured questionnaire from four different universities of Malaysia. The findings showed that the quality factors of digital library systems have a strong influence on satisfaction, behavioral intention, and variance in actual use. Information quality is the strongest predictor to measure user satisfaction, and satisfaction has a strong effect on students’ behavioral intention to use the system. In addition, user satisfaction and behavioral intention to use the system also have a strong positive relationship with the actual use of a digital library system. In brief, behavioral intentions are greatly influenced by system quality, information quality and service quality.
Do Foreign Investors Improve Market Efficiency?

We study the impact of foreign institutional investors on global capital allocation and welfare using novel firm-level international data. Using MSCI index inclusion as an exogenous shock to foreign ownership, we show that greater foreign ownership leads to more informative stock prices and this effect arises more from increased price efficiency than from improved firm governance. We further show that the impact of capital flows on price efficiency is due to real efficiency gains, as opposed to better information disclosure. Finally, we show that foreign ownership increases market liquidity, reduces firms' cost of equity, and leads to subsequent growth in their real investments, thus improving overall welfare.
Surveying American Indians with Opt-In Internet Surveys

Abstract:Although the national survey is the dominant method used to study American attitudes and behavior, it has been used only infrequently to study American Indians. This article examines the possibility of using Internet opt-in panel surveys to study American Indian populations. We first compare the results from an original national stand-alone opt-in panel study with those of pooled data sets from the Current Population Survey and the American National Election Studies. We then use the opt-in panel survey to examine how different operational definitions of American Indians affect how well their political behavior and attitudes are understood. The results of this initial research offer cautionary hope for the use of opt-in panel surveys to study the development of American Indian political behavior and attitudes.