Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Replicating Studying Adaptive Learning Efficacy using Propensity Score Matching and Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting

Despite the importance of replication, it remains rare in the interactive learning research community. In this paper, we attempt to replicate recent quasi-experimental results suggesting that the ALEKS intelligent tutoring system is effective at improving student course outcomes in higher education (Mojarad et al., 2018). In this paper, we conduct a near replication, collecting a new data set of higher education students using ALEKS, at the same university as in that earlier paper. We investigate the robustness of the results found to the choice of quasi-experimental methodology. In the earlier work, the popular propensity score matching algorithm was used; a recent methodological paper challenges this method (King & Nielsen, 2019). We therefore investigate the impact of using another matching algorithm, inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) instead of propensity score matching, and compare the results obtained by these two methods. We replicate the previous study: ALEKS is statistically significantly associated with better student course outcomes. The use of IPTW leads to the same qualitative result as PSM, but IPTW achieves superior matching, suggesting that this method should be preferred for future quasi-experiments within the interactive learning research community.
Phyllomedusa 19-2 INGLÊS.indd

The relationship between body and substrate color for Ambystoma altamirani (Caudata: Ambystomatidae) from the Arroyo los Axolotes, Mexico. To determine whether the coloration of Ambystoma altamirani varies and whether the color is related to the color of the salamander’s substrate, A. altamirani from the Arroyo los Axolotes, state of México, Mexico, was examined. The study was conducted from February 2018 to January 2019, and the colors classified by comparison with a standard color wheel. The most common base color was olive-green (64%) followed by black (21%). The most common color combinations were olive-green with black markings (44%), solid black (14%), and olive-green with black and yellow markings (11%). Olive-green salamanders were present in every month of the study, whereas the other base colors were found in fewer months, with the greatest diversity of base colors being observed from April to July. Olive-green, black, and “light” A. altamirani were found on dark substrates more frequently than expected based on availability compared to intermediate or light substrates. Because there is no evidence for substrate color matching, substrate selection likely is based on other environmental features.
Mouse movements reflect personality traits and task attentiveness in online experiments

Abstract Objective In this rapidly digitizing world, it is becoming ever more important to understand people's online behaviors in both scientific and consumer research settings. The current work tests the feasibility of inferring personality traits from mouse movement patterns as a cost‐effective means of measuring individual characteristics. Method Mouse movement features (i.e., pauses, fixations, speed, and clicks) were collected while participants (N = 791) completed an online image choice task. We compare the results of standard univariate and three forms of multivariate partial least squares (PLS) analyses predicting Big Five traits from mouse movements. We also examine whether mouse movements can predict a proposed measure of task attentiveness (atypical responding), and how these might be related to personality traits. Results Each of the PLS analyses showed significant associations between a linear combination of personality traits (high Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Openness, and low Neuroticism) and several mouse movements associated with slower, more deliberate responding (less unnecessary clicks and more fixations). Additionally, several click‐related mouse features were associated with atypical responding on the task. Conclusions As the image choice task itself is not intended to assess personality in any way, our results validate the feasibility of using mouse movements to infer internal traits across experimental contexts.
Prevalence of malocclusion in various skeletal patterns among Chennai Population

The Prevalence of malocclusion has expanded in late decades, and it is viewed as a standout amongst the most well-known dental issues together with dental caries, gingival malady, and dental fluorosis. Malocclusion designs change in various population because of the varieties in the hereditary and natural in influences. Planning orthodontic treatment and portion of assets in a specific geographic area require standard information on the predominance of various sorts of malocclusion around there. The sample comprised of 100 participants. The subjects were randomly selected. Occlusal anterior-posterior relationship were based on angle’s classification. From the result obtained, 88% had Class I malocclusion, 10% had Class II, just 2% had Class III and 53% were found to have crowding. Whereas, 69% has skeletal class I, 29% has skeletal class II and 2% has skeletal class III. The most widely recognised dental malocclusion was Angle Class I by the molar relationship. The most well-known skeletal malocclusion was Class I, trailed by Class II. No sexual orientation differences was found in the conveyance of the molar relationship and skeletal relationship.
A STUDY ON EFFECTIVENESS OF MOTIVATIONAL INCENTIVES ON MOTIVATIONAL INCENTIVES ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE AT K7 COMPUTING PVT LTD

- The current study was conducted on the Effectiveness of Motivational Incentives on Employee Performance. The main purpose of this study was to determine the level of incentives and to evaluate the impact of these incentives on employee performance. Research has developed a variety of ways in which employees are motivated including incentives based on financial and non - financial recognition. Research suggests that financial incentives alone were not enough. Capacity building programs should be implemented for employees that will not only make their job challenging but also increase their commitment to their organizations. The information from this study can be used effectively by companies to review their staff policies and other researchers for future studies.
Effect of prior application or addition of desensitizers into hydrogen peroxide gels on bleached enamel

This in vitro study evaluated the effect of 35% hydrogen peroxide (35HP) gels with different desensitizing agents on color, microhardness and roughness of bleached enamel. Forty enamel-dentin specimens (6x6x2 mm) were obtained from twenty human molars. After color measurement with a spectrophotometer, the specimens were randomized into four groups (n= 10): 35HPw35HP without desensitizing agent; 35HPCa35HP with calcium; 35HPK35HP with 0.5% potassium nitrate; 35HPTFa35HPw + topical application of 5% potassium nitrate and 2% sodium fluoride (TFa). Specimens were evaluated for color (∆Eab* and ∆E00), Vickers microhardness (VHN) and, superficial and volumetric roughness (Ra and Sa, μm) using a 3D non-contact profilometer before and 1-week after bleaching. Data were analyzed by ANOVA and Tukey tests (p< 0.05). Both treatment groups promoted a significant whitening effect and there was no difference between them for any color parameters evaluated. All groups reduced significantly the VHN, but the 35HPK showed a reduction significantly major than the other groups. 35HPCa and 35HP+TFa did not avoid the of Ra and Sa increasing. It can be concluded that 35HP bleaching gels with different desensitizing agents did not affect the whitening efficacy. However, all treatments decreased the microhardness, the addition of calcium into 35HP gel and the application of TFa before bleaching did not revert the enamel roughness under in vitro conditions.
Chapter 2 Conceptual representation of lexical and grammatical number: Evidence from SNARC and size congruity effect in the processing of Polish nouns

The goal of the present study was to investigate the numerical representation of the referents of collective singular nouns in comparison with non-collective singular and plural nouns. Specifically, we asked whether the representation of collective singulars is influenced by the grammatical number (singularity) or the lexical specification (plurality of collection elements). This question was addressed in two psycholinguistic experiments using a technique based on two number-related phenomena: the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect and the size congruity effect. Participants performed semantic (Experiment 1) or grammatical (Experiment 2) number judgments for collective and non-collective Polish nouns, while the response hand, grammatical number and font size of the words were manipulated. A weak SNARC effect was found in the form of faster responses for grammatically singular nouns with the left hand and for grammatically plural nouns with the right hand. Collective singulars patterned with non-collective singulars suggesting that the primary representation of collective referents does not include conceptual plurality. The numerical interpretation seems to be drivenmore by grammatical than lexical factors. The SNARC effect was present only in Experiment 1, which points to its dependence on the task type. No size congruity effect occurred in either experiment, so the size of the denoted set does not appear to be a salient property of the conceptual representation of linguistic number.
Top Trading Cycles with Reordering: Improving Priorities in School Choice

School districts commonly ration public school seats based on students preferences and priorities. Priorities reflect the school districts’ objectives for reducing busing costs (walk-zone priority) or utilizing siblings’ learning spillovers (sibling priority). Our work develops a simple modification of the well-studied Top Trading Cycles mechanism that matches schools to higher priority students while preserving the mechanism’s desirable efficiency and incentives properties.
Stock Market and Real Economy: Unwritten History Matters!

Economic concepts, statistical methods, and variable classifications used to measure personal consumption expenditures (PCE) are regularly updated when they become obsolete for the evolving US economy. History is gradually rewritten and eventually lost because these structural revisions are applied retrospectively to historical data. We use data revisions to tease out novel empirical support for the conjecture of countercyclical equity risk premia. Latest-vintage PCE, a distorted measure of aggregate consumption risk, is significantly less informative about future stock market returns than real-time-vintage PCE. These results highlight the importance of using real-time data to test economic models.
Modeling Conditional Factor Risk Premia Implied by Index Option Returns

We propose a novel factor model for option returns. Option exposures are estimated nonparametrically, and factor risk premia can vary nonlinearly with states. The model is estimated using regressions with minimal assumptions on factor and option return dynamics. We estimate the model using index options to characterize the conditional risk premia for factors of interest, such as the market return, market variance, tail and intermediary risk factors, higher moments, and the VIX term structure slope. Together, market return and variance explain more than 90% of option return variation. Unconditionally, the magnitude of the variance risk premium is plausible. It displays pronounced time variation, spikes during crises, and always has the expected sign.
What Do You Think about Climate Change?

To answer this question, this paper reviews the huge and growing body of empirical literature on climate change awareness and summarizes insights emerging from a critical review of about 140 papers. In particular, this survey provides (i) a historical overview of climate change awareness worldwide, (ii) a guide to the most widely used datasets, with particular attention to the question wording employed to measuring climate change awareness when the analysis is performed at the individual level; (iii) a detailed review of the main socio-economic and climatological determinants of climate change awareness, such as age, gender, education, political values, the experience of extreme weather conditions, social and institutional trust and the stage of development of the country where people live; and (iv) a summary of the main implications of these findings in terms of public policy responses.
Bank Supervision and Liquidity Creation

This paper examines whether different supervisory practices affect banks’ liquidity creation. Using a sample of commercial banks in the 27 European countries over 1996-2013, we document a negative association between regulators’ supervisory power and bank liquidity creation. However, the level of liquidity creation is unaffected by market-based monitoring. Further analysis reveals that the quality of the institutional environment and market incentives play a crucial role in explaining the cross-country variation in bank liquidity creation. The results of additional analyses suggest that supervisory power and private monitoring affect bank liquidity creation by mitigating liquidity risk, and these two supervisory practices are complementary mechanisms in reducing bank illiquidity. Overall, the results provide new insights into the design of regulatory and supervisory practices of financial institutions.
Serial Dependence in the Stock Market: What Can We Learn from Derivatives?

We derive a model-free expression of the serial dependence coefficients of the stock market return in terms of the prices of available index options, VIX futures, and VIX options. As a result, we obtain real-time market autocorrelation and regression coefficients between market returns over two consecutive periods. From a forward-looking perspective, we document a short-term reversal for monthly returns robustly. Moreover, the fading memory belief based on historical observations yields comparable market autocorrelation from derivatives, despite a virtually zero market autocorrelation calculated by standard statistical method. Furthermore, we show that the derivative information helps to improve the out-of-sample market return prediction.
The Effect of Stock Liquidity on Corporate Cash Holdings: The Real Investment Motive

This study examines the relationship between stock liquidity and corporate cash holdings and explores a new economic mechanism driving this relationship. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) approach based on the annual reconstitution of the Russell 1000/2000 indices, we find that stock liquidity has a positive causal effect on corporate cash holdings. This effect is more pronounced for firms with more investment opportunities. These results suggest that enhanced stock liquidity increases corporate cash holdings by expanding the set of investment opportunities. Our evidence supports the real investment motive over the repurchase motive.
Implications of socio-technical imaginaries of a circular economy on science, technology, and innovation actors’ research project proposals: a Norwegian case study

A growing body of research is investigating the connections between the discursive construction of circular economy (CE) and its influences on public policies that promote the socio-technological transition towards circular production and consumption systems. However, surprisingly little attention has focused on how CE discourses interact with science technology, and innovation (STI) actors. To address this gap, this research adopts the prism of socio-technical imaginaries to understand specific visions of circularity in science and innovation, exploring how competing imaginaries mobilize specific actors, institutions, and visions of a greener future. Our empirical material included archival documentation from the Norwegian government and funded research projects on CE. Our analysis identified two key tension points within these imaginaries: “International drivers versus regional and local transition arenas” and “Ecological modernization versus sectoral transformation. ” In contrast to previous researchers, we suggest that tensions are inherent to CE socio-technical imaginaries. To some extent, these findings challenge existing studies which often give the impression that CE policy programs are harmonious and free of visible controversy. Our findings indicate the need for increased involvement of STI actors and other societal actors (NGOs, private sector) in the CE policy-making process to avoid endless growth as an unexpected CE policy outcome.
Experimental investigation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons growth characteristics of gasoline mixed with methanol, ethanol, or n-butanol in laminar diffusion flames

Alcohols have been regarded as being able to reduce particulate emissions from GDI engines, which in turn requires a deeper understanding of the effect of fuel chemistry on the formation and growth of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This work focused on combustion and soot-forming progress and thus studied the distribution characteristics of PAHs with different ring sizes by PLIF and the combustion characteristics by OH and CH luminescence in laminar diffusion flames. The effect of methanol, ethanol, and n-butanol addition to gasoline on PAHs was evaluated at the same mixing ratio and the same oxygen content, and the effect of alcohol ratio from 0% to 80% was investigated. The results showed that at the same mixing ratio the ability of alcohols to reduce all size PAHs is methanol > ethanol > n-butanol. As the alcohol ratio increases, all size PAHs show a monotonous decreasing trend. The ability of methanol or ethanol to reduce large-ring aromatics is always far greater than that to reduce one-rin.
Comparison of In Vitro Cell Culture and a Mouse Assay for Measuring Infectivity of <italic toggle='yes'>Cryptosporidium parvum</italic>

In vitro cell cultures were compared to neonatal mice for measuring the infectivity of five genotype 2 isolates of Cryptosporidium parvum. Oocyst doses were enumerated by flow cytometry and delivered to animals and cell monolayers by using standardized procedures. Each dose of oocysts was inoculated into up to nine replicates of 9 to 12 mice or 6 to 10 cell culture wells. Infections were detected by hematoxylin and eosin staining in CD-1 mice, by reverse transcriptase PCR in HCT-8 and Caco-2 cells, and by immunofluorescence microscopy in Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells. Infectivity was expressed as a logistic transformation of the proportion of animals or cell culture wells that developed infection at each dose. In most instances, the slopes of the dose-response curves were not significantly different when we compared the infectivity models for each isolate. The 50% infective doses for the different isolates varied depending on the method of calculation but were in the range from 16 to 347 oocysts for CD-1 mice and in the ranges from 27 to 106, 31 to 629, and 13 to 18 oocysts for HCT-8, Caco-2, and MDCK cells, respectively. The average standard deviations for the percentages of infectivity for all replicates of all isolates were 13.9, 11.5, 13.2, and 10.7% for CD-1 mice, HCT-8 cells, Caco-2 cells, and MDCK cells, respectively, demonstrating that the levels of variability were similar in all assays. There was a good correlation between the average infectivity for HCT-8 cells and the results for CD-1 mice across all isolates for untreated oocysts (r 0.85, n 25) and for oocysts exposed to ozone and UV light (r 0.89, n 29). This study demonstrated that in vitro cell culture was equivalent to the “gold standard,” mouse infectivity, for measuring the infectivity of C. parvum and should therefore be considered a practical and accurate alternative for assessing oocyst infectivity and inactivation. However, the high levels of variability displayed by all assays indicated that infectivity and disinfection experiments should be limited to discerning relatively large differences.
WETTING AND DRYING RESISTANCE OF LIME-STABILIZED EXPANSIVE SOILS MODIFIED WITH NANO-ALUMINA

Weak soil at construction sites necessitates ground improvement. Chemical stabilization is typically carried out using either lime or cement. The primary objective of this study was to assess the strength and durability of lime-stabilized soils modified with nano-alumina (NA). This study adopted the scientifically established initial consumption of lime (ICL) content for soil stabilization. In addition, nano-alumina was added in varying percentages as an auxiliary additive. It was observed that 0.5 % of nano-alumina was optimal with respect to the ICL for maximizing the soil stabilization. The stabilized soils were cured for 0, 7, 14, and 28 days. Post-curing testing revealed that the strength increased sixfold for the optimal combination, compared with the virgin soil. To understand the durability behavior of the optimal combination, the stabilized soil specimens were subjected to wetting and drying cycles after 28 days of curing. The optimal combination was nearly as durable as that of the lime-stabilized soil subjected to five cycles of wetting and drying.
OPMI: the Ontology of Precision Medicine and Investigation and its Support for Clinical Data and Metadata Representation and Analysis

—Consortia conducting precision medicine studies face a major challenge of integrating big data including clinical and biomedical data. In this study, we report our development of the community-driven Ontology of Precision Medicine and Investigation (OPMI) and its applications in clinical data and metadata representation. OPMI has been used to represent the common data model (CDM) of the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (or OHDSI) program. It has also been used to represent approximately 30 case report forms defined by the NIH-supported Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP). Our case studies showed that OPMI is able to semantically and precisely represent the OHDSI CDM, various KPMP clinical forms, and their associated data and metadata. Such ontological representations support standardized data representation, sharing, recording, integration, and advanced analysis.