Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Safe Schools Through Strategic Alliances

Abstract In order to effectively address the complex issue of school safety, school and community partnerships are being formed with greater frequency and intensity. Collaboration between educational, law enforcement, and mental health personnel is now widely considered to be the most effective means for addressing issues of school safety (Dryfoos, 1998; Research Triangle Institute, 2003) and all school violence prevention programs can be improved through meaningful evaluation (Flannery, 1998; Gajda, 2004). This article defines the essential characteristics of inter-organizational collaboration and offers a process that has been utilized nationwide to evaluate and strengthen school violence prevention efforts through the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative.
The Problem with Reform from the Bottom up: Instructional practises and teacher beliefs of graduate teaching assistants following a reform‐minded university teacher certificate programme

Reform‐minded practices are widely encouraged during pre‐service science teacher education in concert with national reform documents. This contrasts to the nature of instruction within university science laboratories in which pre‐service teachers enrol, which are largely confirmatory in nature. Undergraduate science laboratories are taught predominantly by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) with minimal teacher preparation. The purpose of this mixed‐methods study is to investigate the instructional practices and teacher beliefs of eight GTAs at a university with very high research activity who completed a reform‐minded Teacher Certificate Programme, asking: What are their beliefs about teaching? How are their practices described? Do their beliefs and practices differ from one another? Do their teaching beliefs correspond with their practices? Findings indicate that GTAs held moderately reform‐minded “transitional” beliefs of teaching following the programme, yet displayed fairly traditional instruction. Cross‐case findings highlight similar patterns across subscales of the RTOP that draw attention to underlying constraints of the laboratory curriculum structure. We suggest that GTA professional development is best undertaken concurrent with laboratory course revision.
Lycopene Intake and Prostate Cancer Risk: Effect Modification by Plasma Antioxidants and the XRCC1 Genotype

Abstract: Lycopene has been associated with reduced prostate cancer risk, although the results of epidemiological studies have varied. We hypothesize that an effect of lycopene may be modified by XRCC1 genotype and other antioxidants. We used a food-frequency questionnaire to assess lycopene intake in a case-control study of prostate cancer in North Carolina. Plasma α-tocopherol and β-carotene levels were measured using high-performance liquid chromatography. XRCC1 genotypes were detected using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. The final dataset included 77 cases and 174 controls with complete questionnaires, genotyping, and plasma analyses. Among men with the Arg/Arg genotype at codon 399, odds ratios (ORs) for prostate cancer risk associated with medium (732–1,529 μg/day) and high (>1,529 μg/day) lycopene intake were 0.59 (95% confidence interval = 0.23–1.50) and 0.21 (0.06–0.71), respectively (Ptrend < 0.01). Similar analyses for persons with Arg/Gln or Gln/Gln genotypes produced null results. Above-median (1,048 μg/day) lycopene intake combined with above-median levels of α-tocopherol and β-carotene was associated with an OR of 0.11 (0.02–0.65) among men with the Arg/Arg genotype but not those with at least one Gln allele (Pinteraction = 0.01). Although limited by small sample size, these findings indicate that the association between lycopene and prostate cancer is complex and may be modified by other antioxidants and by XRCC1 genotype.
Minority perceptions of the police: a state-of-the-art review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive literature review of empirical studies that have examined perceptions and attitudes of the police across various racial and ethnic groups. The specific focus aimed to highlight if minorities perceive the police differently compared to their white counterparts. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature search of various academic databases (Criminal Justice Abstracts, EBSCO Host, Web of Science, etc.) was conducted. Searches on Google Scholar were also conducted to locate empirical articles that are presently forthcoming in academic journals. Findings – The meta-review identified 92 studies that matched the selection criteria. The majority of the studies focussed on black/white, non-white/white, and black/Hispanic/white comparisons. Overall, individuals who identified themselves as black, non-white, or minority were more likely to hold negative perceptions and attitudes toward the police compared to whites. This finding held regar.
GPS-Aided Video Tracking

Tracking moving objects is both challenging and important for a large variety of applications. Different technologies based on the global positioning system (GPS) and video or radio data are used to obtain the trajectories of the observed objects. However, in some use cases, they fail to provide sufficiently accurate, complete and correct data at the same time. In this work we present an approach for fusing GPS- and video-based tracking in order to exploit their individual advantages. In this way we aim to combine the reliability of GPS tracking with the high geometric accuracy of camera detection. For the fusion of the movement data provided by the different devices we use a hidden Markov model (HMM) formulation and the Viterbi algorithm to extract the most probable trajectories. In three experiments, we show that our approach is able to deal with challenging situations like occlusions or objects which are temporarily outside the monitored area. The results show the desired increase in terms of accuracy, completeness and correctness.
Modeling and Forecasting Realized Volatility

This paper provides a general framework for integration of high-frequency intraday data into the measurement, modeling, and forecasting of daily and lower frequency volatility and return distributions. Most procedures for modeling and forecasting financial asset return volatilities, correlations, and distributions rely on restrictive and complicated parametric multivariate ARCH or stochastic volatility models, which often perform poorly at intraday frequencies. Use of realized volatility constructed from high-frequency intraday returns, in contrast, permits the use of traditional time series procedures for modeling and forecasting. Building on the theory of continuous-time arbitrage-free price processes and the theory of quadratic variation, we formally develop the links between the conditional covariance matrix and the concept of realized volatility. Next, using continuously recorded observations for the Deutschemark / Dollar and Yen / Dollar spot exchange rates covering more than a decade, we find that forecasts from a simple long-memory Gaussian vector autoregression for the logarithmic daily realized volatilities perform admirably compared to popular daily ARCH and related models. Moreover, the vector autoregressive volatility forecast, coupled with a parametric lognormal-normal mixture distribution implied by the theoretically and empirically grounded assumption of normally distributed standardized returns, gives rise to well-calibrated density forecasts of future returns, and correspondingly accurate quantile estimates. Our results hold promise for practical modeling and forecasting of the large covariance matrices relevant in asset pricing, asset allocation and financial risk management applications.
Vehicle clamping and alternative parking management and control systems

Vehicle clamping is a practice that started in the 1950's in order to enforce traffic and parking regulations usually inside private premises. It often involves the immobilization of a vehicle via a wheel lock that is attached to the tyres of a car in order to make sure that it cannot be driven. However, not only is this practice burdensome to drivers, there are also serious ethical issues surrounding it that has even made it illegal in certain countries. Several of these ethical problems are mentioned, and an Islamic ethical perspective is provided on vehicle clamping as a justification for discarding the practice completely. It is acknowledged that an alternative system to regulate the parking area according to laws and preventing chaos is crucial for all public parking areas. There are numerous systems which would provide simple, effective, and efficient alternatives to clamping. In this paper we would review and describe two different system configurations to replace vehicle clamping. The first system configuration utilizes passive RFIDs, the second technique uses a camera system to extract the vehicle license plate number, as alternatives to vehicle clamping. A traffic simulation is conducted using Arena process simulator with data collected at the IIUM Gombak campus to evaluate the effects of deploying these systems on the traffic flow of vehicles inside such a campus.
PLANETS AROUND LOW-MASS STARS (PALMS). IV. THE OUTER ARCHITECTURE OF M DWARF PLANETARY SYSTEMS

We present results from a high-contrast adaptive optics imaging search for giant planets and brown dwarfs (≳1 MJup) around 122 newly identified nearby (≲40 pc) young M dwarfs. Half of our targets are younger than 135 Myr and 90% are younger than the Hyades (620 Myr). After removing 44 close stellar binaries (implying a stellar companion fraction of >35.4% ± 4.3% within 100 AU), 27 of which are new or spatially resolved for the first time, our remaining sample of 78 single M dwarfs makes this the largest imaging search for planets around young low-mass stars (0.1–0.6 M☉) to date. Our H- and K-band coronagraphic observations with Keck/NIRC2 and Subaru/HiCIAO achieve typical contrasts of 12–14 mag and 9–13 mag at 1″, respectively, which correspond to limiting planet masses of 0.5–10 MJup at 5–33 AU for 85% of our sample. We discovered four young brown dwarf companions: 1RXS J235133.3+312720 B (32 ± 6 MJup; L0; 120 ± 20 AU), GJ 3629 B (64 MJup; M7.5 ± 0.5; 6.5 ± 0.5 AU), 1RXS J034231.8+121622 B (35 ± 8 MJup; L0 ± 1; 19.8 ± 0.9 AU), and 2MASS J15594729+4403595 B (43 ± 9 MJup; M8.0 ± 0.5; 190 ± 20 AU). Over 150 candidate planets were identified; we obtained follow-up imaging for 56% of these but all are consistent with background stars. Our null detection of planets enables strong statistical constraints on the occurrence rate of long-period giant planets around single M dwarfs. We infer an upper limit (at the 95% confidence level) of 10.3% and 16.0% for 1–13 MJup planets between 10–100 AU for hot-start and cold-start (Fortney) evolutionary models, respectively. Fewer than 6.0% (9.9%) of M dwarfs harbor massive gas giants in the 5–13 MJup range like those orbiting HR 8799 and β Pictoris between 10–100 AU for a hot-start (cold-start) formation scenario. The frequency of brown dwarf (13–75 MJup) companions to single M dwarfs between 10–100 AU is 2.8%. Altogether we find that giant planets, especially massive ones, are rare in the outskirts of M dwarf planetary systems. Although the first directly imaged planets were found around massive stars, there is currently no statistical evidence for a trend of giant planet frequency with stellar host mass at large separations as predicted by the disk instability model of giant planet formation.
Evaluation of an individual sleep intervention programme in people undergoing peritoneal dialysis treatment.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This study aimed to evaluate effects of a non-pharmacological intervention on sleep, activity and fatigue in patients receiving peritoneal dialysis by the use of both actigraphy registration and self-assessed questionnaires. BACKGROUND Insomnia is estimated to affect up to 60% of haemo- and peritoneal dialysis patients. It is associated with two common uremic symptoms, pruritus and restless legs syndrome. To our knowledge, no interventions have been evaluated by actigraphy. DESIGN A prospective multiple baseline single-case experimental design. METHODS Two women and seven men with sleep problems, 48-77 years, treated with PD participated in a 17-week study from January 2009 to February 2011. Two interventions were separately implemented. First, a pressure-relieving mattress and second, a four week individual sleep hygiene and sleep scheduling intervention. The two interventions were evaluated both objectively by actigraphy and subjectively by questionnaires. RESULTS A total of 315 sleep-wake cycles from nine individuals were evaluated. Three patients improved clinically significantly in five or more of the nine outcomes, i.e. sleep onset latency, nocturnal sleep duration, numbers and duration of napping, movement and fragmentation index, number of steps, metabolic equivalent unit, sleep efficiency and fatigue. The other six patients also showed improvements but to a lesser degree. Physical activity advice was the intervention that yielded most sleep improvements. CONCLUSIONS This study illuminates the need for regular assessment of sleep and tiredness. It also demonstrates how a non-pharmacological treatment and self-management can be applied with renal supportive care to improve sleep quality. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE This study is a clinical example of a non-pharmacological intervention with supportive care and self-management. This model can improve health and reduce the pharmacological burden because hypnotics can be replaced by sleep hygiene self-care activities.
The ‘story’ in a risk society: A case study of the BBC and the ‘riskiness’ of journalism

ABSTRACT This article argues that one way the ‘story’ has changed is that it has become a source of potential ‘risk’ (Beck 1992; Giddens 1990) for media organizations operating in a globalized media environment. Through applying a ‘risk’ perspective to the practice of journalism, this article argues that the news story is not only a site where risk is represented and contested but also a source of risk for journalists and media organizations. This conceptual argument is made by reflecting on the significance of the external scrutiny and internal reflection of the BBC's coverage of the Middle East crisis. Attention is also given to the BBC's 2009 decision to deny a Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal for Gaza and how this management decision may be understood in ‘risk’ terms. A larger theoretical objective is to illustrate the utility of a ‘risk’ approach as a new theoretical lens to critically explore the practice of journalism.
On exploring efficient shuffle design for in-memory MapReduce

MapReduce is commonly used as a way of big data analysis in many fields. Shuffling, the inter-node data exchange phase of MapReduce, has been reported as the major bottleneck of the framework. Acceleration of shuffling has been studied in literature, and we raise two questions in this paper. The first question pertains to the effect of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) on the performance of shuffling. RDMA enables one machine to read and write data on the local memory of another and has been known to be an efficient data transfer mechanism. Does the pure use of RDMA affect the performance of shuffling? The second question is the data transfer algorithm to use. There are two types of shuffling algorithms for the conventional MapReduce implementations: Fully-Connected and more sophisticated algorithms such as Pairwise. Does the data transfer algorithm affect the performance of shuffling? To answer these questions, we designed and implemented yet another MapReduce system from scratch in C/C++ to gain the maximum performance and to reserve design flexibility. For the first question, we compared RDMA shuffling based on rsocket with the one based on IPoIB. The results of experiments with GroupBy showed that RDMA accelerates map+shuffle phase by around 50%. For the second question, we first compared our in-memory system with Apache Spark to investigate whether our system performed more efficiently than the existing system. Our system demonstrated performance improvement by a factor of 3.04 on Word Count, and by a factor of 2.64 on BiGram Count as compared to Spark. Then, we compared the two data exchange algorithms, Fully-Connected and Pairwise. The results of experiments with BiGram Count showed that Fully-Connected without RDMA was 13% more efficient than Pairwise with RDMA. We conclude that it is necessary to overlap map and shuffle phases to gain performance improvement. The reason of the relatively small percentage of improvement can be attributed to the time-consuming insertions of key-value pairs into the hash-map in the map phase.
Effects of macronutrient content and energy density of snacks consumed in a satiety state on the onset of the next meal

We examined the effects of nutrient composition of a 1 MJ afternoon snack, consumed in a satiety state, on the spontaneous onset of the next meal in 11 young male subjects deprived of any temporal cues. All subjects attended four experimental sessions scheduled 2 weeks apart. The first, baseline, session served to establish: (1) the subjects' ad libitum lunch intake, (2) the latency of the spontaneous request for dinner following lunch, (3) ad libitum food intake at dinner. Lunches provided during the next three sessions were based on baseline lunch intakes. During the following three sessions, conducted in counterbalanced order, subjects were given a high-fat (58% of energy from fat), a high-protein (77%) or a high-carbohydrate (84%) snack to be consumed 240 min after the beginning of lunch. Latency to dinner and the amount of energy consumed at dinner were two dependent variables. Consumption of a high-protein snack delayed the request for dinner by 60 min. In contrast, high-fat snack delayed dinner request by 25 min, whereas high-carbohydrate snack delayed dinner request by 34 min. Snack composition had no impact on energy or macronutrient intakes during dinner.
Global Citizenship, Global Health, and the Internationalization of Curriculum

Social transformation models of internationalization suggest the need for radical reform to curricula to foster engaged global citizenship, yet little is written depicting how individual courses and their instructors might support such reform. This article stems from and explores philosophical, pedagogical, institutional, and curricular issues related to that challenge. The article reports on a 6-year outcome evaluation of the impact and transformative potential of two interdisciplinary global health courses taught using transformative pedagogies. Results of the evaluation show promise that this model of internationalized curricula can foster personal transformation and global citizenship while creating bridges of understanding between local and global health issues. The course pedagogy may hold keys to increasing potential for social transformation through the process of internationalizing curriculum.
Communications Between Volunteers and Health Researchers during Recruitment and Informed Consent: Qualitative Content Analysis of Email Interactions

Background While use of the Internet is increasingly widespread in research, little is known about the role of routine electronic mail (email) correspondence during recruitment and early volunteer–researcher interactions. To gain insight into the standpoint of volunteers we analyzed email communications in an early rheumatoid arthritis qualitative interview study. Objectives The objectives of our study were (1) to understand the perspectives and motivations of individuals who volunteered for an interview study about the experiences of early rheumatoid arthritis, and (2) to investigate the role of emails in volunteer–researcher interactions during recruitment. Methods Between December 2007 and December 2008 we recruited 38 individuals with early rheumatoid arthritis through rheumatologist and family physician offices, arthritis Internet sites, and the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada for a (face-to-face) qualitative interview study. Interested individuals were invited to contact us via email or telephone. In this paper, we report on email communications from 12 of 29 volunteers who used email as their primary communication mode. Results Emails offered insights into the perspective of study volunteers. They provided evidence prospectively about recruitment and informed consent in the context of early rheumatoid arthritis. First, some individuals anticipated that participating would have mutual benefits, for themselves and the research, suggesting a reciprocal quality to volunteering. Second, volunteering for the study was strongly motivated by a need to access health services and was both a help-seeking and self-managing strategy. Third, volunteers expressed ambivalence around participation, such as how far participating would benefit them, versus more general benefits for research. Fourth, practical difficulties of negotiating symptom impact, medical appointments, and research tasks were revealed. We also reflect on how emails documented volunteer–researcher interactions, illustrating typically undocumented researcher work during recruitment. Conclusions Emails can be key forms of data. They provide richly contextual prospective records of an underresearched dimension of the research process: routine volunteer–researcher interactions during recruitment. Emails record the context of volunteering, and the motivations and priorities of volunteers. They also highlight the “invisible work” of research workers during what are typically considered to be standard administrative tasks. Further research is needed to fully understand the role of routine emails, what they may reveal about volunteers’ decisions to participate, and their implications for research relationships—for example, whether they have the potential to foster rapport, trust, and understanding between volunteer and researcher, and ultimately shift the power dynamic of the volunteer–researcher relationship.
Rearing Male Bluegills Indoors May Be Advantageous for Producing Food‐size Sunfish

— An indicated demand for sunfish (Lepomis spp.) as a food fish remains untested because of continuing inability to efficiently rear these fishes to required large sizes (≥227 g; 0.5 lbs). A recent study involving parallel, indoor rearing of two sunfishes under favorable conditions showed that bluegills Lepomis macrochirus possessed markedly higher growth capacity than B × G hybrids (F1: male bluegill × female green sunfish, Lepomis cyanellus). B × G hybrids had been thought to possess superior growth capacity and so have received more attention than bluegills as a food-fish candidate in many areas of the USA. Reanalysis of data from the recent study with emphasis on gender differences revealed that the male bluegills possessed much higher growth capacity than male B × G hybrids, at least from May to March as Age 1 and then early Age 2 fish. Male bluegills reached 67% of food-market weight within the 10-mo period from a starting weight of 7 g; male B × G hybrids reached only 24% of this weight. Male bluegills’ more rapid growth versus male B × G hybrids’ apparently involved less growth energy allocation to gonad development. Female bluegills grew slower than male bluegills but also outgrew male and female B × G hybrids whose growth trajectories declined in midsummer (June) and remained largely flat through March. The previous view that B × G hybrids possess higher growth capacity than bluegills was fostered by studies in ponds where bluegill growth can be impeded by high reproduction rates and, as this study reveals, by high densities and exposure to suboptimal temperatures when their growth potential is high. Indoor rearing of male bluegills should ameliorate most pond-related growth impediments and take fuller advantage of their rapid growth capacity.