Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Culture and Diversity among Occupational Therapists in Ireland: When the Therapist is the ‘Diverse’ One

Introduction: Literature in occupational therapy, although paying increased attention to cultural differences and diversity, has largely ignored the situation of therapists who are themselves members of social and cultural minority groups. ‘Difference’ is assumed to be exclusively an attribute of the client. Method: This qualitative study explored the professional experiences of 12 occupational therapists in Ireland who self-identified as disabled or ethnic minority group members. Findings: Participants reported challenges with colleagues and managers, which revolved primarily around cultural differences in the norms and expectations guiding social interactions, communications and practice styles. Overt discrimination was reported only by disabled therapists. With clients, again there were clashes of cultural values, but participants also experienced overt and covert prejudice and intolerance. This was particularly difficult to respond to in the context of client-centred practice. Conclusion: Cultural competence, as the prevailing approach to diversity, emphasises suspending one's own values to facilitate those of clients. This demand may be inappropriate for minority therapists who may face prejudice and discrimination. In contrast, cultural humility and critical reflexivity emphasise negotiating values in the context of social power relations, an approach that may better position occupational therapy to benefit from a diverse workforce.
Raising teachers' awareness of corpora

The last couple of decades have seen a dramatic increase in corpus availability and a steady growth in the number of supporters of the use of corpora in language teaching. Yet there still seems to be a long way to go before corpora can be understood and used by language teachers in general. Novice corpus users often fail to grasp that corpora do not work in the same way as the more familiar language learning resources – such as dictionaries, grammar books and textbooks – that they are accustomed to using. I therefore propose a series of task-based, consciousness-raising exercises to help teachers (who are not corpus linguists) understand the basics of corpora. The tasks proposed are not about learning how to use a specific corpus or software, but about learning how to use corpora in general.
Forecasting of monthly marine fish landings using artificial neural network

Management of marine resources have gradually become more important during these past years because of the increased awareness of these resources becoming limited. Forecasting of fish landings is one of the many ways that can contribute to a better decision making for fisheries management. Being a renowned forecasting model, artificial neural network with back propagation was selected for this research with enhancement made by pre-processing the data using empirical mode decomposition. The monthly marine landings data of East Johor and Pahang which has 144 observations each, was gathered from the Department of Fisheries Malaysia website. A ratio of 92:8 was used to divide the data into training and testing sets. Data pre-processing was done in R software whereas the forecasting models were developed in MATLAB software. Results from the proposed model are then compared to a conventional artificial neural network using the root-mean-square error and mean absolute error values, wherein it was shown that the proposed model could outperform the conventional model.
Finite Block-Length Analysis of the Incremental Redundancy HARQ

This letter studies the power-limited throughput of a communication system utilizing incremental redundancy (INR) hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ). We use some recent results on the achievable rates of finite-length codes to analyze the system performance. With codewords of finite length, we derive closed-form expressions for the outage probabilities of INR HARQ and study the throughput in the cases with variable-length coding. Moreover, we evaluate the effect of feedback delay on the throughput and derive sufficient conditions for the usefulness of the HARQ protocols, in terms of power-limited throughput. The results show that, for a large range of HARQ feedback delays, the throughput is increased by finite-length coding INR HARQ, if the sub-codeword lengths are properly adapted.
Reasoning in Systems with Elements that Randomly Switch Characteristics

We examine the issue of stability of probability in reasoning about complex systems with uncertainty in structure. Normally, propositions are viewed as probability functions on an abstract random graph where it is implicitly assumed that the nodes of the graph have stable properties. But what if some of the nodes change their characteristics? This is a situation that cannot be covered by abstractions of either static or dynamic sets when these changes take place at regular intervals. We propose the use of sets with elements that change, and modular forms are proposed to account for one type of such change. An expression for the dependence of the mean on the probability of the switching elements has been determined. The system is also analyzed from the perspective of decision between different hypotheses. Such sets are likely to be of use in complex system queries and in analysis of surveys.
Teen fertility and gender inequality in education: a contextual hypothesis.

Previous studies in developed countries have found a micro-level association between teenage fertility and girls’ educational attainment but researchers still debate the policy implications of these associations. First, are these associations causal? Second, are they substantively important enough, at the macro-level, to warrant policy attention? In other words, how much would policy efforts to reduce unintended pregnancy among teens pay off in terms of narrowing national gender gaps in educational attainment? Third, under what contexts are these payoffs likely to be important? This paper focuses on the latter two questions. We begin by proposing a contextual hypothesis to explain cross-national variation in the gender-equity payoffs from reducing unintended teen fertility. We then test this hypothesis, using DHS data from 38 countries.
A Survey of Arabic Dialogues Understanding for Spontaneous Dialogues and Instant Message

Building dialogues systems interaction has recently gained considerable attention, but most of the resources and systems built so far are tailored to English and other Indo-European languages. The need for designing systems for other languages is increasing such as Arabic language. For this reasons, there are more interest for Arabic dialogue acts classification task because it a key player in Arabic language understanding to building this systems. This paper surveys different techniques for dialogue acts classification for Arabic. We describe the main existing techniques for utterances segmentations and classification, annotation schemas, and test corpora for Arabic dialogues understanding that have introduced in the literature
The Contribution of Ethnic Minority Status to Adaptive Style: A Comparison of Mexican, Mexican American, and European American Children

Ethnic minority status and health minority status (i.e., presence of illness) may facilitate repressive adaptive style (RAS) in an additive fashion, and a “double stigma” hypothesis has been proposed to explain this additive effect. The authors compare RAS in European American, Mexican American, and Mexican children and examine the association of RAS to the traditional values of simpatia and collectivism. Results do not confirm the hypothesis that minority status contributes to RAS; however, collectivism is a significant predictor of defensiveness supporting a cultural hypothesis for RAS.
Globalization and the Industrial Development of Nigeria : Evidence from Time Series Analysis

Among the biggest dilemmas developing countries fac e is whether they should open their economies up to the globalization process or adopt a cautious approach to avoid risks. There are fears that globalization would lead to environm e tally damaging production and consumption patterns, high labour unemployment rate s nd such other fears as loss of local control over domestic economic programmes, as well as de-industrialization. In this paper, we examined the nature of the influence globalization might have exerted on the industrial development of Nigeria over the past five decades ( 1960-2010). Based on the Engle-Granger two-step and Johansen Cointegration tests, the vect or auto regressions technique was used within an error correction framework. Findings cle arly showed that globalization had significant impacts on industrial development in Ni geria. Specifically, trade openness had a positive influence on industrial development. This suggested that increasing the level of trade with the rest of the world would create opportuniti es to export local raw materials and import necessary inputs into the industrial process. In co trast, financial liberalization adversely impacted on industrial development. Policies were required to reverse the tide of capital flight from the country and direct resources toward s developing the country’s industrial sector.
Designing contexts to increase motivations for reading

We examine characteristics of classroom contexts that influence motivations for reading. We frame the discussion in terms of design principles. First, we propose several general criteria that a set of design principles should meet if the set is to be sufficient to increase long-term motivations for reading. Next, we propose 8 principles derived from research on motivational and cognitive processes, instructional research, and classroom innovations. These design principles relate to (a) conceptual themes, (b) real-world interactions, (c) self-direction, (d) interesting texts, (e) social collaboration, (f) self-expression, (g) cognitive strategy instruction, and (h) curricular coherence. We constructed these design principles from sets of design principles offered by psychologists and educators, our studies, and a literature review we conducted. In particular, we note problems of underspecification typical of psychologists' proposed sets of principles and problems of overspecification typical of educators' .
Use of a Demographic Index Score as a Control Measure in Psychiatric Drug Research

Recently Lindemann, Fairweather, Stone, Smith, and London ( 1959) presented an index of five characteristics (incapacity, diagnosis, m a ~ i t a l status, legal competence, and alcoholic involvement) that significantly predicted length of stay in a large Veterans Administration neuropsychiatric hospital for two samples of male patients, newly admitted during successive 6-mo. periods. The authors discussed at length the potential uses of an index of these characteristics in research and service. This present srudy describes use of a modification of this index2 as a control measure in a psychiatric drug research project evaluating the comparative effectiveness of six phenothiazines (Trilafon, Cornpazine, Vesprin, Pacatal, Thorazine, and Sparine), phenobarbital, and placebo in the treatment of acutely disturbed patients, newly admitted to a state psychiatric hospital. Data are based on the admission records and the preand post-treatment MSRPP ratings (Lorr, 1953) of the first 113 patients ( 41 males and 72 females), aged 18 to 6 1 (114 = 38, S D = lo ) , judged by admitting physicians to be candidates for tranquilizing therapy and referred to the research project. Double-blind procedures were used in treating and evaluating patients, and assignment to the eight treatment categories was random. To safeguard medical responsibilities, dosage and duration of ttearmenr were tailored to individual patient response, with specified minimum dosages and minimum and maximum treatment periods of 10 and 42 days, respectively? Since randomization was the only experimental control for initial psychiatric predisposition, analysis of covariance was used in determining differential treatment effects. Utilizing post-treatment MSRPP morbidity scores (rescaled by a square root transformation) as the criterion measure of effectiveness, two such analyses were performed. In the first analysis, the criterion was adjusted in terms of pre-treatment MSRPP scores and in the second in terms of demographic index scores derived from hospital records of mental status. The r between these two control measures was . 40. The first adjustment was part of the research design as originally conceived; the second was undertaken to determine whether, by means other than control of pre-treatment MSRPP scores, the sensitivity of the analysis of differential drug action could be increased beyond that possible with post-treatment MSRPP scores alone. Scores for the demographic index, reflecting a composite probability estimate of a patient's being in a "long stay" hospital group, were obrained by mulriplying the probability values (as determined by Lindemann and his co-workers) for the demographic
Near Optimal Sketching of Low-Rank Tensor Regression

We study the least squares regression problem \begin{align*} \min_{\Theta \in \mathcal{S}_{\odot D,R}} \|A\Theta-b\|_2, \end{align*} where $\mathcal{S}_{\odot D,R}$ is the set of $\Theta$ for which $\Theta = \sum_{r=1}^{R} \theta_1^{(r)} \circ \cdots \circ \theta_D^{(r)}$ for vectors $\theta_d^{(r)} \in \mathbb{R}^{p_d}$ for all $r \in [R]$ and $d \in [D]$, and $\circ$ denotes the outer product of vectors. That is, $\Theta$ is a low-dimensional, low-rank tensor. This is motivated by the fact that the number of parameters in $\Theta$ is only $R \cdot \sum_{d=1}^D p_d$, which is significantly smaller than the $\prod_{d=1}^{D} p_d$ number of parameters in ordinary least squares regression. We consider the above CP decomposition model of tensors $\Theta$, as well as the Tucker decomposition. For both models we show how to apply data dimensionality reduction techniques based on {\it sparse} random projections $\Phi \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times n}$, with $m \ll n$, to reduce the problem to a much smaller problem $\min_{\Theta} \|\Phi A \Theta - \Phi b\|_2$, for which if $\Theta'$ is a near-optimum to the smaller problem, then it is also a near optimum to the original problem. We obtain significantly smaller dimension and sparsity in $\Phi$ than is possible for ordinary least squares regression, and we also provide a number of numerical simulations supporting our theory.
Optimizing the physical implementation of a reconfigurable cache

The microprocessor performance is highly dependent on cache size and structure. This work presents a new design of a reconfigurable cache implemented on FPGA and based on a previous work. Advantages of the new design and the important enhancements are described and analyzed. Experimental background and tests carried out are also discussed. Tests results are favorable to the reconfigurable cache in terms of performance.
Coverage Analysis of Packet Multi-Tier Networks With Asynchronous Slots

Using stochastic geometry, the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) coverage probabilities are derived for co-channel packet multi-tier heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs). The spatial locations of base stations (BSs) as well as user equipments (UEs) are modeled as independent spatial homogeneous Poisson point processes. The decoupled association is evaluated where the UE may connect to different BSs in the UL and DL transmissions. Unlike most of the existing works, the packet transmission slots are not synchronized, that is, the starting and ending points of the slots are not aligned. We investigate fundamental performance metrics of dynamic packet HCN for two traffic models, namely, the slotted-asynchronous and exponential-interarrival. Furthermore, tight lower bounds for the DL and UL coverage probabilities for two traffic models are obtained. The derived bounds are tight especially in high data rate regimes. The analysis provided herein enables us to determine the performance limits of packet-based HCNs with possible asynchronous time-slots. Simulation results are conducted to verify the analytical derivations. Furthermore, the performance comparison between pure synchronous and asynchronous packet-based systems is provided. The results confirm that the synchronous case outperforms the asynchronous one in terms of the UL and DL coverage probabilities at the cost of higher computational complexity.
An Incremental Sensor Deployment Strategy for Wireless Sensor Networks

One of fundamental issues in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is sensor deployment, which affects the performance and effectiveness of WSNs. Sensor node redeployment is an efficient way to extend the lifetime of the network by deploying additional sensor nodes in the sensing region. In this paper, we formulate the event occurrence probability distribution of the redeployment problem in WSNs as Binomial Distribution rather than Uniform Distribution and use Bayesian Estimation to estimate the probability of each node's sensing area. In addition, we proposed a novel algorithm called MFCSB-static to solve the problem under static routing schemes. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm greatly outperforms the algorithm using Uniform Distribution (MFCSU-static) in the percentage of successfully predicting the earliest energy drain out node.
Covert Attacks in Cyber-Physical Control Systems

The advantages of using communication networks to interconnect controllers and physical plants motivate the increasing number of networked control systems in industrial and critical infrastructure facilities. However, this integration also exposes such control systems to new threats, typical of the cyber domain. In this context, studies have been conducted, aiming to explore vulnerabilities and propose security solutions for cyber-physical systems. In this paper, a covert attack for service degradation is proposed, which is planned based on the intelligence gathered by another attack, herein proposed, referred as system identification attack. The simulation results demonstrate that the joint operation of the two attacks is capable to affect, in a covert and accurate way, the physical behavior of a system.
Mechanistic approach for the toxic effects of perfluorooctanoic acid on isolated rat liver and brain mitochondria

Background: Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is one of the most widely used perfluoroalkanes as surfactants, lubricants and processing aids in the production of polymers, which has also been detected in the environment, wildlife and human body. Animal studies indicated that PFOA caused a wide array of toxic effects including liver and brain dysfunction, carcinogenicity and reproductive and developmental toxicity. Based on the established role of mitochondria-mediated pathways in the observed toxic effects of many drugs and chemicals, in this study, the potential toxic effects of PFOA on mitochondria isolated from rat liver and brain have been investigated. Method: Mitochondria were isolated by differential centrifugation method and incubated with different concentrations of PFOA (0.5–1.5 mM). The effects of PFOA were assessed on a series of mitochondrial parameters including reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation, activities of mitochondrial complexes I/II/III, reduced glutathione (GSH) content, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) level, membrane potential, lipid peroxidation (LPO), mitochondrial swelling and cytochrome c release. Results: The data on liver mitochondria indicated that PFOA-induced ROS elevation in both mitochondrial complexes I and III, mitochondrial membrane potential collapse, swelling, cytochrome c release and decreased ATP level which induces apoptosis or necrosis. On brain mitochondria, PFOA showed fairly similar effects on the above-mentioned parameters. However, different results were obtained when the effect of PFOA was assessed on LPO and complex II activity. Conclusions: Due to the fact that PFOA had toxic effects on the mitochondria isolated, it could be suggested that mitochondrial toxicity could be a plausible mechanism for the toxic effects of this fluorochemical on liver and brain function.
Is the Healthy Body Gendered? Toward a Feminist Critique of the New Paradigm of Health

A number of sociologists have identified the emergence of a ‘new paradigm’ of health, based on the principle that the National Health Service should seek to prevent ill-health rather than simply treat the sick. The sociology of health promotion that has emerged over the past 15 years has contributed to debates about risk, lifestyle and consumerism, but the gendered nature of what some refer to as the ‘new morality of health’, and in particular its urging of feminine attributes, has largely been neglected. This article provides a critical examination of the ‘new paradigm’ of health and its relationship to femininity. I suggest that femininity involves a certain attitude to the body that we also find in current health policy, and cultural representations of health more generally: that the body is essentially uncontrollable (yet something we should seek to control, as a matter of virtue), that it is a good in and of itself, and that it is synonymous with the self.
Work Values in Portuguese Society and in Europe

Work represents a significant part of a person's life. At working age, people spend much of their time divided between family, leisure and work, and the way a person relates to work conditions family, social and economic relationships. With the proliferation and diversification of occupations – a characteristic of modern societies – the world of work became a personal challenge, as it is no longer seen exclusively from the perspective of existential necessity – concerned about the needs for security and livelihood – but to be now understood as a social phenomenon, with an exchange value through which market's goods and services can be reached. Thus, in contemporary society, work is perceived as something that is not determined, but a reality that involves the whole person and develops throughout life. Therefore, when considering how individuals relate to and value work, we identify the values underlying the mentality that shapes a society. Based on this principle, and according to the European Values Study, the present study intends to analyze the value of work in Portugal in the last three decades and place the results against the national average for the European Union.
Lack of Association between Methionine Synthase A2756G Polymorphism and Digestive System Cancer Risk: Evidence from 39327 Subjects

Background Polymorphisms in genes involved in the metabolism of folate and methyl groups have been implicated with risk of digestive system cancer. Methionine synthase (MTR) plays a central role in folate metabolism, thereby affecting DNA methylation. The association between A2756G polymorphism (rs1805087) in MTR and digestive system cancer susceptibility was inconsistent in previous studies. To investigate this inconsistency, we performed this meta-analysis. Methods Databases including Pubmed, EMBASE, ISI Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched to find relevant studies. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the strength of association. Potential sources of heterogeneity were also assessed by subgroup analysis and meta-regression. Results A total of 29 articles with 15,368 patients and 23,959 controls were included. We found no association between MTR A2756G polymorphism and digestive system cancer in overall population (G allele: OR = 1.03, 95% CI = 0.98–1.09, P = 0.25; dominant model: OR = 1.03, 95% CI = 0.97–1.10, P = 0.33; recessive model: OR = 1.02, 95% CI = 0.89–1.17, P = 0.79). In the stratified analyses according to cancer type, sample size and genotyping method, no evidence of any gene-disease association was obtained in almost all genetic models. However, marginal significant associations were found for East Asians and hospital-based studies. Conclusions This meta-analysis suggests that there is no significant association between the MTR A2756G polymorphism and digestive system cancer risk.