Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does personal contact with ethnic minorities affect anti-immigrant sentiments? Evidence from a field experiment

This article explores the causal effect of personal contact with ethnic minorities on majority members’ views on immigration, immigrants’ work ethics, and support for lower social assistance benefits to immigrants than to natives. Exogenous variation in personal contact is obtained by randomising soldiers into different rooms during the basic training period for conscripts in the Norwegian Army's North Brigade. Based on contact theory of majority–minority relations, the study spells out why the army can be regarded as an ideal contextual setting for exposure to reduce negative views on minorities. The study finds a substantive effect of contact on views on immigrants’ work ethics, but small and insignificant effects on support for welfare dualism, as well as on views on whether immigration makes Norway a better place in which to live.
Communicative Language Teaching: Practical Difficulties in the Rural EFL Classrooms in Taiwan

English education in Taiwan has experienced a number of modifications over the past decade. The Ministry of Education (MOE) has initiated several reforms since 1994 with a purpose of changing the pedagogy, focusing on grammar-translation, to a more communicative one aim at cultivating learners of greater communication proficiency for the demands resulting from internationalization and globalization. Although the outcome may be promising, the process has proven to be challenging. The studies regarding Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in many EFL settings suggested that factors, associated with socio-culture, school administration, classroom dynamics and personnel, have negatively influenced teachers’ willingness to implement CLT. Notwithstanding the comprehensive discussion about the difficulties, rare were they related directly to rural teachers whose experiences might be different from their urban peers. Their distinct insight and impressions are necessary, and therefore worthy of the investigation in order to further understand the whole CLT-resulted phenomena. Using a multi-methodological approach of quantitative survey and qualitative interview, this study aims at uncovering the difficulties rural EFL teachers have encountered when implementing CLT in their classrooms. Seventy-five teachers were surveyed. Based on their participating willingness, 15 of them were further contacted for in-depth interviews. The result of the study revealed that besides the repeated issues, the teachers have faced problems, including students’ low L1 cognitive resources, parents’ indifferent attitudes toward communicative-English education, and the assortment of students of heterogeneous language skills into the same class, which are unique to the rural setting because of geographical and socio-economic confinement. Keywords: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), multi-methodological approach, learning motivation, communicative competence
Resource Loss as Predictor of the Way Farmers Cope with Drought: A Structural Model Approach

This survey-study carried out among 360 randomly selected farmers living in droughtprone areas of Fars Province, Iran, set out to investigate the perceptions and psychological coping strategies of farmers when facing drought. Results showed that farmers perceived drought as a threat to all of their resources (material, conditions, personal, social and energies) and used emotion-focused and reactive problem-focused coping strategies rather than problem-focused strategies that require planning and being innovative to counteract its psychological consequences. Using structural equations modeling (SEM), relationships between perceived resource loss and the way farmers cope with drought were tested. Problem-focused coping was predicted by a greater loss of objects (e.g., yield, work utilities, land) and personal resources (e.g. motivation, patience and self-efficacy), but a smaller loss of energies (e.g. time and money). Predictors of emotion-focused coping were a greater loss of objects and energies, but smaller losses of condition and personal resources. The implications for educational interventions are discussed.
Stability and -Gain Control of Positive Switched Systems with Time-Varying Delays via Delta Operator Approach

This paper investigates the problems of stability and -gain controller design for positive switched systems with time-varying delays via delta operator approach. The purpose is to design a switching signal and a state feedback controller such that the resulting closed-loop system is exponentially stable with -gain performance. Based on the average dwell time approach, a sufficient condition for the existence of an -gain controller for the considered system is established by constructing an appropriate copositive type Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional in delta domain. Moreover, the obtained conditions can unify some previously suggested relevant methods in the literature of both continuous- and discrete-time systems into the delta operator framework. Finally, a numerical example is presented to explicitly demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.
Determination of Energy and Protein Requirements of Sheep in Indonesia using a Meta-analytical Approach

The objective of this study was to determine energy and protein requirements, for both maintenance and gain, of sheep in Indonesia by using a meta-analysis method. A database was developed from various in vivo experiments involving sheep as the experimental animals in which energy intake, protein intake and average daily weight gain (ADG) were reported. A total of 38 articles consisting of 137 data points were integrated into the database. Different breeds (Priangan, fat-tailed and local) and sexes (male and female) were specified in the database. Maintenance and gain requirements of dry matter, energy and protein were determined by regressing ADG with dry matter intake (DMI), total digestible nutrient intake (TDNI) and crude protein intake (CPI), respectively. An intercept (where ADG= 0 g/kg MBW/d) and a slope (required nutrient intake per unit ADG) were taken as maintenance and gain requirements, respectively. Results revealed that all sheep breeds had similar energy requirement for maintenance (TDNm). Energy requirement for gain (TDNg) of Priangan breed was lower than other breeds; the breed required 0.860 g TDN for 1 g ADG. Fat-tailed and local breeds required 1.22 and 2.75 g TDN for 1 g ADG, respectively. All breeds also revealed relatively similar protein requirement for maintenance (CPm), i.e. 6.27-6.47 g/kg MBW/d. Priangan breed required less CP for 1 g ADG (CPg), i.e. 0.295 g. Requirements of CPg for fat-tailed and local breeds were 0.336 and 0.497 g/g ADG, respectively. It was concluded that each sheep breed in Indonesia had specific TDN and CP requirements for gain, but similar requirements for maintenance.
Bio-engineering thermodynamics: an engineering science for thermodynamics of biosystems

Cells are open complex thermodynamic systems. Energy transformations, thermo-electro-chemical processes and transports occur across the cells membranes. Different thermo-electro-biochemical behaviours occur between health and disease states. Moreover, living systems waste heat, the result of the internal irreversibility. This heat is dissipated into the environment. But, this wasted heat represent a sort of information, which outflows from the cell toward its environment, completely accessible to any observer. Consequently, the analysis of irreversibility related to this wasted heat can represents a new approach to study the behaviour of the cells. So, this approach allows us to consider the living systems as black boxes and analyze only the inflows and outflows and their changes in relation to the modification of the environment. Therefore, information on the systems can be obtained by analyzing the changes in the cell heat wasted in relation to external perturbations. In this paper, a review of the recent results obtained by using this approach is proposed in order to highlight its thermodynamic fundamental: it could be the beginning of a new engineering science, the bioengineering thermodynamics. Some experimental evidences from literature are summarized and discussed. The approach proposed can allow us to explain them.
Salient features of trade performance in Eastern and Southern Africa

This paper reviews the main trends in growth, direction, and structure of intra- and extra-regional trade in the eastern and southern Africa (ESA) region and its trading blocks (COMESA, SADC, SACU and EAC). The region's trade evolution over the 1990-2001 shows some troubling features. Unlike other developing countries, the ESA region has increased its marginalization in world trade. The declining share in world exports reflects export failure in some countries and growth failure in others. The main impact of such marginalization has been either a slowdown in imports or an increase in external debt. The share of intra-regional trade in region's total trade increased only marginally in all the trading blocks. Furthermore, such increase is concentrated mainly in two countries: South Africa and Kenya, which have large and growing trade surpluses with other countries in the region. Intra-regional trade is substantially lower in the ESA region than in other regional trading blocks. The region's export composition changed only marginally, unlike other developing regions, which experienced an increase in manufactured exports. As a result, there has been little change in the skill and technology intensity of exports in all trading blocks. Exports remain concentrated in non-fuel primary commodities and resource based and labor-intensive manufactures. The trading blocks' exports are generally growing at a lower rate than world exports - the share of dynamic products in the region is significantly low compared to other developing countries. ESA's challenge to reverse its increasing marginalization in world trade is to fully exploit its comparative advantage in agriculture and minerals through trade facilitation policies while diversifying also into other exports by gradually increasing the degree of primary good processing and increasing manufactured exports. Policies to make the export sector competitive and profitable need to be pursued relentlessly.
Productivity and carbon allocation in a tropical montane cloud forest in the Peruvian Andes

Background: The slopes of the eastern Andes harbour some of the highest biodiversity on Earth and a high proportion of endemic species. However, there have been only a few and limited descriptions of carbon budgets in tropical montane forest regions. Aims: We present the first comprehensive data on the production, allocation and cycling of carbon for two high elevation (ca. 3000 m) tropical montane cloud forest plots in the Kosñipata Valley, Peruvian Andes. Methods: We measured the main components and seasonal variation of net primary productivity (NPP), autotrophic (R a) and heterotrophic (R h) respiration to estimate gross primary productivity (GPP) and carbon use efficiency (CUE) in two 1-ha plots. Results: NPP for the two plots was estimated to be 7.05 ± 0.39 and 8.04 ± 0.47 Mg C ha−1 year−1, GPP to be 22.33 ± 2.23 and 26.82 ± 2.97 Mg C ha−1 year−1 and CUE was 0.32 ± 0.04 and 0.30 ± 0.04. Conclusions: We found strong seasonality in NPP and moderate seasonality of R a, suggesting that forest NPP is driven by changes in photosynthesis and highlighting the importance of variation in solar radiation. Our findings imply that trees invest more in biomass production in the cooler season with lower solar radiation and more in maintenance during the warmer and high solar radiation period.
Improving Water Productivity and ReducingNutrient Losses by Controlled Irrigationand Drainage in Paddy Fields

Controlled irrigation and drainage (CID) has received considerable attention as a reliable management practice for improving water quality and water productivity in rice production. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of CID on water productivity, nitrogen, and phosphorus losses in paddy fields. Treatments include alternate wetting and drying (AWD; lower limit of irrigation to -200 mm and upper limit of ponding water depth after rainfall to 60 mm), CID-I (lower limit of irrigation to -200 mm and upper limit of ponding water depth after rainfall to 200 mm), and CID-II (lower limit of irrigation to -500 mm and upper limit of ponding water depth after rainfall to 200 mm). Results showed that CID reduced irrigation water without a significant impact on grain yields and increased the irrigation water productivity by 14.6-51.5% compared with AWD. However, the percolation of CID may be increased, especially in a wetting year. The application of CID-II by combining yield with irrigation water productivity could be suitable and beneficial to rice crops. The average total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) concentrations of CID presented similar values or were significantly increased relative to AWD, indicating that the significant decreases in nutrient loads under CID were primarily due to reductions in surface runoff rather than changes in concentration. Ammonium nitrogen (NH4 +-N) concentrations were clearly increased after fertilizer application in percolation water. Compared with AWD, the NH4 +-N, TN, and TP leaching losses of CID-I were increased. The nitrogen and phosphorus leaching losses of CID-II were significantly increased relative to AWD and CID-I because of high nutrient concentrations and severe preferential flow. Therefore, CID potentially increased nitrogen and phosphorus loading to groundwater *e-mail: seyu@hhu.edu. cn DOI: 10.15244/pjoes/76791 ONLINE PUBLICATION DATE: 2018-02-12
Mind Mapping: Overcoming Problems of Writer Identity and Convention for Academic Writing by Student Collaboration

This article will consider Mind Mapping as an eLearning tool for the enhancement of learning and assessment within the discipline of academic writing. It goes on to identify two key problems for student writers, highlighted by existing research: firstly, writer identity and the affective domain of writing and second, the conventions of academic writing. It then proposes an implementation plan for Mind Mapping for the Applied Writing module (AWRI-1002), which is currently delivered on the Mature Access Foundation Programme (DT522A), at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Ireland. The implementation plan for the use of Mind Mapping for academic writing will attempt to provide solutions for the two key problems experienced by student writers, in order to present the rationale and relevance behind its use. Recommendations for assessment strategies from existing research in this area will also be taken into account.
The Network Structure of Food Webs

Descriptions of food-web relationships first appeared more than a century ago, and the quantitative analysis of the network structure of food webs dates back several decades. Recent improvements in food-web data collection and analysis methods, coupled with a resurgence of interdisciplinary research on the topology of many kinds of “real-world”networks, have resulted in renewed interest in food-web structure. This chapter reviews the history of the search for generalities in the structure of complex food webs, and discusses current and future research trends. Analysis of food-web structure has used empirical and modeling approaches, and has been inspired both by questions from ecology such as “What factors promote stability of complex ecosystems given internal dynamics and external perturbations? ”and questions from network research such as “Do food webs display universal structure similar to other types of networks? ”Recent research has suggested that once variable diversity and connectance are taken into account, there are universal coarse-grained characteristics of how trophic links and species
CYANIDE-RESISTANT RESPIRATION IN DIVERSE MARINE PHYTOPLANKTON. EVIDENCE FOR THE WIDESPREAD OCCURRENCE OF THE ALTERNATIVE OXIDASE

In higher plants, the alternative oxidase (AOX) is the terminal oxidase in a mitochondrial electron transport chain thought to allow carbon flow through glycolysis and the citric acid cycle when cellular energy levels are high. In phytoplankton, information is lacking on the taxonomic distribution and metabolic properties of the AOX. We used cyanide-resistant respiration to indicate the presence of the AOX, and the AOX inhibitors, salicylhydroxamic acid (SHAM) and propyl gallate (PG), to estimate the relative activity and capacity of the AOX in axenic cultures of the marine phytoplankton, Chlorella sp. (Chlorophyceae), Clostenum sp. (Zygnematophyceae), Thalassiosira sp. (Bacillariophyceae), Cryptornonas sp. (Cryptophyceae), Ochromonas sp. (Chrysophyceae), and Amphidinium carterae (Dinophyceae), and the freshwater green alga Chlamydornonas reinhardtij. AOX inhibitor effects were higher in stationary phase (nutrient-limited) cultures compared to linearly growing cultures. With the exception of Clostenum, in which respiration was almost completely inhibited by cyanide, estimates of AOX capacity, determined as the effect of AOX inhibitors on cyanide-resistant respiration, were nearly identical using the 2 AOX inhibitors, and ranged from 46 to 113 % of the respiration rates of cultures not exposed to inhibitors. The presence of the AOX in 5 of the 6 marine phytoplankton species tested suggests that the AOX is widespread among phytoplankton. Furthermore, the pronounced inhibitory effect of SHAM and PG added alone to stationary phase cultures of Chlorella, Tlialassiosira, Cryptornonas, and A. carterae (21 to 63 % of uninhibited respiration rates) implies that the AOX contributes substantially to oxygen and carbon cycling in many species of phytoplankton during nutrient deficiency.
Influence of a Controlling Factor on the Unsteady Viscosity Profile of Deoxyhemoglobins

The mechanism of polymerization is linking to the structural viscosity n*(t, x) which depends on the time t and a controlling parameter x . The controlling factor which influences the aggregation dynamics can be limited to, say, the volume f function, the temperature T , the deoxy-HbS, concentration c and obviously a constant shear rate . The mathematical model for n*(t, x) need a sub-model for each controlling factor x . This constraint drives to derive a rheological model n*(t, x) can be directly taken into account in the parameters base. In the present work, we study the influence of these controlling factors on the unsteady viscosity profiles obtained during the time course of aggregation process.
Leverage and Corporate Performance: Evidence from Unsuccessful Takeovers

This paper examines how debt affects firms following failed takeovers. Using a sample of 573 unsuccessful takeovers, we find that, on average, targets significantly increase their debt levels. Targets that increase their debt levels more than the median amount reduce their levels of capital expenditures, sell off assets, reduce employment, increase focus and increase their operating cash flows. These leverage-increasing targets also realize superior stock price performance over the five years following the failed takeover. In contrast, those firms that increase their leverage the least show insignificant changes in their level of investment and their operating cash flows and realize stock price performance that is no different than their benchmarks. Those failed targets that increase their leverage the least, and fail to get taken over in the future, realize significant negative stock returns following their initial failed takeovers. The evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that debt helps firms remain independent not because it entrenches managers, but because it commits the manager to making the improvements that would be made by potential raiders.
International Financial Integration in Asian Bond Markets

With the development of international financial market, the degree of international financial integration increased significantly during the late 1980s and 1990s. A key factor underlying this process was the increased globalization of investments seeking a higher rate of return and the opportunity to diversify risk internationally. In this paper, we investigate the degree of international financial integration in Asia by examining the relationships amongst Asian bond markets by employing the advanced econometric technique of cointegration of error correction vectors. In other words, we propose the answers to the following questions. Firstly, what is the degree of international financial integration in Asian bond markets? Secondly, does this degree of integration significantly change after the 1997 Asian financial crisis? This study has a strong implication for investors, in particular, from the perspective of Australian or US investors, whether they do benefit from investing in Asian bond markets.
Mediating Effects of Decisional Balance in the Transtheoretical Model of Change for Customers who Mismanage their Money

This research introduces a Transtheoretical model of change for customer financial behaviour that focuses on approach-avoidance money management strategies. Approach strategies include processes for increasing savings while avoidance strategies involve processes for reducing spending. The mediating effects of decisional balance on the relationships between predictor variables (stages of change) and the outcome variables (strategies of change) are examined. The empirical study analyses consumers who mismanage their money and find themselves coping with this issue in early stages of change like precontemplation and contemplation. Regression analysis was used in order to examine the relationship between those early stages of change and approach-avoidance strategies and to test the mediating effects of decisional balance. Results indicate progression of approach-avoidance strategies by stages of change. Decisional balance between pros and cons to change seams to mediate the relationship between the characteristics of precontemplation and contemplation stages and approach-avoidance strategies. The outcomes of the study provided valuable information on how each predictor variable is connected to the adoption of approach-avoidance money management strategies of change. Previous studies have mainly delineated the relationships between stages of change and the other two constructs while mediating paths serve to clarify the psychological process that generates behaviour change. By understanding the mechanisms of behaviour change, professionals who are marketing financial services can develop effective financial education strategies that take into account the role of decisional balance while changing money management behaviour. Decisional balance can be used to measure the progress of customers in the behaviour change process.