Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decomposing Differences between Groups

Somewhat divergent approaches to finding the components of group differences (for example, the difference in average earnings across gender or racial groups) have grown up in the literatures of economics and sociology. Both, however, are variants of the same underlying approach. This article illustrates different approaches and draws attention to the conditions under which two, three, or four components of the income gap between groups can be usefully distinguished. The two central issues are which standard one uses to evaluate endowment differences between groups, and whether the scales used to operationalize underlying concepts have arbitrary zero-points or not. This latter difficulty has often been neglected in empirical applications using variables such as education, region, occupation, industry, and marital status. In such cases, the choice of a comparison group is inherently arbitrary, and nothing other than an arbitrary decomposition of the residual group difference can result.
Improved video-based eye-gaze detection method

Video-based eye-gaze point detection methods used in the support systems for the disabled have been studied. Recently, we proposed the pupil detection technique using two light sources and the image difference method, and presented its effectiveness. In this paper, a method eliminating the light sources reflected in eye glass lenses and precisely detecting the pupil and the glint (the corneal reflection light), which are the feature points for the determination of the eye-gaze point, were proposed. <<ETX>>
Joint Management of Banteng (Bos javanicus) in a Contested Cultural Landscape: Observations and Implications

This article presents findings on Aboriginal perspectives of the feral banteng (Bos javanicus) herd located in the Aboriginal-owned and jointly managed Garig Gunak Barlu National Park. The park, situated on the Cobourg Peninsula in Australia’s Northern Territory, is home to what may be the world’s largest remaining wild herd of banteng, and the animals have both local and international significance. The article presents extensive ethnographic details of this situation, and compares the perspectives and aspirations of the traditional owners of the park to the park’s management plans. Drawing on emerging theoretical understandings of landscape in anthropology, the article concludes with an evaluation of some of the sources of discord in the joint management of banteng and the implications of this case for joint management in general. First and foremost, the author thanks the people of the Cobourg Peninsula who have shared their thoughts and their country with me, and the rangers for all their assistance. This research was funded by the Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management at Charles Darwin University, the Pacific Rim Foundation of the University of California, and the Institute of Governmental Affairs at the University of California, Davis. The author also received a conference support subsidy from the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, which helped make presentation of this research at the Third International Wildlife Management Congress possible. Finally, the author must thank Dr. Benjamin Orlove, Aaron Petty, and two anonymous reviewers for their thorough comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Promoting School Success Among At Risk Youth

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between grade retention and completing high school in a sample of very low-income children from an urban school district. Results suggest that being retained–whether in first grade or in later grades–increases the risk of dropout. Moreover, youths who are retained in middle school are at greater risk of dropping out early in high school. Regardless of when retention occurs, youths who participate in extracurricular activities remain in school longer, relative to their counterparts. The findings support a social developmental model of academic success in which children's opportunities for pro-social involvement, their social and academic skills, and the rewards in their environments condition educational outcomes.
Issues in Information Systems

Some research studies indicate that small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have had mixed success in the adoption of information technology innovations in the past as compared to larger organizations. However if SMEs can successfully adopt advanced Internet-based technologies then they may be able to overcome some of their inherent limitations and improve their ability to compete with larger organizations in today’s global marketplace. SMEs differ widely in the degree to which they have adopted advanced Internet-based technologies. This study focuses on only one Internet-based technology that a SME may choose to adopt: a web site. A research framework is developed based upon Rogers’ Innovation Diffusion Theory and is used to interpret the results of a case study of SME web site adoption. The study findings illustrate the utility of Rogers' Innovation Diffusion Theory for exploring this complex innovation adoption phenomenon. In addition, the study findings suggest that personal innovativeness may be an important factor to include in future studies. An analysis of the case study findings also suggest actions that change agents could take to increase the likelihood of successful web site adoption among SMEs.
Collective Bargaining Agreement Provisions in the Wake of Ohio Teacher Evaluation System Legislation

Guided by Honig and Hatch’s conceptualization of bridging and buffering, we analyzed the first teacher collective bargaining agreements negotiated after the enactment of the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System to understand how state law has shaped provisions for teacher evaluation, compensation, reductions in force (RIF), transfers, and contract renewal. We found surprising variation in provisions across districts. Most notable was how districts defined comparable evaluations in making RIF decisions. Bridging districts provided the greatest protections for the most accomplished teachers, regardless of seniority. In contrast, buffering districts have RIF provisions based on seniority.
Parallel/series connection of self-sustained oscillating series-parallel resonant converters

In this paper, a new interconnection concept of two (or more) series-parallel resonant converter suitable for parallel/series connected inputs is proposed. With this connection method operation at a wide range of operating voltages and good semiconductor utilisation is enabled. Furthermore, the balance of the two resonant converter input voltages in case of a series connection is investigated and a method for improving the voltage balancing is presented. The proposed concept is verified by measurement results and the design of the converter/integrated transformer is discussed in detail.
Sabertooth characters in the clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa Griffiths 1821)

The clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) is an unusual medium‐sized felid whose ecology in the wild is poorly known. Mainly famous for its large canines, it has often been an overlooked taxon in analyses of felid morphology and systematics or has proven aberrant and difficult to interpret. In this article I report on a number of unusual features in the clouded leopard skull hitherto considered characteristic of sabertooth felids exclusively, and, accordingly, universally believed to be absent in extant felids. The skull morphology of the clouded leopard sets it apart from other extant felids, and in a number of respects it approaches the morphology of primitive sabertooths. This indicates convergence of several characters in machairodontine felids and the clouded leopard, mainly as adaptations for attaining a large gape. This raises doubts about the characters hitherto considered as distinguishing sabertoothed from nonsabertoothed predators, and since no evidence at present suggests a different functional killing and feeding ecology in Neofelis, regardless of its unusual skull morphology, also whether primitive sabertoothed felids were functionally similar to advanced forms such as Homotherium, Megantereon, or Smilodon. J. Morphol. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development Abbreviated title : Musical Brain Development

Acknowledgements: We thank our previous research assistants and postdoctoral fellows for test preparation, behavioral testing, and imaging data collection, and the participating children and their families for their cooperation in taking part in our experiments. The human brain has the remarkable capacity to alter in response to environmental demands. Training-induced structural brain changes have been demonstrated in the healthy adult human brain. However, no study has yet directly related structural brain changes to behavioral changes in the developing brain, addressing the question of whether structural brain differences seen in adults (comparing experts with matched controls) are a product of 'nature' (via biological brain predispositions) or 'nurture' (via early training). Long-term instrumental music training is an intense, multisensory and motor experience and offers an ideal opportunity to study structural brain plasticity in the developing brain in correlation with behavioral changes induced by training. Here we demonstrate structural brain changes after only 15 months of musical training in early childhood, that were correlated with improvements in musically-relevant motor and auditory skills. These findings shed light on brain plasticity, and suggest that structural brain differences in adult experts (whether musicians or experts in other areas) are likely due to training-induced brain plasticity.
Joint acute toxicity of diazinon and copper to Ceriodaphnia dubia

Diazinon and copper are two contaminants that are widely found in urban streams and in municipal wastewater effluents. Because these contaminants may be found concurrently, the potential for their joint toxicity is of interest, particularly with regard to toxicity testing of wastewater effluents and the ecological implications of simultaneous exposures in urban streams. Although interactions between metals are well studied, relatively little is known about interactions between metals and organophosphate compounds such as diazinon. In this study, the interaction between copper and diazinon was evaluated using cladoceran (Ceriodaphnia dubia) in 48‐h static tests within laboratory water. Using toxic units derived from concurrently established 48‐h median lethal concentration values (LC50) of test organisms of each individual toxicant, the effects of the mixture of copper and diazinon on the survival of C. dubia were shown to be generally nonconcentration additive (LC50 significantly greater than one toxic unit). However, evaluation of the dose‐response relationship across the entire range of effect levels revealed that the mortality induced by the mixture of copper and diazinon supported concentration additivity at higher effect levels.
DEFORMATION MONITORING BASED ON TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNER POINT CLOUD REGISTRATION

Terrestrial laser scanning, although a recent techn ology is shown to be promising for deformation detection and monitoring applicatio ns. However, general practice for deformation monitoring with laser scanners requires use of predefined targets. A methodology for measuring structural deformation, based on the acquisition of terrestrial laser point clouds from a deforming object without the use of targets, has been developed and presented in this paper. Instead of targets, a number of stationary c ontrol points located in the surrounding area of the object are used. These points are identified automatically on photographic images taken during laser scanner data acquisition from a high r esolution CCD camera mounted on the scanner device and are used for the automatic regis tration of the point clouds. The paper also describes the application of the above methodology in laboratory experiments on a model of an ancient temple under stress caused by controlled motion.
Portable desktop applications based on user-level virtualization

As computing is becoming increasingly ubiquitous today, it would be very attractive for common computer users to access same personalized desktop environment on any compatible PC anytime and anywhere. This paper presents such a solution for Windows systems based on user-level virtualization technologies. Namely, the userpsilas data, applications and their configurations are stored on a portable USB device. At run-time, the portable desktop-applications on the device will run in a user-mode virtualization environment where some resource (registry, files/directories, environment variables, etc.) accessing APIs are intercepted and redirected to the portable device as necessary. User can access her personalized applications and data conveniently on any compatible computer, although they do not exist on local disk. This paper describes the whole design, technical details and performance evaluation, and presents a demo application. Compared with some existing solutions based on virtual machine technologies, this solution is more efficient in performance and storage capacity.
Weak Relationships between Stint Duration, Physical and Skilled Match Performance in Australian Football

Australian Rules football comprises physical and skilled performance for more than 90 min of play. The cognitive and physiological fatigue experienced by participants during a match may reduce performance. Consequently, the length of time an athlete is on the field before being interchanged (known as a stint), is a key tactic which could maximize the skill and physical output of the Australian Rules athlete. This study developed two methods to quantify the relationship between athlete time on field, skilled and physical output. Professional male athletes (n = 39) from a single elite Australian Rules football club participated, with physical output quantified via player tracking systems across 22 competitive matches. Skilled output was calculated as the sum of involvements performed by each athlete, collected from a commercial statistics company. A random intercept and slope model was built to identify how a team and individuals respond to physical outputs and stint lengths. Stint duration (mins), high intensity running (speeds >14.4 km · hr−1) per minute, meterage per minute and very high intensity running (speeds >25 km·hr−1) per minute had some relationship with skilled involvements. However, none of these relationships were strong, and the direction of influence for each player was varied. Three conditional inference trees were computed to identify the extent to which combinations of physical parameters altered the anticipated skilled output of players. Meterage per minute, player, round number and duration were all related to player involvement. All methods had an average error of 10 to 11 involvements, per player per match. Therefore, other factors aside from physical parameters extracted from wearable technologies may be needed to explain skilled output within Australian Rules football matches.
Motility of the human digestive tract under resting conditions and after ingestion of food. A study with endoradiosondes.

AbstractThe motility of the digestive tract in healthy persons was studied by means of pressure-sensitive endoradiosondes, under resting conditions during the night and after ingestion of food. In the stomach, slow pressure waves were observed with a frequency of 3–5 contractions per min and pressures of up to 10 cm H2O, as well as activity in the form of relatively rapid pressure increases of up to about 25 cm H2O—so-called type II waves. These waves were observed especially in the antrum. After ingestion of food increased activity was recorded in the form of a higher frequency of type II waves. In the small intestine waves of both type I and type II were recorded. Immediately following ingestion of food the intensity of both type I and type II waves increased. In the colon, waves of types I, III and IV were recorded. After ingestion of food the intensity of the type III and IV waves was increased. Activity during the night was considerably reduced in relation to that during the daytime. However, activit.
Intellectual Property Rights and Multinational Firms’ Modes of Entry

This paper studies the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPR) and the entry mode decision by multinational firms. A simple model is developed allowing firms to choose among export, foreign direct investment (FDI), and licensing. Firms in the recipient country may imitate the technology, and their abilities to do so depend both on the nature of each mode and on the level of IPR protection in that country. Unlike the traditional beliefs, however, strong IPR can affect FDI more than licensing.
Conflict values and team relationships : conflict's contribution to team effectiveness and citizenship in China

Although conflict has traditionally been considered destructive, especially in collectivist societies like China, recent studies indicate that valuing and approaching conflict can contribute to effective teamwork. A hundred and six pairs of employees and their leaders were recruited from State Owned Enterprises in Shanghai and Nanjing. Employees described their conflict values and relationships. Their immediate supervisors rated the effectiveness of their teams and the extent of their citizenship behavior. Results indicate that positive conflict attitudes and approaching conflict can contribute to strong relationships, which in turn strengthen team effectiveness and employee citizenship. Findings suggest that how conflict values affect relationships and outcomes are more differentiated than originally expected. Results were interpreted as supporting the traditional idea that relationships are critical for effective organization work in China but also challenging future research to understand the processes by which conflict has a positive contribution to work relationships. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Do I matter

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider whether a common process linking seemingly disparate phenomena could explain how men from a low-secure unit (LSU) could stabilise, progress and return to their community. Design/methodology/approach – Reflective practice and a re-consideration of an LSU unknowingly operating as a therapeutic community. Findings – The Hawthorne Effect, social psychiatry and Bowman LSU share a common humanity whereby people matter. As a result, LSU's can offer more than containment. Originality/value – Therapeutic community principles can function in LSU's.
Daily activity recognition combining gaze motion and visual features

Recognition of user activities is a key issue for context-aware computing. We present a method for recognition of user daily activities using gaze motion features and image-based visual features. Gaze motion features dominate for inferring the user's egocentric context whereas image-based visual features dominate for recognition of the environments and the target objects. The experimental results show the fusion of those different type of features improves performance of user daily activity recognition.
dbCAN-seq: a database of carbohydrate-active enzyme (CAZyme) sequence and annotation

Abstract Carbohydrate-active enzyme (CAZymes) are not only the most important enzymes for bioenergy and agricultural industries, but also very important for human health, in that human gut microbiota encode hundreds of CAZyme genes in their genomes for degrading various dietary and host carbohydrates. We have built an online database dbCAN-seq (http://cys.bios.niu.edu/dbCAN_seq) to provide pre-computed CAZyme sequence and annotation data for 5,349 bacterial genomes. Compared to the other CAZyme resources, dbCAN-seq has the following new features: (i) a convenient download page to allow batch download of all the sequence and annotation data; (ii) an annotation page for every CAZyme to provide the most comprehensive annotation data; (iii) a metadata page to organize the bacterial genomes according to species metadata such as disease, habitat, oxygen requirement, temperature, metabolism; (iv) a very fast tool to identify physically linked CAZyme gene clusters (CGCs) and (v) a powerful search function to allow fast and efficient data query. With these unique utilities, dbCAN-seq will become a valuable web resource for CAZyme research, with a focus complementary to dbCAN (automated CAZyme annotation server) and CAZy (CAZyme family classification and reference database).
Willingness to communicate: can online chat help?1

This study compared the experiences of small groups of female Japanese university students communicating in English to solve tasks using online chat with those who solved the same tasks in face-to-face settings using spoken language. The groups were compared using a counterbalanced research design so that the nine groups consisting of four participants each took part in solving tasks in both the online mode and the traditional face-to-face setting. Data gathered from questionnaires, along with an analysis of the discourse produced by students, led to the conclusion that under the conditions in the study, online chatting provided a more comfortable environment, enhancing students’ willingness to communicate. Regarding benefits to the language teacher, online chat provides another fruitful tool to enhance interaction in the target language.
Gestalt interest points for image description in weight-invariant face recognition

In this work, we propose two improvements of the Gestalt Interest Points (GIP) algorithm for the recognition of faces of people that have underwent significant weight change. The basic assumption is that some interest points contribute more to the description of such objects than others. We assume that we can eliminate certain interest points to make the whole method more efficient while retaining our classification results. To find out which gestalt interest points can be eliminated, we did experiments concerning contrast and orientation of face features. Furthermore, we investigated the robustness of GIP against image rotation. The experiments show that our method is rotational invariant and - in this practically relevant forensic domain - outperforms the state-of-the-art methods such as SIFT, SURF, ORB and FREAK.
Integrating Reflective Practice in Family Therapy Supervision

This paper discusses how to integrate reflective practice in the family therapy supervisory relationship. This enables family therapists to think creatively, be insightful, and develop a range of perspectives regarding systemic formulation and practice. It encourages review of the past and promotes understanding in the present with the aim to improve therapists work with families in the future. Reflective practice encourages independent thinking and learning and helps therapists to develop a systemic process of critical enquiry to investigate and critique their own practice. It encourages therapists to be self-reflective and develop confidence to think hypothetically regarding change. This allows them to pose questions for exploration, construct a new lens to conceptualise therapy and the therapeutic relationship and develop awareness of the personal as well as the professional self.