Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Interactivity with a Music Video Game on Second Language Vocabulary Recall.

Jonathan deHaan, University of Shizuoka W. Michael Reed, New York University, Radford University Katsuko Kuwada, Tohoku University Video games are potential sources of second language input; however, the medium’s fundamental characteristic, interactivity, has not been thoroughly examined in terms of its effect on learning outcomes. This experimental study investigated to what degree, if at all, video game interactivity would help or hinder the noticing and recall of second language vocabulary. Eighty randomly-selected Japanese university undergraduates were paired based on similar English language and game proficiencies. One subject played an Englishlanguage music video game for 20 minutes while the paired subject watched the game simultaneously on another monitor. Following gameplay, a vocabulary recall test, a cognitive load measure, an experience questionnaire, and a two-week delayed vocabulary recall test were administered. Results were analyzed using paired samples t-tests and various analyses of variance. Both the players and the watchers of the video game recalled vocabulary from the game, but the players recalled significantly less vocabulary than the watchers. This seems to be a result of the extraneous cognitive load induced by the interactivity of the game; the players perceived the game and its language to be significantly more difficult than the watchers did. Players also reported difficulty simultaneously attending to gameplay and vocabulary. Both players and watchers forgot significant amounts of vocabulary over the course of the study. We relate these findings to theories and studies of vocabulary acquisition and video game-based language learning, and then suggest implications for language teaching and learning with interactive multimedia.
The (Non)-persistence of Changes of Attitudes Toward Immigrants’ after Terrorist Attacks: The Case of the Manchester Bombings

Growing research focusing on the psychological reactions to terrorism by citizens finds that terrorist attacks perpetrated by individuals belonging to Muslim minorities increase nega- tive attitudes towards those perceived as the ”outgroup”, and especially immigrants and refugees. However, few attempts have been made so far to assess the short-term impact of these attacks. While we know that immediate emotional reactions are deemed to cause stereotyping effects in the days follow- ing traumatic events (as a result of coping mechanisms by individuals reacting to a perceived threat), we need more re- search to assess how long this effect endures. By means of a quasi-experimental before-after design based on the Manch- ester bombing of May 22, 2017, we ask whether the stereo- typing effect occurs, and whether it fades away after a few days. We present evidence consistent with the stereotyping effect hypothesis, but we also show the role of temporality: while the effect is strong and significant in the first 3 days after the attacks, it disappears after 4-7 days. These findings suggest that the emotional, immediate reactions that trigger stereotyping processes right after a terrorist attack are reab- sorbed after a few days as a result of rational processing. (Less)
Financial Valuation and Risk Management Working Paper No . 134 A point process approach to Value-at-Risk estimation

We consider the modelling of rare events in financial time series, and introduce a marked point process model for the excesses of the time series over a high threshold that combines a self-exciting process for the exceedances with a mark (size) dependent process. This allows realistic models for rare events, in which recent events affect the current intensity for exceedances more than distant ones, but it also allows the intensity to depend on the marks of the events. Estimates of Value-atRisk are derived for real datasets and backtested.
“The Number Race”: an efficacy study of an adaptive software in 5-to-7-year-old New Zealand children with low numeracy.

1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION . 2 1.1 Overview . 2 1.2 Developmental Dyscalculia . 4 1.3 Aetiology of Dyscalculia . 6 1.3. 1 Genetic Contributions to Dyscalculia . 6 1.3. 2 Environmental Contributions to Dyscalculia . 7 1.4 Dyscalculia at the Cognitive and Neural Levels . 10 1.4. 1 The ‘core deficit’ theory of dyscalculia . 12 1.4. 2 The ‘access deficit theory of dyscalculia . 15 1.5 Proposed Subtypes of Dyscalculia . 16 1.6 Low Numeracy versus Dyscalculia . 20 1.7 Interventions . 22 1.7. 1 Classroom/Curriculum-based interventions . 22 1.7. 2 Small-group/Teacher-led interventions . 24 1.7. 3 Computer-assisted interventions . 26 1.7. 4 The Number Race . 28 1.8 Summary . 30 1.9 The Present Study . 32 CHAPTER TWO METHOD . 33 2.1 Participants . 33 2.2 Materials/Apparatus . 35 2.2.1 The Number Race . 35 2.2.2 Standardised Measures of IQ . 37 2.2. 3 Standardised Measures of Mathematics . 37 2.2. 4 Standardised Measures of Attention . 38 2.2. 5 Curriculum-Based Measures . 38 2.2. 6 Parental Questionnaire . 39 2.2. 7 Computerised Testing Battery . 39
Prevalence and Characteristics of Smoking among Children under Eighteen Years: About the Investigation in Kabinda’s Town, Lomami Province (Democratic Republic of Congo)

Background: Smoking is a major public health issue, responsible of high morbidity and mortality. The proportion of tobacco use among teenagers and the early age of initiation to tobacco is a disturbing and unacceptable reality. The aim of this study is to evaluate the prevalence and the characteristics associated with smoking among minors from eight to seventeen years. Methods: We conducted a prospective and descriptive cross-sectional study over a two weeks period, from 18 to 31 May 2014 (Kabinda’s town, DR. of Congo). Individuals were interviewed according to the study parameters. The data obtained was analyzed by the software Epi Info 7.1. Results: The smoking prevalence of minors in this study was 20.2% (304 out of 1,506). The profile of the minor smoker was an individual aged 12 to 17 years, mean age of 14.3 ± 1.5 years, male (37.8% vs. 0.8%), illiterate or Secondary school, living in an incentive environment with low tobacco mobilization and growing pro-tobacco advertising. The age of the first smoking experience was between 10 and 17 years with a peak at 15 years and a mean age of 14.1 ± 1 year. The age between 13 to 17 years (p<0.0001), male sex (p<0.0001), and being illiterate or in secondary school (p 0.000) were associated with the risk of smoking tobacco. Conclusion: It is absolutely necessary to take measures to force the pressure of the tobacco epidemic (factors and context for tobacco use) in children to avoid the harmful consequences of tobacco.
TOWARD A COMPREHENSION OF AN INTUITION : CRITERIA FOR DISTINGUISHING VERBAL ARGUMENTS AND ADJUNCTS

■ ABSTRACT: The distinction between verbal arguments and adjuncts is essential to ground various linguistic theories. However, although we may have reliable intuitions regarding prototypical cases, such intuitions fail in the judgment of certain verbal relations. We are, thus, in need of a reliable criterion (beyond mere intuition) that is capable of differentiating verb complementation from adjunction. Therefore, our goal is to present and to discuss some of the main tests that seek to distinguish verb arguments and adjuncts (JACKENDOFF, 1977; DOWTY, 1982; CAPPELEN; LEPORE, 2005; HAEGEMAN, 2006; KENEDY, 2013; MIOTO; FIGUEIREDO SILVA; LOPES, 2013), especially concerning the thematic roles of beneficiary and locative – because they occur both in internal argument and in adjunct positions. We are going to present the following tests: (i) term optionality, (ii) subcategorization, (iii) s-selection, (iv) entailment and (v) anaphora, and try to show what problems each one of them faces. Surprisingly, the argument–adjunct distinction does not seem to find any consistent and definitive support in any of the tests found in the literature. The last one, however, anaphora, is the only one that seems capable of capturing this distinction, although it diagnoses as transitives some verbs usually considered to be unergative (like “to travel” (viajar) and “to phone” (telefonar)).
Objective Peripheral Neuropathy and its Predictors in Type 2 Diabetic Subjects with Symptoms of Peripheral Neuropathy in Nnewi , South-Eastern Nigeria

Although symptoms of PN are very common in T2DM patients, there is paucity of data on PN diagnosed using different objective methods in T2DM patients with clinical symptoms of PN in South-East Nigeria. Data are even more scarce on the predictors of objective PN in DM subjects with symptoms of PN. The objective of this study is to evaluate the prevalence and predictors of objective PN in T2DM subjects with symptoms of PN.
The Prediction of Physical Education Teacher Candidates ’ Achievement Goals Regarding Their Learning and Studying Approaches and Epistemological Beliefs

Article History: Received 01.09. 2015 Received in revised form 17.02. 2016 Accepted 06.03. 2016 Available online Tarih girmek için burayı tıklatın. The study aim is to define the relationships between the learning and study approaches, achievement goal orientations, and epistemological beliefs of physical education teacher candidates studying at physical education and sports schools. A total of 502 students (233 females and 269 males) from five different universities volunteered to participate. Multiple regression analysis using the stepwise method shows that the highest proportion of the variance of the Learning-Approach Goal Orientation subscale score was explained by the Belief of Learning Depends on Effort subscale. Meanwhile, the Belief of There is Only One True Truth subscale explained a significant portion of the variance for the Learning-Avoidance Goal Orientation subscale score. The Belief of Learning Depends on Ability subscale explained a significant portion of the variance for the PerformanceApproach Goal Orientation and Performance-Avoidance Goal Orientation subscale scores. Teacher candidates should be allowed to undertake learning and study approaches that adhere to their own beliefs, while education planning for the future must be performed taking into consideration students’ individual features. © 2016 IOJES. All rights reserved
The Aggregation Dilemma Ingmar Schumacher

The results in this paper show that the level of aggregation used in a social welfare function matters significantly for policy analysis. Using climate change as an example, it is shown that, under the mild and widely-accepted assumptions of asymmetric climate change impacts and declining marginal utility, an aggregation dilemma may arise that dwarfs most other policy-relevant aspects in the climate change cost-benefit analysis. Estimates based on the RICE-99 model (Nordhaus and Boyer 2000) suggest that aggregation leads to around 26% higher total world emissions than those from a regional model. The backstop energy use would be zero in the model which aggregates consumption in utility, while it would be 1.3% of Gross World Product in a regionally-disaggregated version. In general we observe that richer countries will be required to undertake stronger efforts toward climate policy based on the aggregated utility social welfare function and compared to both the aggregated utility function with Negishi weights and the aggregated consumption function. We propose criteria that may aid in deciding on the level of aggregation one might wish to choose depending on both positive and normative criteria. Though the policy recommendations from fully aggregated models like the DICE model are always used as a benchmark for policy making, the results here suggest that this should be done with the reservations raised by the Aggregation Dilemma in mind.
EXAMINING THE DETERMINANTS OF DIVIDEND POLICY IN LISTED COMPANIES IN TEHRAN STOCK EXCHANGE

Cash dividend is a part of the company's profits paid to shareholders in cash. Dividend distribution is the oldest and most common way to transfer cash returns to shareholders. Corporate management should always make decisions on maintenance or distribution of all or part of the dividend. For this reason, determining the most appropriate dividend policy and the factors that may affect this policy are the most important issues for financial managers. Many factors may affect dividend policy development. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of institutional ownership, profitability, business risk, tangible assets, liquidity and firm size on dividend policy of the company listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange. For this purpose, 109 companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange were chosen as the sample using screening sampling method for the period from 2008 to 2012. The results of estimated panel regression fixed effect model showed a significant positive relationship between tangible assets, liquidity, growth opportunities and firm size with the payout ratio (dividend policy) and significant negative relationship between institutional ownership and dividend payout ratio (dividend policy) in listed companies at the Tehran stock Exchange.
Changing Patterns of Work and Poverty During and After the Great Recession

This study examines changes in patterns of work, poverty, and the relationship between work and poverty between 2005 and 2013. It also explores the implications of heterogeneous work-poverty dynamics for the distribution of poverty risk across race and sex groups. Our analyses address three specific objectives. First, we track changes in work and poverty status among householders during the 2005 to 2013 period. Second, we use a regression-based decomposition approach to quantify how shifts in hours and weeks worked among householders contributed to changes in poverty between 2005 and 2013. Third, we track raceand sex-based differences in work-poverty dynamics during this period. We specifically quantify how changes in work patterns among particular raceand sexgroups affected the distribution of poverty risk between groups. Our results demonstrate that changing patterns of work had a large, but not exclusive effect on poverty rates during the recession. In contrast, changes in work explain very little of postrecession poverty dynamics. We also find evidence of systematic variation in workpoverty dynamics between race and sex group. Our findings show a male and minority disadvantage during the recession and uniquely persistent disadvantages among nonHispanic black males in the post-recession period.
Does What Goes Around Really Comes Around? The Mediating Effect of CSR on the Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Employee’s Job Performance in Law Firms

Leadership is essential for the success of every organization, as people believe in the ability of their leaders to guide change and achieve success. Today’s law firms are operating in a complex business environment and facing huge competition from both clients and talent. Tough competition, business alliances, corporate social responsibleness, and market conditions demand a huge transformation in the law industry. This study was designed to investigate the relationships between transformational leadership (TL), employee’s job performance (JP), and corporate social responsibility (CSR), as well the mediating mechanism of CSR among TL and JP. The data has been collected from 200 employees working in law firms of Pakistan by using a cross sectional research method. The study hypothesized that TL is significantly related to JP and CSR; in addition, CSR mediates the relationship between TL and JP. Results confirm our conjectures, hence allowing us to contribute to the scant literature of TL, CSR, and JP in the law industry. Our study provides important information to the decision makers who are involved in policymaking; that the adoption of TL practices and involvement in CSR activities can improve JP. Moreover, theoretical and practical implementations are provided for generalization.
Learning Active Contour Models for Medical Image Segmentation

Image segmentation is an important step in medical image processing and has been widely studied and developed for refinement of clinical analysis and applications. New models based on deep learning have improved results but are restricted to pixel-wise ﬁtting of the segmentation map. Our aim was to tackle this limitation by developing a new model based on deep learning which takes into account the area inside as well as outside the region of interest as well as the size of boundaries during learning. Speciﬁcally, we propose a new loss function which incorporates area and size information and integrates this into a dense deep learning model. We evaluated our approach on a dataset of more than 2,000 cardiac MRI scans. Our results show that the proposed loss function outperforms other mainstream loss function Cross-entropy on two common segmentation networks. Our loss function is robust while using different hyperparameter lambda.
Working Paper 2014-438 US Monetary Policy and Commodity Sector Prices

This study examines the effects of the monetary policy of the United States on commodity prices. Using a Bayesian Structural VAR, we identify the interest rate shocks as a measure of the stance of the U.S. monetary policy and evaluate their impacts on different types of commodity prices. The empirical evidence suggests that a U.S. monetary contraction has a negative and significant effect on the aggregate commodity prices, which takes place with a substantial lag (i.e., eight quarters after the shock). However, the aggregate response masks the existence of significant heterogeneity in the responses of the different types of commodities. More specifically, a positive interest rate (contractionary) shock leads to: i) an initial increase in the prices of non-fuel commodities, which later reverts path and becomes negative (as in the case of the prices of agricultural raw materials); ii) a positive and persistent rise in the food prices; iii) a fall in the beverage prices; and iv) a persistent reduction in the prices of metals and the prices of fuel (energy) prices.
Airline Revenue Management as a Control Problem – New Demand Estimates

Revenue optimization is usually based on a model of market demand. In practice, the true model cannot be known and has to be estimated from observed sales and availabilities. As airline revenue management systems become increasingly sophisticated, the number of parameters in the demand model grows, rendering demand estimation a challenging endeavor. This paper formulates the demand estimation and revenue optimization problem as a state-space model and illustrates that it closely relates to well-known models in control theory. Based on this, we apply techniques developed in this field for Bayesian Learning and Dual Control, Kalman and Particle Filters. In a simulation study, we evaluate these methods as adapted to demand estimation for revenue management using the Posterior CramérRao Bound as a benchmark. We compare the results to those achieved by two more common approaches, simple estimation and maximum likelihood estimation. philipp.bartke@fu-berlin.de catherine.cleophas@rwth-aachen.de; Corresponding author natalia.kliewer@fu-berlin.de
Potential for reconstruction from proxy data

We investigate the historical variation of the wintertime Pacific marine sector meridional atmospheric circulation, using simple diagnostics calculated from a statistical analysis of 140 years of surface wind data. Intensity of the wintertime expression of the Hadley Circulation, as expressed by a wind divergence index, varies interannually and secularly. In agreement with previous studies, interannual variation is associated with variations in the Walker Circulation; e.g. ENSO activity. The secular variation, most likely affected by systematic measurement biases, is nevertheless consistent with results from simulation of the Indo-Pacificsector Hadley Circulation variability in the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis (see chapters by Quan et al. and by Minobe, this volume) and model simulations of the global atmospheric response to anthropogenic forcing (see chapters by Rind and Perlwitz and by Meehl et al., this volume). A proxy network tracking Hadley intensity as mirrored in sea surface temperature, precipitation, surface winds, and/or ocean upwelling might be used to further study processes underlying long-term variability in the Hadley Circulation over the past several hundred years.
3 D-FEM Simulation of a Transverse Flux Machine Respecting Nonlinear and Anisotropic Materials

This paper presents the three dimensional (3D) Finite Element Method (FEM) COMSOL model of a Three Phase Permanent Magnetic Excited Transverse Flux Machine (TFM). The model is fully parameterized and able to sweep over all parameters during design optimization process. The nonlinear BH curve of stator and rotor material as well as the anisotropy of the laminated rotor stack is considered. In order to reduce simulation time and computation effort model symmetries are respected and a mixed formulation with vector and scalar potential is used.
Access to Clean Water and Educational Opportunity in Nicaragua

This article examines the accessibility of clean water sources in Nicaragua and reviews Nicaragua’s water resource management in terms of obstacles and challenges. It also examines how citizen concern and engagement could improve Nicaragua’s water resource management. The article then reviews some of the sources for Nicaragua’s low school enrollment, whereby it is conjectured that water accessibility is an important factor. The article concludes that Nicaragua’s long-term economic development prospects would be enhanced significantly if the Nicaraguan government would pay more attention to the access to safe water and education.
Structure and evaluation of flipped chemistry courses: organic & spectroscopy, large and small, first to third year, English and French

Organic chemistry is a traditionally difficult subject with high failure & withdrawal rates and many areas of conceptual difficulty for students. To promote student learning and success, four undergraduate organic chemistry and spectroscopy courses at the first to third year level (17–420 students) were “flipped” in 2013–2014. In the flipped course, content traditionally delivered in lectures is moved online; class time is dedicated to focused learning activities. The three large courses were taught in English, the small one in French. To structure the courses, each course's intended learning outcomes (ILOs) were analyzed to decide which course components would be delivered online and which would be addressed in class. Short (2–15 min), specific videos were created to replace lectures. Online and in-class learning activities were created in alignment with the ILOs; assessment was also aligned with the ILOs. A learning evaluation was undertaken to determine the impact of the new course structure, using Guskey's evaluation model. Analysis of students' grades, withdrawal rates, and failure rates were made between courses that had a flipped model and courses taught in previous years in a lecture format. The results showed a statistically significant improvement in students' grades and decreased withdrawal and failure rates, although a causal link to the new flipped class format cannot be concluded. Student surveys and course evaluations revealed high student satisfaction; this author also had a very positive experience teaching in the new model. The courses' overall design and evaluation method could readily be adapted to other chemistry, science and other courses, including the use of learning outcomes, the weekly course structure, online learning management system design, and instructional strategies for large and small classes.