Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Believing is Achieving : The Implications of Self-Efficacy Research for Family and Consumer Sciences Education

research regarding self-efficacy and its application in academic settings. Based on the relevant published findings, the authors discuss the implications of the research for family and consumer sciences educators. Because of AAFCS's core values of research application, innovation, and empowerment of individuals, families, and communities, FCS education is an ideal vehicle for the implementation of instructional methods aimed at increasing students' self-efficacy. F ew people outside the profession are fully aware of the range of responsibilities of teachers in Family & Consumer Sciences. In addition to having knowledge and experience in all of the areas that Family & Consumer Sciences encompasses, a teacher is a manager, educator, and motivator of students. The teacher sets the tone and tempo of the classroom, and a motivating teacher means a motivating teaching environment. In order to be effective, a teacher must learn instructional and management skills developed through training in educational theory and practice and enhanced by years of experience with students. Consistent with AAFCS's core values of innovation, creativity, and application of research (American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, 2001), FCS educators strive to incorporate into their teaching innovative strategies that have their foundation in both theory and research. Through this constant process of innovation and application, FCS educators shape and empower students to strive for their goals and become productive members of their families and society. Some of the most challenging aspects of teaching involve developing and encouraging student motivation, goal setting abilities, and independent problem solving skills. Furthermore, the nature of these challenges varies from topic to topic and from student to student. Some students have not been exposed to a good model for problem solving, whereas others simply lack the self-confidence to try things on their own. One means of fostering students' motivation to learn independently is through building the students' sense of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy simply refers to a judgment a student makes about his or her ability to accomplish a specific future task (Bandura, 1986). Educators nurture students' self-direction and sense of self-efficacy by providing them with opportunities to exercise at least some degree of control over their own learning. Thus, in addition to teaching basic concepts or skills, FCS educators must also focus on teaching students strategies that allow them to learn skills more effectively and to develop the self-confidence needed for success in school and in all aspects of life. First in this article is …
Demand Growth in Services: A Discrete Choice Analysis of Customer Preferences and Online Selling

The selling of perishable services (e.g., hotel rooms, airline seats, and rental cars) online is increasingly popular with both retailers and consumers. Among the innovative approaches to online sales is opaque selling. First popularized by Priceline.com's name-your-own-price model, opaque selling hides some attributes of the service (notably, brand and specific location) until after the purchase decision, in exchange for a discounted price. This means that a branded “product” is being sold as somewhat of a commodity, but the brand “name” is protected by the opaque model. The attraction of this model for retailers is that they are presumably able to increase their revenue stream, albeit at a lower rate, by selling rooms that otherwise would remain in inventory. In this article, we outline the development and analysis of an online choice survey to understand consumer preferences among three types of online distribution channels: regular full information sales channels, and opaque sales channels with or without consumer bidding. A Multinomial Logit model is employed to analyze the data and measure the consumer trade-offs between price and other attributes of the product. We use the estimated model to calculate the incremental demand and revenue created by using an opaque channel simultaneously with regular full information channels. On balance, we find that correctly priced opaque channels can add to hotels revenue streams without undue cannibalization of regular room sales.
Entropy-Based Particle Systems for Shape Correspondence

This paper presents a new method for constructing statistical representations of ensembles of similar shapes. The proposed method relies on an optimal distribution of a large set of surface point correspondences, rather than the manipulation of a specific surface parameterization. The optimal configuration is defined as one in which the entropy or information content of each shape is balanced against the entropy of the ensemble of shapes. The correspondences are modeled as sets of dynamic particles that are manipulated using a gradient descent on the entropies of the shapes and the ensemble, but constrained to lie on a set of implicit surfaces. The proposed, particle-based method for finding correspondences requires very little preprocessing of data or parameter tuning, and therefore makes the problem of shape analysis more practical for a wider range of problems. This paper presents the formulation and several synthetic and real shape examples in two and three dimensions.
Who Needs Cream and Sugar When There Is Eco-Labeling? Taste and Willingness to Pay for “Eco-Friendly” Coffee

Participants tasted two cups of coffee, decided which they preferred, and then rated each coffee. They were told (in lure) that one of the cups contained “eco-friendly” coffee while the other did not, although the two cups contained identical coffee. In Experiments 1 and 3, but not in Experiment 2, the participants were also told which cup contained which type of coffee before they tasted. The participants preferred the taste of, and were willing to pay more for, the “eco-friendly” coffee, at least those who scored high on a questionnaire on attitudes toward sustainable consumer behavior (Experiment 1). High sustainability consumers were also willing to pay more for “eco-friendly” coffee, even when they were told, after their decision, that they preferred the non-labeled alternative (Experiment 2). Moreover, the eco-label effect does not appear to be a consequence of social desirability, as participants were just as biased when reporting the taste estimates and willingness to pay anonymously (Experiment 3). Eco labels not only promote a willingness to pay more for the product but also lead to a more favorable perceptual experience of it.
An overview of alternative type-reduction approaches for reducing the computational cost of interval type-2 fuzzy logic controllers

Interval type-2 fuzzy logic controllers have demonstrated better abilities to handle uncertainties than their type-1 counterparts in many applications; however, the high computational cost of the iterative Karnik-Mendel algorithms in type-reduction may hinder them from certain real-time applications. This paper provides an overview and comparison of 11 alternative type-reducers, which have closed-form representations and are more convenient in analysis. Experiments demonstrate that 10 of them are faster than the Karnik-Mendel algorithms. Among them, the Wu-Tan and Nie-Tan methods are the fastest, and they are only about 1.2-1.7 times slower than a type-1 fuzzy logic controller.
Identification of the Copper Regulon in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by DNA Microarrays*

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, copper ions regulate gene expression through the two transcriptional activators, Ace1 and Mac1. Ace1 mediates copper-induced gene expression in cells exposed to stressful levels of copper salts, whereas Mac1 activates a subset of genes under copper-deficient conditions. DNA microarray hybridization experiments revealed a limited set of yeast genes differentially expressed under growth conditions of excess copper or copper deficiency. Mac1 activates the expression of six S. cerevisiae genes, including CTR1,CTR3, FRE1, FRE7, YFR055w, and YJL217w. Two of the last three newly identified Mac1 target genes have no known function; the third, YFR055w, is homologous to cystathionine γ-lyase encoded by CYS3. Several genes that are differentially expressed in cells containing a constitutively active Mac1, designated Mac1up1, are not direct targets of Mac1. Induction or repression of these genes is likely a secondary effect of cells because of constitutive Mac1 activity. Elevated copper levels induced the expression of the metallothioneins CUP1 andCRS5 and two genes, FET3 and FTR1, in the iron uptake system. Copper-induced FET3 andFTR1 expression arises from an indirect copper effect on cellular iron pools.
Hybridisation techniques for cold-starting context-aware recommender systems

Context-Aware Recommender Systems (CARSs) suffer from the cold-start problem, i.e., the inability to provide accurate recommendations for new users, items or contextual situations. In this research, we aim at solving this problem by exploiting various hybridisation techniques, from simple heuristic-based solutions to complex adaptive solutions, in order to take advantage of the strengths of different CARS algorithms while avoiding their weaknesses in a given (cold-start) situation. Our initial research based on offline experiments using various contextually-tagged rating datasets has shown that basic CARS algorithms perform very differently in different recommendation scenarios, and that they can be effectively hybridised to achieve an overall optimal performance. Further research is now required to find the optimal method for hybridisation.
Brucella canis Is an Intracellular Pathogen That Induces a Lower Proinflammatory Response than Smooth Zoonotic Counterparts

ABSTRACT Canine brucellosis caused by Brucella canis is a disease of dogs and a zoonotic risk. B. canis harbors most of the virulence determinants defined for the genus, but its pathogenic strategy remains unclear since it has not been demonstrated that this natural rough bacterium is an intracellular pathogen. Studies of B. canis outbreaks in kennel facilities indicated that infected dogs displaying clinical signs did not present hematological alterations. A virulent B. canis strain isolated from those outbreaks readily replicated in different organs of mice for a protracted period. However, the levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-6 (IL-6), and IL-12 in serum were close to background levels. Furthermore, B. canis induced lower levels of gamma interferon, less inflammation of the spleen, and a reduced number of granulomas in the liver in mice than did B. abortus. When the interaction of B. canis with cells was studied ex vivo, two patterns were observed, a predominant scattered cell-associated pattern of nonviable bacteria and an infrequent intracellular replicative pattern of viable bacteria in a perinuclear location. The second pattern, responsible for the increase in intracellular multiplication, was dependent on the type IV secretion system VirB and was seen only if the inoculum used for cell infections was in early exponential phase. Intracellular replicative B. canis followed an intracellular trafficking route undistinguishable from that of B. abortus. Although B. canis induces a lower proinflammatory response and has a stealthier replication cycle, it still displays the pathogenic properties of the genus and the ability to persist in infected organs based on the ability to multiply intracellularly.
Increasing Self‐Efficacy Through Empowerment: Preoperative Education for Orthopaedic Patients

Purpose To examine whether patients who received an empowerment model of education for preoperative orthopaedic teaching had improved outcomes compared to patients who received the traditional education. Design An experimental (empowerment teaching method) group vs. comparison (traditional teaching method) group posttest design. Sample Seventy-four patients undergoing elective orthopaedic surgery. Methods Following the preoperative teaching session, patients in both groups completed a questionnaire designed to measure their perceptions of the teaching (empowerment) and self-efficacy (belief in their ability to carry out perioperative tasks). A chart audit and phone interview was done after discharge to assess length of stay, pain management, complications, and patient perceptions of the ability to complete perioperative tasks. Findings Patients in the empowerment group felt the educational approach was more empowering and had significantly higher self-efficacy scores than those in the traditional teaching group. There was much less variation in empowerment and self-efficacy scores in the empowerment group. The empowerment group reported feeling greater confidence in performing perioperative tasks. There were no differences in length of stay, complications or pain control. Conclusion Use of an empowerment teaching approach enabled patients to become more confident in their ability to carry out perioperative tasks and become a more integral part of the preoperative teaching process. Implications for Nursing Research The theoretical model will be used to structure other educational programs and guide research. More sensitive measures of complications and pain control should be considered for future studies.
High-Volume Natural Pozzolan Concrete for Structural Applications

The authors present preliminary study results on concrete mixtures for structural applications containing high volumes of natural pozzolan (50% by total cementitious material mass). In high-volume natural pozzolan (HVNP) concrete mixture preparation, three different natural pozzolans were used from Turkish deposits. For purposes of comparison, two additional mixtures were also prepared with a high volume of low-calcium fly ash and granulated blast-furnace slag. Additionally, as a reference, a conventional portland cement concrete mixture was prepared. High-range water-reducing admixture dosage was determined for resistance to chloride-ion penetration, splitting-tensile strength, compressive strength, setting time, air content, and given slump. The suitability of studied high-volume natural pozzolan concrete mixtures for structural concrete applications were indicated by preliminary results with compressive strengths of 1.74 to 2.03 ksi (12 to 14 MPa) and 4.21 to 5.51 (29 to 38 MPa) at 3 and 28 days, respectively.
Co-ClusterD: A Distributed Framework for Data Co-Clustering with Sequential Updates

Co-clustering has emerged to be a powerful data mining tool for two-dimensional co-occurrence and dyadic data. However, co-clustering algorithms often require significant computational resources and have been dismissed as impractical for large data sets. Existing studies have provided strong empirical evidence that expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms (e.g., k-means algorithm) with sequential updates can significantly reduce the computational cost without degrading the resulting solution. Motivated by this observation, we introduce sequential updates for alternate minimization co-clustering (AMCC) algorithms which are variants of EM algorithms, and also show that AMCC algorithms with sequential updates converge. We then propose two approaches to parallelize AMCC algorithms with sequential updates in a distributed environment. Both approaches are proved to maintain the convergence properties of AMCC algorithms. Based on these two approaches, we present a new distributed framework, Co-ClusterD, which supports efficient implementations of AMCC algorithms with sequential updates. We design and implement Co-ClusterD, and show its efficiency through two AMCC algorithms: fast nonnegative matrix tri-factorization (FNMTF) and information theoretic co-clustering (ITCC). We evaluate our framework on both a local cluster of machines and the Amazon EC2 cloud. Empirical results show that AMCC algorithms implemented in Co-ClusterD can achieve a much faster convergence and often obtain better results than their traditional concurrent counterparts.
ESTIMATION OF TOOL WEAR OF CARBIDE TOOL IN ORTHOGONAL CUTTING USING FEM SIMULATION

In metal cutting, tool wear on the tool-chip and tool-workpiece interfaces (i.e. flank wear and crater wear) is strongly influenced by the cutting temperature, contact stresses, and relative sliding velocity at the interface. These process variables depend on tool and workpiece materials, tool geometry and coatings, cutting conditions, and use of coolant for the given application. Based on the predicted temperatures and stresses on the tool face from the finite element analysis (FEA) simulation, tool wear may be estimated with acceptable accuracy by incorporating an empirical wear model. The overall objective of this study is to develop a methodology to predict the tool wear evolution and tool life in orthogonal cutting using FEM simulations. To approach this goal, the methodology is proposed with three different parts. In the first part, a tool wear model for the specified tool-workpiece pair is developed via a calibration set of tool wear cutting tests in conjunction with cutting simulations. In the second part, modifications are made to the commercial FEM code used to allow for tool wear calculation and tool geometry updating. The last part includes the validation of the developed methodology. This paper is mainly focused on the modifications made to the commercial FEM code in order to make reasonable tool wear estimates (the second part).
Automated Summarization Evaluation with Basic Elements.

As part of evaluating a summary automati-cally, it is usual to determine how much of the contents of one or more human-produced ideal summaries it contains. Past automated methods such as ROUGE compare using fixed word ngrams, which are not ideal for a variety of reasons. In this paper we describe a framework in which summary evaluation measures can be instantiated and compared, and we implement a specific evaluation method using very small units of content, called Basic Elements that address some of the shortcomings of ngrams. This method is tested on DUC 2003, 2004, and 2005 systems and produces very good correlations with human judgments.
Two‐dimensional immune profiles improve antigen microarray‐based characterization of humoral immunity

Antigen arrays are becoming widely used tools for the characterization of the complexity of humoral immune responses. Current antibody profiling techniques provide modest and indirect information about the effector functions of the antibodies that bind to particular antigens. Here we introduce an antigen array‐based approach for obtaining immune profiles reflecting antibody functionality. This technology relies on the parallel measurement of antibody binding and complement activation by features of the array. By comparing sera from animals immunized against the same antigen under different conditions, we show that identifying the position of an antigen in a 2‐D space, derived from antibody binding and complement deposition, permits distinction between immune profiles characterized by diverse antibody isotype distributions. Additionally, the technology provides a biologically interpretable graphical representation of the relationship between antigen and host. Our data suggest that 2‐D immune profiling could enrich the data obtained from proteomic scale serum profiling studies.
Simulation of water quality and plankton dynamics in the Danshuei River estuary, Taiwan

An ecosystem model was developed to simulate the water quality and plankton dynamics in the Danshuei River estuary, Taiwan. The model simulates the hydrodynamics with a laterally integrated 2-dimensional intratidal numerical model, which supplies the physical transport processes for simulation of water quality and plankton state variables. The application of the model to the Danshuei River estuary indicates that the point source loadings are mainly responsible for the degraded water quality and very high nutrient concentrations in the estuary. The impacts of wastewater discharges are tightly controlled by the transport processes. Frequent occurrence of high river flow and flood events rapidly cleanses the estuary by flushing out both pollutants and plankton populations. The plankton is allowed to grow to significant populations if low river flow lasts for a period much longer than the biological time scale.
Measuring and modeling anisotropic reflection

A new device for measuring the spatial reflectancedistributionsof surfaces is introduced, along with a new mathematical model of sniaorropic reflectance. The reflectance model presented is both simple and accurate, permitting efficient reflectance data reduction rasdreproduction. Tire validity of the model is substantiated with comparisons to complete meaarsremems of surface reflectance functions gathered with the novel retlectometry device. This new device uses imaging technology to capture the entire hemisphem of reflected directions simttkarreously, which greatly accelerates the reflectance data gathering process, making it pssible to measure dozens of surfaces in the time that it used to take to do one. Example measurements and simulations are shown. and a table of fitted parameters for several surfaces is presented. General Terms: algorithms, measurement, theory, verification. CR Categories and Descriptors: 1.3. 7 Three-dimensionalgraphics and rw#ism, 1.6. 4 Model validation and analysis. Additional
Implicating SCF Complexes in Organogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans

Development of the Caenorhabditis elegans foregut (pharynx) is regulated by a network of proteins that includes the Retinoblastoma protein (pRb) ortholog LIN-35; the ubiquitin pathway components UBC-18 and ARI-1; and PHA-1, a cytoplasmic protein. Loss of pha-1 activity impairs pharyngeal development and body morphogenesis, leading to embryonic arrest. We have used a genetic suppressor approach to dissect this complex pathway. The lethality of pha-1 mutants is suppressed by loss-of-function mutations in sup-35/ztf-21 and sup-37/ztf-12, which encode Zn-finger proteins, and by mutations in sup-36. Here we show that sup-36 encodes a divergent Skp1 family member that binds to several F-box proteins and the microtubule-associated protein PLT-1/τ. Like SUP-35, SUP-36 levels were negatively regulated by UBC-18–ARI-1. We also found that SUP-35 and SUP-37 physically associated and that SUP-35 could bind microtubules. Thus, SUP-35, SUP-36, and SUP-37 may function within a pathway or complex that includes cytoskeletal components. Additionally, SUP-36 may regulate the subcellular localization of SUP-35 during embryogenesis. We carried out a genome-wide RNAi screen to identify additional regulators of this network and identified 39 genes, most of which are associated with transcriptional regulation. Twenty-three of these genes acted via the LIN-35 pathway. In addition, several S-phase kinase-associated protein (Skp)1–Cullin–F-Box (SCF) components were identified, further implicating SCF complexes as part of the greater network controlling pharyngeal development.