Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phenomenology of Misophonia: Initial Physical and Emotional Responses

Misophonia is typically characterized as an extreme emotional response to auditory and visual stimuli. In several case studies, physical responses have also been reported. This study sought to determine whether adults with misophonia experience physical responses in addition to emotional responses in the presence of triggering stimuli. Twenty-seven adults with misophonia were interviewed via teleconferencing. Participants self-reported the presence of physical and emotional responses to triggers (i.e., two auditory and one visual). All participants reported physical responses to at least 1 of their triggers. There was great variation in the region of the physical responses across participants. Approximately half of the sample reported region consistency across triggers. Likewise, all participants reported emotional responses to at least 1 of their triggers. These results suggest including an immediate physical response as part of the conceptualization of misophonia. They also support classical conditioning of a physical response as a possible contributing mechanism for the etiology of misophonia.
Educational inequalities in leisure-time physical activity in 15 European countries.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to assess the patterns of socio-economic inequalities in leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) in the different member states of the European Union. METHODS Comparable data on subjects aged 16-64 years derived from national health interview surveys from 15 European countries were used for the analysis. We used log-binominal regression to assess prevalence rate ratios (PRRs). The PRR measured the risk of showing a low level of LTPA for a given educational level, relative to the highest educational group. RESULTS Within Europe, large cross-national differences in the overall prevalence of a low level of LTPA were observed. However, a low level of LTPA was always more common among those of lower educational attainment. The educational inequalities in a low level of LTPA were more pronounced in men. For the lowest compared with the highest educational level, the PRR was 1.53 (95% CI: 1.49-1.57) in males and 1.36 (95% CI: 1.33-1.39) in females. There was no consistent relationship between the absolute level of prevalence rate, as measured by the rate for the highly educated, and the magnitude of these inequalities. CONCLUSIONS Throughout Europe, physical activity during leisure time is less common among the lower educational groups compared with the higher educational groups. Programs to promote LTPA should consider strategies that target people of lower educational attainment.
Volume stylizer: tomography-based volume painting

Volumetric phenomena are an integral part of standard rendering, yet, no suitable tools to edit characteristic properties are available so far. Either simulation results are used directly, or modifications are high-level, e.g., noise functions to influence appearance. Intuitive artistic control is not possible. We propose a solution to stylize single-scattering volumetric effects. Emission, scattering and extinction become amenable to artistic control while preserving a smooth and coherent appearance when changing the viewpoint. Our approach lets the user define a number of target views to be matched when observing the volume from this perspective. Via an analysis of the volumetric rendering equation, we can show how to link this problem to tomographic reconstruction.
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF VISCOUS FLOW OF A NON-NEWTONIAN FLUID PAST AN IRREGULAR SOLID OBSTACLE BY THE MIRROR FLUID METHOD

The mirror fluid method is proposed for simulating viscous tubular flow of a Newtonian or non-Newtonian fluid past an irregular solid obstacle using a simple finite difference method for discretization. Suitable flow parameters in the solid domain are assigned by a mirror relation to ensure the surface segment is subjected to zero net shear and normal forces and the boundary conditions are enforced implicitly on the solid-fluid surface. The SIMPLE scheme and the control volume formulation are used for solving the governing equations and a 5th order weighted ENO scheme is adapted for discretization of the constitutive equations. Some typical numerical examples including Newtonian, power-law, Carreau-Bird and Oldroyd-B fluids past half-circular, triangular or trapeziform obstacles in a straight tube are simulated successfully in a two-dimensional axisymmetric coordinate system.
AudioCubes: a distributed cube tangible interface based on interaction range for sound design

AudioCubes is a novel tangible user interface allowing any person interested by sound design such as sound creators, and music trainers to intuitively explore and create dynamically changing sound. A new sound is created by manipulating distributed cube tangible user interface that can be coupled wirelessly by locating them in the interaction range of each other on a table. At any time, a sound processing network combines operational properties of AudioCubes, such as location on a plane or in space, movement, arrangement with other cubes, and layout. Sound algorithm parameters and the configuration of the sound processing network can be changed simultaneously, allowing a fast and convenient exploration of sound creation space that creates a new interaction technique for creating sounds.
Gender Differences in Environmental Behaviors Among the Chinese Public: Model of Mediation and Moderation

The environmental concern literature consistently finds that women when compared with men participate more in private environmental behaviors such as recycling and green consumer activities. A common argument posits that this is because women possess stronger proenvironmental values, beliefs, and attitudes relative to men. Research findings in China, however, do not seem to support this argument. We use data from the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey to reexamine this argument by testing a model of the mediation effects of postmaterialism, environmental knowledge, and the New Ecological Paradigm, as well as a model of the moderation effect of postmaterialism. Our results show that lower levels of environmental knowledge of Chinese women relative to men hinder their participation in private environmental behaviors. There is also some evidence for the moderation effect of postmaterialism. We conclude this study by stating theoretical and policy implications of our findings, and offering insights for future research.
The influences of cleanliness and employee attributes on perceived service quality in restaurants in a developing country

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the service quality of full-service restaurants in Vietnam to explore possible factors that may impact customer perception, which subsequently influences customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions. Based on the DINESERV model and service clues, the possible dimensions to construct customer perception were realised, and four key dimensions were suggested. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from four urban local full-service restaurants in Vietnam, and factor analysis and SEM-PLS were then performed to uncover the relationship between customer perception, satisfaction and behavioural intentions. Findings The results suggest that customer perception significantly influences customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions, and customer satisfaction itself is also found to have influence on behavioural intentions. Originality/value This is an original piece of work which contributes to the exploration of service quality in developing countries and to the incorporation of cleanliness into analyses of restaurant service quality in particular.
Mothers’ depressive symptoms and their children’s Turkish heritage language vocabulary development

Aims: This study examined associations between mothers’ depressive symptoms and the Turkish heritage vocabulary of their school-age children. We expected that mothers’ depressive symptoms would be associated with lower Turkish vocabulary scores in fourth grade as well as slower growth in vocabulary scores from fourth to sixth grade. Design: We collected longitudinal data on 139 mothers of Turkish origin in Germany and their children in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. Mothers reported on the level of their depressive symptoms, and children were administered a Turkish receptive vocabulary test. Analysis: Data were analyzed with growth curve modeling. Findings and conclusions: Mothers’ depressive symptoms were not significantly associated with children’s vocabulary in fourth grade. However, mothers’ depressive symptoms did predict slower growth in children’s vocabulary from fourth to sixth grade. The higher a mother’s depressive symptoms score, the slower the growth of her child’s Turkish vocabulary. Originality: To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the association between mothers’ depressive symptoms and their children’s vocabulary development during the school-age years, and the second to examine it for heritage language development. Significance and implications: Our findings suggest that mothers’ depressive symptoms may be one risk factor limiting parents in successfully passing on the heritage language to their children, even during school-age. Families as well as medical, psychological, and educational professionals should be made aware of the role of mothers’ depressive symptoms in their children’s language development.
Women in Academic Science: Experimental Findings From Hiring Studies

Although women are underrepresented in the most mathematically intensive fields, the gender gap in these fields has narrowed over the past 2 decades. In my E. L. Thorndike address I summarized the temporal trends in sex differences for 8 fields and considered factors that drive both the underrepresentation of women and its recent narrowing. I reviewed evidence concerning sex differences in mathematical and spatial aptitude, biases in hiring, funding, publishing, remuneration, and promotion, and gendered preferences. I conclude that the most important causes of underrepresentation appear to occur before women matriculate in college and are concerned with ability-related beliefs, stereotypes, and preferences starting in early elementary school, which by the end of high school have reduced the size of the potential pool. By the time women reach graduate school, there is evidence that they are as successful as their male counterparts in being interviewed and hired for tenure-track positions, funded, and published.
Information-Selectivity of Beta-Amyloid Pathology in an Associative Memory Model

This work models the progression of beta-amyloid pathology according to Small’s synaptic scaling theory in an updated version of Ruppin and Reggia’s associative neural network model of Alzheimer’s disease, leading to a self-reinforcing cascade of damage. Using an information theoretic approach, it is shown that the simulated beta-amyloid pathology initially selectively targets neurons with low informational contribution to the overall performance of the network, but that it targets neurons with increasingly higher significance to the network as the disease progresses. The results additionally provide a possible explanation for the apparent low correlation between amyloid plaque density and cognitive decline in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Evaluation of web-specific goal oriented requirements language models with quantitative reasoning

In this paper, we propose to evaluate Web-specific Goal Driven Models to choose amongst various design alternatives, deal with conflicts, check completeness and reaffirm the sanity of the model. The work is based on Web specific User Requirements Notation (WebURN), which is an enhancement of a goal and scenario based standard, User Requirements Notation (URN). We present the forward reasoning approach for finding the satisfaction level of the root/parent goals from the sub-goals in the goal model. The Quantitative Reasoning method called Forward Reasoning and Evaluation: Numeric (FREN) is apt when enough domain knowledge is there and precise results are expected. We propose a Quantitative Reasoning and Evaluation approach in this paper wherein the requirements engineer has an estimate of the satisfaction level of tasks and knows the priorities of various goals and sub-goals. The rules for propagation of satisfaction values from the leaves to the root level goals are specified in detail. The approach is then applied to the Web-specific Goal driven Requirements models for evaluation. The methodology has been implemented in the WebURN tool, built upon Microsoft Visio for editing and analyzing the WebURN diagrams. The results of evaluations are also compared with other prominent approaches in the area of Goal oriented Requirements Engineering. The methodology used for evaluation enables choice amongst design alternatives, resolves conflicts automatically and incorporates the role of priority in making design decisions.
Fault Diagnosis Expert System Based on Integration of Fault-Tree and Neural Network

The traditional fault diagnosis expert system is dependent on knowledge acquisition of the experts. Knowledge acquisition is recognized as the "bottleneck" problem of expert system. In addition, there are also some limitations of adaptive capacity, learning ability and real-time. And artificial neural network with good fault-tolerance and associative memory function, as well as very strong self-adaptive, self-learning ability, just can make up for the limitations of traditional expert system. This paper will construct a new expert system with the artificial neural network into and fault tree. Besides fault tree and neural network, this article mainly introduces the system model of fault diagnosis of the fire control computer and sensor subsystem, the method and process of fault diagnosis. In this expert system, we use the object-oriented production rule to represent the knowledge, which solves the bottleneck problem of the diagnostic knowledge acquisition effectively. The inferential process begins with the abnormal event and finally finds all of the possible faults and the faulty component. For some possible faulty components, which have large number of fault samples, the neural network model can be used to diagnose. The training network of fault samples employs the BP neural network. Finally, simulation training results show that the fault diagnosis expert system based on the combination of fault tree and neural network is rational and effective in fault diagnosis of the fire control system, realizes perfectly the combination of new knowledge and old one, and can grasp the state of systems dynamically.
Understanding the ""Woman Entrepreneur"" Identity Construction in Different Socio-cultural Contexts

The concept of identity has been widely researched within the social sciences with increasing attention being given to the understanding of entrepreneurial identities. However, while existing studies have analyzed the concept from both a normative and interpretative perspective, many have viewed identity itself as an unproblematic concept, and few studies have examined the importance of the socio-cultural context for the identity construction process. Using an inductive multiple case study approach, and drawing from identity and identity work theories, we analyze the construction of the “woman entrepreneur” identity in two different socio-cultural contexts, namely Sweden and Tanzania. Our study contributes to the entrepreneurial identity literature by identifying five typologies of women entrepreneurial identities, namely: born, know how, missionary, transition and solution seeker entrepreneurs. Second, we find that women construct their entrepreneurial identities as either central or salient to their sel.
Multi-Agent Based Dynamic Resource Provisioning and Monitoring In Cloud Computing Systems

The cloud computing paradigm provides a shared pool of resources and services with different models delivered to the customers through the Internet via an on-demand dynamically-scalable form charged using a pay-per-use mod el. The main problem we tackle in this paper is to optimize the resource provisioning task by shortening the completion ti me for the customers’ tasks while minimizing the associated co st. This study presents the Dynamic Resources Provisioning and Monitoring (DRPM) system, a multi-agent system to manage the cloud provider’s resources while taking into account the customers’ quality of service (QoS) requirements as determined by the service-level agreement (SLA). Moreover, DRPM inclu des a new Virtual Machine (VM) selection algorithm called the Host Fault Detection (HFD) algorithm. The proposed DRPM system i s evaluated using the CloudSim tool. The results show that usi ng the DRPM system increases resource utilization and decreas e power consumption while avoiding SLA violations. Keywords—cloud computing, multi-agent system, resource provisioning.
Reliability of Occupancy and Binomial Mixture Models for Estimating Abundance of Golden-Cheeked Warblers (Setophaga chrysoparia)

ABSTRACT. Reliable estimates of population parameters derived from survey methods are essential for decision making in management of endangered species. We evaluated whether point-count surveys used in conjunction with occupancy and binomial mixture models (BMMs) constituted a reliable approach for monitoring the federally endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia) on a preserve in central Texas. Occupancy and abundance were estimated using point-count surveys conducted on each of five 113-ha detection grids in 2008 and seven grids in 2009. Single-season occupancy models and BMMs were used to estimate occupancy and abundance, respectively. Occupancy estimates per grid ranged from 0.48 to 1.0 in 2008 and from 0.52 to 1.0 in 2009. Estimates of abundance were compared with territory densities independently estimated using spot mapping, the standard by which all other avian survey methods are often compared. Abundance estimates produced by BMMs were significantly higher than territory density estimates at all but one site in 2008 and two sites in 2009. While estimation techniques incorporating detection probabilities should be considered in monitoring programs, our results suggest that BMMs deserve careful scrutiny before being used to estimate abundance or to monitor population trends.
Requirements Engineering in the Year 2001: On (Virtually) Managing a Changing Reality

Trends in society and technology force requirements engineering (RE) to expand its role from a one-shot activity in the development process to a virtual image that accompanies the changing reality of a system. A maturing software market will require a better understanding of the differentiation in market segments also for RE, and standardization of methodologies within these segments. On the research side, this will require a coherent perspective of hitherto parallel research directions towards a comprehensive understanding of requirements processes, as well as the optimal exploitation of new technologies that support the main role of requirements engineering: mutual learning of all stakeholders concerned.
Could localized warm areas inside cold caves reduce mortality of hibernating bats affected by white-nose syndrome?

White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a mysterious condition affecting populations of hibernating bats in the northeastern US. Little is known about its physiological effects on bats and no intervention has so far been proposed to slow associated mortality. We use an individual-based population model to examine how disruption of normal hibernation or pre-hibernation physiology could lead to the pattern of mortality that has been observed. We present evidence that artificial warming of localized areas within hibernacula could increase survival of WNS-affected bats during winter by lessening the energetic costs of periodic arousals. The model suggests that localized thermal refugia of 28°C could improve survival by up to 75%, depending on how WNS acts to disrupt energy balance. This approach has yet to be tested, but it could serve as a stopgap measure to slow population declines until a solution is found, or to preserve remnant bat populations if WNS becomes ubiquitous throughout the ranges of affected species.
Dynamic Network Logistic Regression: A Logistic Choice Analysis of Inter- and Intra-Group Blog Citation Dynamics in the 2004 US Presidential Election

Methods for analysis of network dynamics have seen great progress in the past decade. This article shows how Dynamic Network Logistic Regression techniques (a special case of the Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models) can be used to implement decision theoretic models for network dynamics in a panel data context. We also provide practical heuristics for model building and assessment. We illustrate the power of these techniques by applying them to a dynamic blog network sampled during the 2004 US presidential election cycle. This is a particularly interesting case because it marks the debut of Internet-based media such as blogs and social networking web sites as institutionally recognized features of the American political landscape. Using a longitudinal sample of all Democratic National Convention/Republican National Convention—designated blog citation networks, we are able to test the influence of various strategic, institutional, and balance-theoretic mechanisms as well as exogenous factors such as seasonality and political events on the propensity of blogs to cite one another over time. Using a combination of deviance-based model selection criteria and simulation-based model adequacy tests, we identify the combination of processes that best characterizes the choice behavior of the contending blogs.
We Are (Not) All Bulldogs: Minoritized Peer Socialization Agents’ Meaning-Making About Collegiate Contexts

Abstract: In this study I examined the ways minoritized students who serve as peer socialization agents made meaning of their collegiate contexts in relation to their identities and socialization positions. Using the framework of Critical Race Theory and the concept of a meaning-making filter, I explored the meaning-making of 13 minoritized peer socialization agents (MPSAs) at a predominantly White institution. MPSAs mobilized meaning-making filters developed by counterspaces and enacted counterstorytelling as an act of resistance to the dominant narrative of the institution.