Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The complex interplay between schizotypy and emotional, cognitive and psychological factors

This thesis is focused on the complex relationships between schizotypy and a host of emotional, cognitive and psychological factors suggested to be risk factors or adverse outcomes for psychosis. The factors of interest included: cognitive insight, negative affect, psychological wellbeing, self-stigma for seeking psychological help, dysfunctional metacognitive beliefs, neurocognition and social cognition. The complex interplay of these factors has remained relatively unexplored in schizotypy and was investigated in this thesis by utilising multiple regression and complex mediation models in five empirical study chapters. Study one found multidimensional schizotypy traits had differential relationships with the cognitive insight subcomponents- self-reflectiveness and self-certainty. Furthermore, the results indicated that the relationship between schizotypy and psychological wellbeing was mediated in serial by self-reflectiveness and negative affect, extending the “insight paradox” to schizotypy. Study two found that schizotypy was associated with greater self-stigma for seeking psychological help, and psychological wellbeing and the cognitive insight subcomponent- self-certainty mediated these relationships. Study three found that multidimensional schizotypy traits had differential relationships with dysfunctional metacognitive beliefs, and these beliefs mediated the relationship between schizotypy and both cognitive insight subcomponents, negative affect and psychological wellbeing. Against expectations, study four found only weak associations between a small number of neurocognition domains and one schizotypy trait (impulsive non-conformity), cognitive insight and psychological wellbeing. Study five found that out of four social cognition domains (theory of mind, emotion processing, social perception and attribution bias), only attribution bias was associated with schizotypy. Attribution bias also mediated the relationships between schizotypy and both cognitive insight subcomponents, negative affect and psychological wellbeing. Combined, the findings of the thesis not only provide a more coherent understanding of the complex relationships occurring in schizotypy, but also provide additional evidence for patterns that are potentially occurring across the psychosis continuum.
An Examination of Changes in Student Course Evaluations of CALS Faculty after Participating in a Faculty Development Program

Faculty development programs in agricultural colleges have aimed to improve teaching and learning in undergraduate and graduate courses. The purpose of this study was to examine how students perceived instructor teaching behaviors after instructors participated in the Teacher’s College program at the University of Florida. Student course evaluation scores were used as an indicator of instructor behaviors. A paired samples t-test was used to compare participant’s student evaluation scores before with their student evaluation scores after the program. Results indicated a statistically significant difference between scores, demonstrating slightly higher student evaluation scores after completion. It was also found faculty had higher student evaluation scores for classes they taught during the semester of participation. Lastly, this study compared student evaluation scores for courses before, during, and after faculty members’ completion of the program with their department student evaluation averages. Results indicated before Teacher’s College, faculty members had slightly lower student evaluation averages compared to department averages. Student evaluation averages were found to be slightly higher than department averages during and after Teacher’s College. Although variations were found between graduate and undergraduate-level courses, this study supports the use of faculty development programs as a strategy to improve teaching behaviors of faculty.
Are Outside Director Trades Informative? Evidence from Acquiring Firms

I show that nonroutine premerger trades by acquirer outside directors contain a significant amount of private information and indicate opportunistic trading on the information. I find that outside directors sell shares before less valuable deals and purchase shares before more value enhancing deals. Mergers with selling (buying) beforehand are associated with 22% lower (41% higher) announcement returns. Their trades are more informative than trades by other insiders, appear concentrated in harder-to-value firms, and intensify when more directors trade. Further, more outside directors appear to trade opportunistically in firms where the CEO has significant power, suggesting agency problems may exist.
An Empirical Study on Heterogeneous Defect Prediction Approaches

Software defect prediction has always been a hot research topic in the field of software engineering owing to its capability of allocating limited resources reasonably. Compared with cross-project defect prediction (CPDP), heterogeneous defect prediction (HDP) further relaxes the limitation of defect data used for prediction, permitting different metric sets to be contained in the source and target projects. However, there is still a lack of a holistic understanding of existing HDP studies due to different evaluation strategies and experimental settings. In this paper, we provide an empirical study on HDP approaches. We review the research status systematically and compare the HDP approaches proposed from 2014 to June 2018. Furthermore, we also investigate the feasibility of HDP approaches in CPDP. Through extensive experiments on 30 projects from five datasets, we have the following findings: (1) metric transformation-based HDP approaches usually result in better prediction effects, while metric selection-based approaches have better interpretability. Overall, the HDP approach proposed by Li et al. (CTKCCA) currently has the best performance. (2) Handling class imbalance problems can boost the prediction effects, but the improvements are usually limited. In addition, utilizing mixed project data cannot improve the performance of HDP approaches consistently since the label information in the target project is not used effectively. (3) HDP approaches are feasible for cross-project defect prediction in which the source and target projects have the same metric set.
A Comparative Biomechanical Analysis the Vertical Jump between Flatfoot and Normal Foot

Flatfoot has been one of the most common foot deformity, which gives rise to several malfunctions or disoders to the foot and lower extremity. Difference between flatfoot and normal foot mainly present in the middle foot, while few is known about the biomechanical difference under barefoot vertical jump. The objective of this study is to investigate the difference of flatfoot and normal foot while vertical jumping under barefoot condition. Twenty males (ten with flatfoot and ten with normal foot) volunteered to participate in this study. Foot morphology was measured with Easy-Foot-Scan. Foot kinetics and joint kinematics were obtained from EMED force platform and Vicon motion analysis system. Results showed that flatfoot group had a significantly larger peak pressure in the region of hallux and larger contact area of center forefoot than that of normal foot group, and larger contact area in medial midfoot. The flatfoot group presented larger plantarflexion and smaller external rotation to the ankle, and larger flexion and abduction and smaller external rotation to the knee than normal foot group during vertical jump. It can be concluded that people with flat-arched feet may have a poorer ability of self-regulation when facing a movement with rapid impact force like vertical jump, which will increase the risk of injuries. This information will be valuable for future work in structure, function and potential treatment of low arched feet.
Half the sky: interwoven resilience processes of women political leaders in China

ABSTRACT Applying communication theory of resilience (CTR), this study examines how women leaders in China’s politics enact resilience throughout their long career journey. We draw upon in-depth interviews to analyze the storied experiences of participants’ career development. Previous studies focus on the separate processes of CTR. We demonstrate how and when individuals interweave several processes through identifying resilience enactment in the following areas: resilience in resistance, resilience in (re)alignment, resilience in networks. Additionally, we propose the concept of subjective resilience resource as a new element of CTR by locating resilience in transformative achievements. Our findings contribute to CTR, bringing an additional way of conceptualizing the dynamics of resilience processes. Moreover, our study adds to the different contexts in which CTR offers an explanatory framework for how individuals and groups enact resilience to adapt to and transform their changing circumstances.
Quality of care and monitoring in paediatric end stage renal disease

In this thesis quality of care and monitoring of chronic kidney disease - mineral bone disorder (CKD-MBD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is assessed. Practices and policies with regards to transplantation, growth hormone and hypertension are inventories and compared with current guidelines and literature. Since end stage renal disease (ESRD) in childhood is rare, large scale studies are scarce. Differences in policies might be caused by a lack of evidence based guidelines, possibly affecting health outcome. More research on the outcome of children with end stage renal disease seems warranted in order to produce uniform guidelines enabling the same treatment and outcome for each child, independently of where the child is being treated. Next, current methods of imaging of CKD-MBD and CVD are evaluated. Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) seems unreliable for detecting and predicting CKD-MBD in patients with childhood onset ESRD. Children with ESRD show an impaired function of the left ventricle measured with Speckle Tracking Echocardiography (STE), without abnormal function as assessed with conventional echocardiography, showing that STE could be a reliable method to detect CVD. Finally, the effect of a quality improvement collaborative on quality of care (QOC) is assessed. A ceiling might have been reached with regards to QOC. This is possibly due to the fact that certain factors are present which cannot be influenced by the doctors or nurses.
Effect of Integrated Nutrient Management on Growth and Yield attributes of Brinjal

Brinjal or eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) of the family Solanaceae is one of the important and popular vegetable crops grown in India and other parts of the world. Various sizes, shapes, colours and forms of cultivated as well as wild type of brinjal are found in India, white type brinjal fruits is said to be good for diabetic patients. Brinjal fruits have medicinal properties (Rajan and Markose, 2002). Some medicinal use of eggplant tissues and extract include treatment of diabetes, asthama, cholera, bronchitis and diarrhea, its fruit and International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 8 Number 11 (2019) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Could platelet distribution width predict coronary collateral development in stable coronary artery disease?

OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that hemogram parameters should be related to the development of coronary collateral vessels. For this purpose, we aimed to compare platelet distribution width (PDW) and PDW to platelet ratio (PPR) in subjects with stable coronary artery disease having adequate or inadequate coronary collateral development. METHODS: A total of 398 patients with stable angina pectoris undergoing coronary angiography were enrolled and divided on the basis of the development of coronary collateral (CCD) (inadequate CCD (n=267) and adequate CCD (n=131). Routine complete blood count and biochemical parameters were measured before coronary arteriography. RESULTS: Mean PDW and PPR values of inadequate and adequate CCD groups were 17.5% (10–23) and 12.4% (9.8–22) %, p<0.001, respectively. In multivariate analysis, age (p=0.012, 95% CI for OR: 0.958 (0.933–0.983) and PDW (p<0.001, 95% CI for OR: 1.432 (1.252–1.618) were found to be statistically significantly different inadequate CCD group compared to adequate CCD group. Receiver operating curve (ROC) analyses revealed that a PPR value greater than 0.057 had 76% sensitivity and 51% specificity and a PDW higher than 16.2% had 80% sensitivity and 66% specificity in predicting inadequate CCD. CONCLUSION: The present study suggests that PDW and PPR may be associated with the degree of collateral development in chronic stable coronary artery disease (CAD).
Relationship of Accident Rates and Road Geometric Design

Road safety issue has become a major concern worldwide due to the serious consequences of road accidents on countries socio-economics and human lives. The main aim of this paper is to discuss and review the effects of geometric design elements on road accidents including statistical models used over the years and to compare the outcomes of the studies conducted in several countries. A way to improve road safety is improving road geometric design to mitigate accidents occurrence and severity on roadways. In order to improve the road design, it is crucial to evaluate and define the relationship between road geometric design elements and road accidents. Studies have tried to relate road geometric design elements such as lane number, sight distance, super-elevation, median width and type, lane and shoulder width, curve radius, gradient, and horizontal and vertical alignments to accident rates. Due to the interrelations between geometric design elements with each other and with other road accident factors, and also lack of reliable methodology of relationship estimation between road geometric design and safety. Ongoing enhancement of statistical methods has resulted in many road design-accidents analysis models which have been developed using a variety of statistical modelling approaches such as linear regression models, multiple linear regression models, Poisson regression models, Poisson-Gamma models, negative binomial models, bivariate and multivariate models, generalized estimation regression models, random parameters models, etc. However, some limitations have been encountered using the mentioned statistical models, thereby there are opportunities for road safety researchers to overcome the limitation challenges.
On Sum and Stability of Continuous $G$-Frames

In this paper, we give some conditions under which the finite sum of continuous $g$-frames is again a continuous $g$-frame. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the continuous $g$-frames $Lambda=left{Lambda_w in Bleft(H,K_wright): win Omegaright}$ and $Gamma=left{Gamma_w in Bleft(H,K_wright): win Omegaright}$ and operators $U$ and $V$ on $H$ such that $Lambda U+Gamma V={Lambda_w U+Gamma_w V in Bleft(H,K_wright): win Omega}$ is again a continuous $g$-frame. Moreover, we obtain some sufficient conditions under which the finite sum of continuous $g$-frames are stable under small perturbations.
Evaluation of Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) in Medical Students in Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran

BACKGROUND: Working in health care units has been known as occupational risk factor in mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) infection. The TB exposure rate in medical students is more than other people. In several studies significant correlation has been reported between hospital presence hours and positive PPD test prevalence. With regard to morbidity of several medical students and nursing staff due to primary tuberculosis in recent years, we decided to investigate positive tuberculin skin test (TST) prevalence in medical students and examine correlation between positive cases prevalence with presence hours in hospitals.METHODS: This was a cross sectional study and 297 medical students of Mazandaran University of medical sciences were investigated. TST was done with Mantoux method. After 48 hours, injection site induration was measured. Subjects that had induration 1000 h/a hospital presence(Intern), had positive tests. There was a meaningful statically difference in positive tests, between groups 1000 hours contact (p=0.032). CONCLUSIONS: Because of, Interns’ high responsibilities and their more involvement in patient’s diagnostic and therapeutic process, they have high chance to contact with undiagnosed and diagnosed tuberculosis patients. Due to these reasons, TB infection rate is increasing among Interns. As a result of these findings, performing PPD test should be considered at the beginning of entrance to hospital departments and then annually. Necessary tasks and following up are needed to new positive cases.
Ripple Voltage Suppression and Control Strategy for CHB-Based Solid-State Transformer

For cascade H-bridge-based solid state transformer (CHB-based SST), the ripple voltage in its dc bus will restrict the optimization of volume and energy density. To suppress and control the ripple voltage, a new control strategy is proposed in this article. First, the topology and control strategy of CHB-based SST are described briefly. In this article, all the topologies of CHB-based SST are divided into two categories when considering the differences in their energy transfer paths. Then, this article analyzes the dc ripple voltage generation mechanism of CHB-based SST, and pointing out that taking full use of the dc/dc stage is the key point for ripple suppression. Meanwhile, the ripple voltage suppression strategies for topologies I and II are proposed. Considering the dc/dc stage is a nonlinear link, a linear fitting method has been shown to analysis the performance of the dc control loop and ripple control loop. Finally, simulation and experiment results are shown to verify the proposed control strategy.
Epidemiologic Transition in Urban India: An Analysis of Medical Certification of Cause of Death Data. -

Background: Epidemiologic transition is reflected by the change in pattern of causes of death in which infectious and parasitic diseases shift to chronic and degenerative diseases of adulthood. Cause of death trends and patterns are important for future health policy planning. Objectives: To measure mortality trends of different causes of deaths for urban population of India. Materials and Methods: The study used MCCD data for 1990-2010 and calculated proportion of major cause of death to total deaths by age and sex for all these years. Results: Analysis indicated that there had been shift in the age structure and cause of mortality. The unique feature of epidemiologic transition in urban India is that circulatory and respiratory deaths had increased their relative shares in mortality over time but infectious diseases did still remain a major cause of death at the same time. There was reduction in share of children‟s deaths and concentration of mortality in older age group. Conclusion: India is presently facing the dual burden of disease specific mortality.
Adults with Down Syndrome and Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract An increasing number of people with Down syndrome are at risk of dementia resulting from Alzheimer's disease. Many reside in community group homes. When they are affected by dementia, the challenge to agencies providing group homes is how to best provide continued housing and provide effective dementia-related care management. In the general population, long term care is typically provided in nursing facilities, often in special care units (SCUs). This study evaluated select factors found in group homes and SCUs to determine which is able to provide a better quality of life for people with Down syndrome affected by dementia. Interviews, using quality of life indicators, were conducted at 20 sites, equally selected from group homes and SCUs, on the basis of their experience with people with dementia. Results indicate that group homes can provide conditions associated with better quality of life and, additionally, operate with lower staffing costs due to the non-utilization of medical staff.
Impact of Economic Value Added Dynamics on Stock Prices Fact or Fallacy: New Evidence from Nested Panel Analysis

Present scholarship targets to examine the robustness of EVA in Pakistan and information content while controlling prior research ignored firm-specific factors towards excess stock returns. The design of this research used panel data analysis whereby relevant, incremental information content and event analysis of EVA and conventional accounting performance measure via share prices is done by employing nested panel data analysis for 70 non-financial PSX listed companies from 13 industries for a study period of 2006-2015. Against prior research, EVA doesn’t add to the incremental information content of the model. Moreover asymmetric results were revealed using nested and separate regression analysis. This study is aimed to benefit stakeholders in the context of prudent investment choice. This study identifies ROA as the most important financial performance metric for local investor’s decision making. However firm-specific characteristics like financial leverage, liquidity, and firm size also play a pivotal role.
Large-Scale Screening and Machine Learning to Predict the Computation-Ready, Experimental Metal-Organic Frameworks for CO2 Capture from Air

The rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere has attracted attention in recent years. The technique of capturing CO2 from higher CO2 concentrations, such as power plants, has been widely studied, but capturing lower concentrations of CO2 directly from the air remains a challenge. This study uses high-throughput computer (Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulation) and machine learning (ML) to study 6013 computation-ready, experimental metal-organic frameworks (CoRE-MOFs) for CO2 adsorption and diffusion properties in the air with very low concentrations of CO2. First, the law influencing CO2 adsorption and diffusion in air is obtained as a structure-performance relationship, and then the law influencing the performance of CO2 adsorption and diffusion in air is further explored by four ML algorithms. Random forest (RF) was considered the optimal algorithm for prediction of CO2 selectivity, with an R value of 0.981, and this algorithm was further applied to analyze the relative importance of each metal-organic framework (MOF) descriptor quantitatively. Finally, 14 MOFs with the best properties were successfully screened out, and it was found that a key to capturing a low concentration CO2 from the air was the diffusion performance of CO2 in MOFs. When the pore-limiting diameter (PLD) of a MOF was closer to the CO2 dynamic diameter, this MOF could possess higher CO2 diffusion separation selectivity. This study could provide valuable guidance for the synthesis of new MOFs in experiments that capture directly low concentration CO2 from the air.
Electron transport properties of mirror twin grain boundaries in molybdenum disulfide: Impact of disorder

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Electron transport properties of mirror twin grain boundaries in molybdenum disulfide: Impact of disorder Jejune Park, Kan-Hao Xue, Mireille Mouis, Francois Triozon, Alessandro Cresti