Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extremum Seeking Control With Sporadic Packet Transmission for Networked Control Systems

Extremum seeking control (ESC) is a data-driven optimization technique that can steer a dynamic plant toward an extremum of an unknown but measurable input to steady-state output. In the context of networked control systems, a new implementation method for ESC inspired by the well-known Luus–Jaakola algorithm is proposed. The main motivation is to minimize the communication burden associated with the search phase of ESC. In the proposed method, the controller only requires a notification of a change registered at the sensor, rather than the full information available at the sensor. This event-based approach leads to sporadic packet transmission. In addition, the proposed method is able to directly account for constraints while seeking the desired extremum. The constraints may be of the inequality or equality type. The algorithm's behavior is illustrated on a networked water pump control system.
Dementia Caregivers: An Exploration of Their Knowledge, Beliefs, and Behavior Regarding Advance Care Planning For End-of-Life Care

DEMENTIA CAREGIVERS: AN EXPLORATION OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE, BELIEFS, AND BEHAVIOR REGARDING ADVANCE CARE PLANNING FOR END-OF-LIFE CARE By: Mariette L. Klein, Ph.D., M.S.W A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014. Dissertation Chair: Sarah Kye Price, Ph.D., M.S.W. Ph.D. Program Director and Associate Professor School of Social Work The purpose of this study is to explore what knowledge dementia caregivers have about advance care planning (ACP), how they learn to execute formal advance directives (ADs) or have engaged in an informal ACP process, and how they understand their roles as decision makers for the patients. Factors that contribute to the completion of an ACP process such as demographic, psychosocial, and situational factors are identified. From the grounded theory data analysis, a theory emerged about how ACP is accomplished and used by caregivers. Findings reveal that caregivers understand ACP as having the power to shape the dying process for dementia patients. It is not just about executing formal written ADs but how caregivers exercise that power. Caregivers’ knowledge and beliefs are reflected in their behavior regarding ACP in both how they do the ACP process and how they use ACP. For the caregivers in this study, the process of ACP occurs along a trajectory from: years before dementia to dementia diagnosis to end stage and death. At each of these stages, actions
A comprehensive measure of attitudes and behaviour: Development of the Support for Gender Equality among Men Scale

Despite progress, profound gender inequality prevails across the globe, and in Western society. Perhaps most strikingly, the division of labour remains largely traditional: Women are (a) less likely to engage in paid work (American Association of University Women, 2016; Eurostat, 2019), (b) less likely to occupy top level positions (American Bar Association, 2016; Catalyst, 2015, 2016; Grant Thornton, 2018; Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2017; S&P Global, 2016), and (c) more likely to bear disproportionate responsibility for housework and childcare (Deutsch, 1999; Hochschild & Machung, 2012; Pew Research Center, 2013). While these circumstances put women at an economic disadvantage, they impede men in other ways. The traditional male gender role is associated with stereotypes that reinforce physically and mentally harmful behaviours such as risk-taking and the suppression of emotions (Bird & Rieker, 1999; Courtenay, 2000). Such behaviours can result in decreased mental and physical health, and can help explain increased suicide rates in men (relative to women, Hawton, 2000). In comparison, it has been demonstrated that gender equality is related to greater well-being and decreased depression rates (Holter, 2014), and greater relationship stability and sexual satisfaction (Rudman & Phelan, 2007) for both women and men. From a more societal perspective, men moving away from traditionally masculine gender roles is essential for the labour market considering that a growing number of women move from traditionally female occupations to traditionally male ones. Given the resulting labour shortage in traditionally female fields, such as care and education, men moving into such roles might address this deficiency and might further broaden the diversity of perspectives in these roles (see Croft, Schmader, & Block, 2015 for a review). A range of perspectives might result in improved decision-making and more efficient problem-solving in traditionally female fields, similar to the effect it has had within traditionally male Received: 25 June 2018 | Revisied: 27 September 2019 | Accepted: 28 August 2019 DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2629
Consumer Competence Strategies, Spiritually Inspired Core Values and Locus of Control: What Are the Links?

Ethical consumption has increased as a result of a more pressing environmental agenda, allowing consumers to assert their core values through marketplace decisions. The progressive secularisation of society has opened a gap on how religion and spirituality, defined in this paper as constructs that underpin core values, affect individuals through their consumption choices. An exploratory approach was taken in this research to investigate how consumers negotiate their daily shopping habits, whether they align with or diverge from their religious or secular core values, and whether an internal or external locus of control (LoC) was demonstrated. This qualitative study used the theory of reasoned action and applied an interpretative paradigm, being most interested in the lived experience of the 25 participants. They were recruited from religious, spiritual, and secular backgrounds, following a purposeful sampling strategy. The participants kept a 2-week daily diary detailing spending decisions and were interviewed, also to provide the opportunity to discuss their diary entries. Findings reveal the direction of linkage between constructs such as core values, LoC orientation and Consumer Competence strategies. The study also revealed how religious participants were subject to a moral dualism that at times created dissonance between their core values and their consumer behaviour.
Defending popular sovereignty: discursive conflict in French and Swedish parliamentary debates on immigrant voting rights (1968-2017)

ABSTRACT Through a discourse analysis of French and Swedish legislative debates from 1968 to 2017, this article examines how actors challenge and reinforce dominant ideas about the link between nationality and political rights. We argue that the broader political culture influences which discursive strategies – or ‘frames’ – are more likely to structure parliamentary debates in different national contexts. However, our analysis also shows that legislators sometimes develop new discursive frames in which they reinterpret dominant norms to make them consistent with their views. Through this incremental process of reinterpretation and reformulation of dominant ideas, debates over non-citizen voting rights have chipped away at the link between nationality and political rights. Our findings suggest that initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens trigger lower levels of conflict when they can be framed as a policy tool for immigrant integration rather than as a matter of popular sovereignty.
Adolescents' meaning-making experiences in physical education – in the transition from primary to secondary school

ABSTRACT The aim of the study is to shed light on how physical education (PE) is experienced among a varied group of adolescents in school, and to nurture debate related to the relationship between adolescents' lived experience of PE and their identity-formation processes. Nuanced insights can help to increase teachers' ability to perceive, react to and deal appropriately in relation to fostering healthy lives in young people, in and through PE and physical activity (PA). The empirical material is derived from interviews with four adolescents, firstly in year 7, followed-up in year 8. Two of the teenagers were characterised by a high level of PA, two by a low level. The analysis was carried out using the interpretative phenomenological analysis method. The findings give a glimpse into the unique lived experience of PE of four pupils in modern society, and into how their meaning-making experiences of the subject seem to be situated in its context, as much as in wider contexts of family, and the PA related values, norms and discourses extant in their local communities. From their unique lived experiences of PE of the four participants, two overarching themes emerge. The first, ‘PE is “a bag of sweets with more sweet than sour flavors”, reflects the participants’ experience and understanding of PE as predominantly positive. The second theme, ‘PE is in negotiation with football culture’, reflects that the culture of football, as a sport-related framework for the understanding of content and mastery, appears to have a special significance for the participants' meaning-making in physical education. Our findings also point to the importance of acknowledging that meaning making experiences in PE are embedded in the wider and overall context of the life of each individual.
The Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Value-Based Decision-making

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has been shown to correlate with the subjective value for options, across reward type and across hundreds of functional neuroimaging studies. Despite the prominence of its role in preference-based decision-making, its specific contributions to how decisions are made have not yet been well-characterised. Study 1 addresses what the vmPFC signal represents during decision-making. While the vmPFC signal has been shown to correlate highly with subjective value in past studies, this signal is also consistent with mental navigation through a conceptual attribute space using a grid-like code. We found that the mental navigation model lacked support in the evidence, and the subjective value model remains the best explanation for vmPFC signal during decision-making. After having established that the signal in vmPFC reflects subjective value, Study 2 addresses whether subjective value representations remain consistent for non-choice preference tasks, and when this representation comes online during the decision process. This study shows that the value network seen previously for choice tasks also is active during a matching bidding task, and that the vmPFC, interestingly, represents value only at the time of the final choice. Finally, in Study 3, I address the question of how the vmPFC is necessary for subjective value in my third chapter. Transitivity (the idea that if A > B, and B > C, then A > C) is a key property of a value-based system. Individuals with ventromedial frontal lobe damage have been found to make more transitivity errors in the past, but it is not known whether vmPFC damage causes fundamentally intransitive choices (implying abolishment of value), or transitive but noisier choices (implying preservation of value but increased instability). We found strong evidence for the second case, demonstrating that vmPFC damage adds instability to valuation but does not abolish it. The evidence I present here is consistent with the theory that vmPFC is involved in a subjective value-based process during decision-making, yet that value is a distributed process over many brain regions where other regions may compensate for the loss of the vmPFC in calculating value. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor Joseph W. Kable
Promoting Peer Feedback in Developing Students’ English Writing Ability in L2 Writing Class

The study aimed at investigating the effects of peer feedback on students’ English writing ability in L2 writing class. A mixed-methods research, an embedded experimental design was employed, making use of a writing pretest and post-test and self-written reflection in the experiment. Data were quantitatively analyzed through a dependent simple t-test, and content was thematically analyzed for qualitative data. The participants were 21 undergraduate students majoring in English in the three southernmost border provinces of Thailand. The findings revealed that from the mean scores of the pretest and post-test, the students had made significant progress in their writing ability. Additionally, the effect size was calculated at 1.97, which means that its magnitude was “large”. Moreover, students reflected that peer feedback was a worthwhile experience for social interaction, and provided them with perceiving the writing process, developing affective strategies, supporting critical thinking skills, and developing socially and intellectually by means of working collaboratively. In addition, it helped them practice to become more autonomous learners. As a result, peer feedback should be implemented in L2 writing classes.
Gas Movement and Air-Filled Porosity

The movement of gases through the pore space of the soil is important in several respects. It plays a vital role in soil biological processes, in which the supply of oxygen, O2 , to respiring roots and microorganisms from the atmosphere above the soil is balanced by the outward flow of carbon dioxide, CO2. Impedance of this gas exchange is frequently damaging to plant growth, due to deficiency in O2 supply to the roots. Such conditions also give rise to emissions to the atmosphere of the microbially produced gases methane, CH4, and nitrous oxide, N2O, which, like CO2 , contribute to the greenhouse effect (Houghton et al., 1996); conversely, part of the methane in the atmosphere is removed by diffusion into well aerated soils, where it is oxidized by microorganisms. Soil fumigation to control diseases of horticultural crops depends on movement of the fumigant in the vapor phase; emissions of methyl bromide, the most widely used fumigant, contribute to stratospheric ozone depletion (as does N2O). In a very different context, emissions of the radioactive gas radon into buildings, following the decay of radium present in underlying soils, may be sufficient to constitute a health hazard in some localities. The mechanisms responsible for the transport of all these gases are diffusion, resulting in a net movement of gas from a zone of higher concentration to one of lower concentration, and mass flow, where the whole gas mixture moves in response to a pressure gradient. Most gas movement is by diffusion; mass flow is important only when pressure differences develop because of changes in barometric pressure, temperature, or soil water content. The movement occurs
Flood hydrograph prediction in a semiarid mountain catchment: The role of catchment subdivision

The effect of different degrees of catchment subdivision coupled with the nonlinear storage–discharge relationship on hydrograph prediction is evaluated in a meso‐scale catchment in the Zagros mountain region, southwest of Iran. The catchment is divided into different sets of subcatchments based on catchment geomorphology, and runoff hydrographs are simulated for each set using a network‐based runoff routing model, watershed‐bounded network model. It is shown that, in the absence of fully distributed data, if a semidistribution of storage–discharge is taken into consideration in the modeling process, lumped rainfall data could provide valuable information on the hydrological response of catchment in data‐scarce regions, which are usually found in remote areas, such as mountains. Although the results suggest that catchment subdivision leads to more accurate results, a subcatchment area threshold of about 3% of the catchment extent is found. Below this, no further improvement in simulation accuracy can be achieved, probably because of the limitations of the data interpolation method used by the model.
Formal and Informal Talks of Lecturers in EFL Classroom Interaction

This research aimed to discover the characteristics of formal and informal talks of lecturers in EFL classroom. Adopting a qualitative research approach, the researcher collected the data by conducting classroom observations and interview. The research was conducted at the first and fifth semester groups of English Study Program of IAIN Bone. The formal talks which occurred in EFL classroom consist of six characteristics. They were (1) neutral lexis, (2) full form, (3) politeness phenomena, (4) careful turn taking and (5) incongruent mood choice (6) modality for suggestion. The informal talks which occurred in EFL classroom were (1) colloquial lexis, (2) interruption/overlapping, (3) first name/nickname, (4) typical mood choice, (5) modal for probability and (6) modal to express opinion. Meanwhile there were four new characteristics of informal talk which appeared in lecturers’ talks. They were (1) regional term, (2) discourse marker, (3) contraction and (4) ellipses sentence. The result shows that the characteristic of formal talk which was frequently used by teacher was full form particularly in asking question. Whereas informal talk happened frequently when teacher delivered material in the form of contraction. Keywords: Formal and Informal talks, lecturers’ talks
Theory in a Nutshell: A Guide to Health Promotion Theory

Theory in a nutshell offers a brief overview of some of the central theoretical approaches informing health promotion strategies and practice. The authors start from the premise that theoretically informed health promotion leads to more effective programs. However, they suggest the role of theory in building promotion programs and projects is often more implicit than explicit. The aim of the book then is to provide students and practitioners with a rudimentary knowledge of the most influential theories in order to demonstrate how a 'prudent' use of theories can improve the 'effectiveness and sustainability of health promotion programs'.
A caring relationship as a prerequisite for patient participation in a psychiatric care setting: A qualitative study from the nurses' perspective

The participation of patients in their treatment and care is perceived as desirable; however, patients with mental illnesses experience limited opportunities to participate in their own care. As nurses play a key role in taking care of patients with mental illnesses, this study aimed to investigate how nurses within psychiatric care settings experience patients' participation and how they act to increase it. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight registered nurses, four of whom worked in a psychiatric institutional care setting and four of whom worked with outpatients. Data were analysed using a qualitative content analysis approach. The analysis identified a theme: a caring relationship is a prerequisite for patient participation. This theme was further developed through five subthemes. The findings illustrate critical aspects of the caring relationship by which the nurse–patient relationship can either facilitate or impede patient participation. A caring relationship builds trust and increases the patient's sense of responsibility for their own condition. Because patients with mental illness are cared for in many different contexts, the results of the present study have implications for a broad range of healthcare environments.
Impact of Seminars By and For Medical Students

Background: The undergraduate medical program is a 5 year academic course wherein Physiology is taught in the first professional year. Physiology is nowadays a subject of clinical interest. It provides the basis to understand physiological processes and phenomena and thus the pathophysiology of disease. It also helps the students understand the basis for therapeutics and the management of diseases. The faculty of the Physiology department has a greater responsibility in making the study of the subject innovative, interesting and participatory, for the students. One such method we have adopted is organizing seminars by the students and for the students. Aim & objectives: This study aims to gauge the impact of student seminars on students who participated as well as on those who were spectators. Materials and methods: Students were encouraged to volunteer for taking seminars. They were given help by faculty to study and present small subtopics for about 10 minutes each. Later they were analyzed and statistical tests were done. Results: There was a positive response from both the participants and the spectators for the use of student seminars as a method of teaching/learning. Conclusions: Student seminars were discovered to be a good method of teaching learning which improved the depth of learning, teacher-student and student-student interactions and communication skills amongst the students participating. This was evident from the feedback obtained from the students. (Bahmed F et al NJIRM 2014; 5(2):103-106)
Socio-economic impact of African swine fever outbreak of 2011 and its epidemiology in Isoka District of Zambia

A study was carried out to evaluate the socio-economic impact of African swine fever (ASF) and associated epidemiological factors following the 2011 outbreak in Isoka district of Zambia. One hundred and twenty small holder farmers were interviewed using a structured questionnaire to collect information on the socio-economic impact of the outbreak. Blood samples were also collected from 190 pigs from 65 households in the areas previously affected by the ASF outbreak. Sera were harvested and subjected to antibody blocking Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent assay (b ELISA). Questionnaire survey revealed that the majority of farmers (51.0%) kept pigs for business. A large proportion of the remaining farmers (37.0%) kept pigs for home consumption. Eighty-four percent of the respondents were aware of ASF and 46.7% were directly affected by the 2011 outbreak which resulted into 50.0% reduction in pig population in the surveyed area. This ASF outbreak caused 99.9% mortality of affected pigs. The socio-economic impacts of the disease were in terms of loss of the pigs due to mortalities, loss of business and the cost of disease control. Serological analysis showed that no pig had circulating antibodies against ASF; suggesting that none of the exposed pigs during the outbreak survived. With our findings we can conclude that ASF is still an important transboundary animal disease (TAD) with enormous socio-economic impact that requires concerted efforts of all stakeholders in the enforcement of control and preventive measures. Key word s: African swine fever, socio-economic impact, seroprevalence, Isoka, Zambia