Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ROLE OF CULTURE BETWEEN INFLUENCING FACTORS AND STUDENT ELECTRONIC LEARNING SATISFACTION

The aim of this paper is to show the role of culture in the Electronic Learning Environment. The diverse effect of influencing factors on student satisfaction in different cultures in Electronic Learning environment is proposed.A theoretical model has been proposed showing the moderating role of culture between the relationship of influencing factors and student e-learning satisfaction. Cultural differences change the perspectives of individuals’, keeping in view; the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions; power-distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism theoretical linkages are justified with the influencing factors namely Human Factor, Course Factor and Technological Factor using literature. Administration should consider the factors that have been pointed out in this study, for successful implementation of EL education system in different cultures. The proposed model can be justified by applying empirical research on the variables in different cultures. Individuals in different cultures have different perspective. The satisfaction level or criteria vary in different cultures in electronic learning environment. The cultural impact is not been measured yet considering the influencing factors.
A compact ku-band 6-bit attenuator in 0.35um SiGe BiCMOS technology

This paper presents a compact 14–18 GHz 6-bit attenuator in 0.35-μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. To realize size miniaturization, large attenuation range and low insertion loss, the switched Pi/T attenuator topology is employed. It adopts serial and shunt single-pole-single-throw switches merged with a resistive network to control attenuation accurately. In addition, the proposed attenuators use a novel inductive low-pass filter for phase correction to compensate the phase error in difference states. The designed prototype achieves an attenuation range of 31.5 dB in a 0.5-dB step size with 64 states, average insertion loss of 8±0.6 dB, P1dB of better than 10 dBm, input/output return losses of better than −10/-11 dB in all states, and chip size of 0.80×0.34 mm2 only excluding testing pads. The calculated root-mean-square (rms) amplitude error is less than 0.29 dB, with rms phase error is less than 3.9o in the designed frequency range.
An open-label, dose-finding study of the combination of satraplatin and gemcitabine in patients with advanced solid tumors

Purpose: Satraplatin is a third generation oral platinum, which has demonstrated antitumor activity. The aim of this phase I study was to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of the combination of satraplatin and gemcitabine in patients previously treated with chemotherapy and in patients without prior chemotherapy. Patients and Methods: Two separate MTDs were planned in two different patient groups (those with and without prior chemotherapy treatment). Dose escalations were planned in cohorts of three patients. Tumor measurements were obtained every two cycles. Assessment of response was performed according to Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST criteria v.1.0). Results: Thirty subjects were enrolled. A MTD of gemcitabine 1000 mg/m2 days 1 and 8 plus satraplatin 60 mg/m2 days 1–3, every 21 days was determined in the prior chemotherapy group. No MTD could be determined for the no prior chemotherapy group treated with this schedule. Five patients completed 12 treatment cycles; 22 serious adverse events (SAE) were observed. Although not an entry criteria, overall confirmed response was observed in 17 (24%) evaluable patients (complete response, CR = 1 and partial response, PR = 3) and in 3/7 (43%) patients with measure prostate cancer lesions. Conclusions: In this phase Ib study, the combination of satraplatin and gemcitabine demonstrated to be safe and efficacious in particular in patients with prostate cancer.
Few-Example Video Event Retrieval using Tag Propagation

An emerging topic in multimedia retrieval is to detect a complex event in video using only a handful of video examples. Different from existing work which learns a ranker from positive video examples and hundreds of negative examples, we aim to query web video for events using zero or only a few visual examples. To that end, we propose in this paper a tag-based video retrieval system which propagates tags from a tagged video source to an unlabeled video collection without the need of any training examples. Our algorithm is based on weighted frequency neighbor voting using concept vector similarity. Once tags are propagated to unlabeled video we can rely on off-the-shelf language models to rank these videos by the tag similarity. We study the behavior of our tag-based video event retrieval system by performing three experiments on web videos from the TRECVID multimedia event detection corpus, with zero, one and multiple query examples that beats a recent alternative.
Inhibitory Effects of Ketamine on Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Microglial Activation

Microglia activated in response to brain injury release neurotoxic factors including nitric oxide (NO) and proinflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-1β (IL-1β). Ketamine, an anesthetic induction agent, is generally reserved for use in patients with severe hypotension or respiratory depression. In this study, we found that ketamine (100 and 250 μM) concentration-dependently inhibited lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced NO and IL-1β release in primary cultured microglia. However, ketamine (100 and 250 μM) did not significantly inhibit the LPS-induced TNF-α production in microglia, except at the higher concentration (500 μM). Further study of the molecular mechanisms revealed that ketamine markedly inhibited extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK1/2) phosphorylation but not c-Jun N-terminal kinase or p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase stimulated by LPS in microglia. These results suggest that microglial inactivation by ketamine is at least partially due to inhibition of ERK1/2 phosphorylation.
Unsupervised, language-independent grapheme-to-phoneme conversion by latent analogy

Automatic, data-driven grapheme-to-phoneme conversion is a challenging but often necessary task. The top-down strategy implicitly followed by traditional inductive learning techniques tends to dismiss relevant contexts when they have been seen too infrequently in the training data. The bottom-up philosophy inherent in, e.g., pronunciation by analogy, allows for a markedly better handling of rarer contexts, but proves nonetheless equally dependent on local, language-dependent alignments between letters and phonemes. This paper proposes an alternative bottom-up approach, dubbed pronunciation by latent analogy, which adopts a global definition of analogy, more amenable to obviate such supervision. For each out-of-vocabulary word, a neighborhood of globally relevant pronunciations is constructed through an appropriate data-driven mapping of its graphemic form. Phoneme transcription then proceeds via locally optimal sequence alignment and maximum likelihood position scoring. This method was successfully applied to the speech synthesis of proper names with a large diversity of origin.
Executive control in the anterior cingulate cortex

Converging evidence supports the hypothesis that the prefrontal cortex is critical for executive control. One prefrontal subregion, the anterior cingulate cortex has previously been shown to be active in situations involving high conflict, presentation of salient, distracting stimuli, and error processing, i.e. situations that occur when learning new response contingencies, when previously learned response strategies fail, or when a shift in attention or responding is required. These situations all involve goal-oriented monitoring of performance in order to effectively adjust cognitive processes. Several neuropsychological disorders, for instance schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder, are correlated with morphological changes in the anterior cingulate cortex. Individuals with these disorders show impairments on tasks that require goal-oriented monitoring. The current studies used multiple behavioral paradigms to assess the effects of anterior cingulate cortex excitotoxic lesions in rats on executive control. Animals with anterior cingulate cortex lesions showed greater decline in cognitive capacity as tasks progressed, longer response latencies to conflicting stimuli, impaired reversal learning, impaired error processing, and impaired performance in the presence of previously relevant distractors. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the anterior cingulate cortex is involved in executive control, specifically monitoring impairments in performance that signal the need to adjust cognitive control.
Prevention of long-term sickness absence and major depression in high-risk employees: a randomised controlled trial

Objectives To examine the efficacy of early intervention on the prevention of long-term sickness absence and major depression among employees at high risk of future sickness absence and with mild to severe depressive complaints. Methods Randomised controlled trial conducted among employees working in an office environment. 139 employees were identified both at high risk of future sickness absence and with mild to severe depressive complaints through screening. Subsequently, they were randomly assigned to the intervention group (n=69) or the control group (n=70). Objective sickness absence was analysed at 12 and 18 months of follow-up. Depressive complaints were assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) at baseline, and at 6 and 12 months of follow-up. Results Intention-to-treat analyses showed a significant difference in total sickness absence duration between the intervention (27.5 calendar days (SD 44.7)) and control group (50.8 days (SD 75.8)) over 12 months of follow-up, a reduction of 46% (p=0.017). The intervention group showed a non-significantly lower proportion of long-term sickness absence spells compared with the control group (p=0.127). Statistically significant and clinically relevant differences in depressive complaints were found after both 6 months (p=0.001) and 12 months (p=0.005) of follow-up, in favour of the intervention group. Relative risk reductions (RRR) were 19.2% and 19.8% respectively. Sickness absence data were available for all participants over 18 months of follow-up. Questionnaire data were available for 99 (at 6 months) and 90 participants (at 12 months). No adverse events or side effects occurred. Conclusions Early intervention in employees with mild to severe depressive complaints and high risk of future long-term sickness absence proved to be effective in preventing/reducing both sickness absence and depressive complaints.
Which weight-loss programmes are as effective as Weight Watchers(R)?: non-inferiority analysis.

BACKGROUND Three randomised controlled trials have provided strong evidence that Weight Watchers(®) is an effective weight-loss programme but there is insufficient evidence to determine whether three other weight-loss programmes are also effective. AIM To examine whether other group-based weight-loss programmes were not inferior to Weight Watchers. DESIGN AND SETTING A prospective cohort study using a non-inferiority analysis of 3290 adults referred through primary care. METHOD Participants who met the eligibility criteria for primary care obesity management treatment chose a free programme (Weight Watchers, Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs, Slimming World or a NHS group programme) lasting 3 months; they were weighed at 3 months (programme end) and self-reported their weight at 12 months. RESULTS At 3 months, weight loss achieved through Rosemary Conley and Slimming World was not inferior to Weight Watchers. The NHS group programme was inferior. At 12 months Slimming World and Rosemary Conley were not inferior to Weight Watchers, although participants using Slimming World lost significantly more weight than those using Weight Watchers. Data on the NHS group programme were inconclusive. CONCLUSION In the short term all commercial weight-loss programmes appear to result in similar weight loss but the NHS alternative appears to produce less weight loss. At 12 months Slimming World led to greater weight loss but the differences between commercial programmes was small and of minor clinical importance.
THE EFFECT OF LOCOMOTION TECHNIQUE ON PRESENCE, FEAR AND USABILITY IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

In this study the effects of locomotion techniques were investigated in virtual worlds made for phobia treatment. Three locomotion techniques walk-in-place, handcontrolled viewing and gaze-directed steering were systematically varied for several taks in different virtual worlds. A series of variables were measured to show the effects on presence, fear, avoidance, and simulator sickness. In the experiment was found that more natural locomotion techniques contribute to higher levels of presence and fear. This researh provides guidelines to improve the usability of systems for virtual reality exposure therapy.
Traitement syllabique au cours de la reconnaissance de mots écrits chez des enfants dyslexiques, lecteurs en retard et normo-lecteurs de 11 ans

Trois groupes d'enfants de 11 ans, de differents niveaux d'expertise en lecture (groupe controle, groupe avec un an de retard et dyslexiques) ont ete soumis a une tâche constituant une adaptation visuelle de la -tâche de detection de phoneme a l'initiale de mots developpee par Mehler et al (1981). Les sujets devaient decider si une cible visuelle de deux ou trois lettres (de structure syllabique CV ou CVC) se retrouvait a l'initiale d'un mot familier, ou peu familier, presente de facon subsequente (par exemple, la cible 'ga' ou 'gar' etait suivie par la presentation du mot 'garage' ou 'garcon'). Les cibles correspondaient - ou pas - a la premiere syllabe des mots. Pour le groupe controle, on observe un effet de compatibilite syllabique pour les mots peu familiers (les temps de detection sont plus courts lorsque la cible correspond a la premiere syllabe des mots) et un effet de la longueur de la cible pour les mots familiers (les temps sont plus courts pour les cibles CV de 2 lettres que pour les cibles CVC de 3 lettres). Chez les lecteurs en retard, l'effet de la congruite syllabique s'observe pour les mots familiers et l'effet de la longueur de la cible pour les mots peu familiers. Pour les dyslexiques, on constate un seul effet de la longueur de la cible, quelle que soit la familiarite des mots. Ces resultats suggerent que les enfants du groupe controle ont effectue la tâche phonologiquement pour les mots peu familiers, en s'appuyant sur des unites syllabiques, et orthographiquement pour les mots familiers, alors que les lecteurs en retard l'ont effectuee phonologiquement, quel que soit le type de mots, mais en recourant a des unites syllabiques pour les mots familiers et phonemiques pour les mots peu familiers. Par contre, les dyslexiques traiteraient les mots lettre a lettre, en utilisant une procedure qualifiee de visuo-orthographique, et non une procedure phonologique, ce qui peut s'expliquer par le fait qu'ils auraient un deficit phonologique severe. Cette interpretation est confortee par les resultats d'une etude longitudinale qui avait pour objectif d'evaluer les capacites d'analyse phonologique des enfants respectivement a 5, 7 et 8 ans et dans laquelle on constate que les dyslexiques - et egalement, mais dans une moindre mesure, les lecteurs en retard - ont obtenu des scores inferieurs a ceux des enfants du groupe controle dans des tâches d'analyse syllabique et phonemique.
Using Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy as Additional Treatment for Chronic Medical Conditions

The present paper focuses on the utility of applying cognitive-behavioral therapy as support in the case of patients diagnosed with chronic medical conditions, by presenting a series of arguments sustained by the professional literature regarding the fact that psychological interventions can be critical to the success of medical treatment. Specific cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques such as modifying maladaptive thoughts, changing risky behavioral patterns and the global aim of increasing the feeling of autonomy support chronic patients in adjusting their psychological resources to better cope with their condition. We support the idea of including psychotherapy specialists in all health care facilities in order to allow the patients to benefit from results such as higher treatment compliance and increased quality of life, developing effective self-management skills, finding resourceful meaning to the present situation. Such intervention offers the potential of helping patients to adjust more easily to the new conditions of life experienced after being diagnosed with chronic illness.
Identification and management of psychosocial problems among toddlers in Dutch preventive child health care.

OBJECTIVES To assess the degree to which preventive child health professionals (CHPs) identify and manage psychosocial problems among preschool children in the general population and to determine the association with parent-reported behavioral and emotional problems, sociodemographic factors, and mental health history of children. DESIGN The CHPs examined the child and interviewed the parents and child during their routine health assessments. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was completed by the parents. SETTING Sixteen child health care services across the Netherlands that routinely provided well-child care to nearly all preschool children. PATIENTS Of 2354 children aged 21 months to 4 years who were eligible for a routine health assessment, 2229 (94.7%) participated. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Identification and management of psychosocial problems by CHPs. RESULTS In 9.4% of all children, CHPs identified psychosocial problems. Two in 5 of the CHP-identified children were referred for additional diagnosis and treatment. Identification of psychosocial problems and subsequent referral were much more likely in children with a clinical CBCL total problems score than in others (identification: 29% vs 7%; odds ratio [95% confidence interval], 5.40 [3.45-8.47]; referral: 15% vs 3%; odds ratio [95% confidence interval], 6.50 [3.69-11.46]). CONCLUSIONS The CHPs frequently identify psychosocial problems in preschool children, although less than among school-aged children, but they miss many cases of parent-reported problems as measured by a clinical CBCL score. This general population study shows substantial room for improvement in the early identification of psychosocial problems.
Yolk testosterone varies with sex in eggs of the lizard, Anolis carolinensis.

In the green anole (Anolis carolinensis), a lizard with genotypic sex determination, yolk testosterone (T) concentration is greater in male-producing than female-producing eggs at oviposition, but the source and potential effects were not clear from previous studies. If yolk T levels are also sex-specific before eggs are laid, a period during which embryonic steroidogenesis is unlikely, it would strongly suggest that the difference in yolk T is maternally derived. We collected yolk samples from eggs shelling within the oviducts of anesthetized females, and then allowed these females to lay the eggs naturally. Eggs were incubated to hatching to determine sex morphologically, and yolk T concentrations were analyzed by radioimmunoassay. As is the case just after they are laid, yolk T is higher in male than female oviductal eggs. To our knowledge, this is the earliest sex difference reported for any yolk steroid. We suggest that maternally derived yolk T levels could influence sex by differentially affecting male- and female-inducing sperm, because fertilization occurs after yolk deposition and ovulation, while the egg is in the oviduct. Our results, together with those of an increasing number of studies, suggest that a relationship between hormones and vertebrate sex determination may be more widespread than generally appreciated.
A Framework Supporting the Development of a Grid Portal for Analysis Based on ROI

Summary Objectives: In our research on brain function analysis, users require two different simultaneous types of processing: interactive processing to a specific part of data and high-performance batch processing to an entire dataset. The difference between these two types of processing is in whether or not the analysis is for data in the region of interest (ROI). In this study, we propose a Grid portal that has a mechanism to freely assign computing resources to the users on a Grid environment according to the users’ two different types of processing requirements. Methods: We constructed a Grid portal which integrates interactive processing and batch processing by the following two mechanisms. First, a job steering mechanism controls job execution based on user-tagged priority among organizations with heterogeneous computing resources. Interactive jobs are processed in preference to batch jobs by this mechanism. Second, a priority-based result delivery mechanism that administrates a rank of data significance. Results: The portal ensures a turn-around time of interactive processing by the priority-based job controlling mechanism, and provides the users with quality of services (QoS) for interactive processing. The users can access the analysis results of interactive jobs in preference to the analysis results of batch jobs. The Grid portal has also achieved high-performance computation of MEG analysis with batch processing on the Grid environment. Conclusion: The priority-based job controlling mechanism has been realized to freely assign computing resources to the users’ requirements. Furthermore the achievement of high-performance computation contributes greatly to the overall progress of brain science. The portal has thus made it possible for the users to flexibly include the large computational power in what they want to analyze.
Beauty in the Beast A Functional Semantics for the Awkward Squad

It can be very difficult to debug impure code, let alone prove its correctness. To address these problems, we provide a functional specification of three central components of Peyton Jones’s awkward squad: teletype IO, mutable state, and concurrency. By constructing an internal model of such concepts within our programming language, we can test, debug, and reason about programs that perform IO as if they were pure. In particular, we demonstrate how our specifications may be used in tandem with QuickCheck to automatically test complex pointer algorithms and concurrent programs.
What Factors Contribute to Entrepreneurs' Decision Making Biases? A Comprehensive Study

Entrepreneurial decisions are of great value as well as importance in the field of entrepreneurship by playing an exceptional role in all major entrepreneurial activities. Given the unique characteristics of entrepreneurial activities, entrepreneurs are prone to decision making biases in their decisions. Because these biases directly affect enterprises, they are of crucial importance in the field of entrepreneurship. On the other hand, because these biases emanate from a lot of important factors and differ from one person to another (given their subjective nature), their identification needs an elaborate study. Having concluded that identifying the main factors influencing entrepreneurial decision making biases is vital for entrepreneurship-related studies and there is no comprehensive research study in this regard, this paper conducted a grounded theory approach by interviewing 20 Iranian entrepreneurs. According to our findings, personal (individual), environmental and organizational factors are the main categories influencing the genesis of decision making biases in entrepreneurs.