Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Numeracy competence requirements for admission to undergraduate degree programmes: a case study of a programme to prepare pre‐registration nursing student candidates for a numeracy entrance test

Some undergraduate programmes require evidence of baseline numeracy skills as a condition of entry. With a widened entry gate into higher education and a recognised ‘mathematics problem’ in society, students wishing to enrol onto degree programmes that require evidence of numeracy often find it difficult to provide such evidence. Numeracy skills of pre‐registration nursing students are an issue of particular concern. Some undergraduate nursing programmes require prospective students who are applying for places to undertake a numeracy entrance test as part of the selection process. Evidence from numeracy selection tests conducted at one university indicated that many applicants struggled to demonstrate competence in basic numerical concepts. On the basis of this evidence, the School of Nursing at Kingston University/St George’s University of London (KU/SGUL), in partnership with Merton College of Further Education, designed and delivered an innovative pre‐entrance test numeracy development programme for prospective nursing students. The programme, ‘Making Friends with Numbers’, was delivered to two groups. There is little evidence in the literature that this type of support is offered to students who fail to demonstrate the minimum numeracy requirement for entry. A case‐study evaluation study was undertaken to measure the effectiveness of the numeracy programme. Results showed that the programme had short‐ and medium‐term success in helping students to prepare for the numeracy entrance test and developed students’ confidence and self‐esteem in relation to their numerical ability. The findings will be of relevance to all professionally orientated programmes where numeracy is important.
Analysis of transverse mode competition of VCSELs based on a spatially independent model

A spatially independent model of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) is built up in this paper by integrating the spatially dependent rate equations over the cross section of the active region of a VCSEL. The transverse modal structure is presented and discussed. This model is simulated numerically with the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method in a self-consistent way. Different kinds of injection currents such as a disk-contact and a ring-contact of injection current with different current parameters are employed in the investigations. The dependencies of the transverse mode competition on the current intensity, the current spread, and the geometrical parameters of the injection contact forms are thoroughly investigated and analyzed. The results are useful to design and control the transverse modal profile of a VCSEL.
The Effect of Socioeconomic Status and Family Structure on Parental Warmth and Parental Control in a Chinese Context: Implications for Social Work Practice

We report the results of a telephone survey conducted in 2008 in Hong Kong, which aimed to identify Chinese parents' parental warmth and parental control (guan) and to explore their relationship with the sociodemographic characteristics of the parents. The respondents perceived themselves to be warm (mean = 3.44) and educating their child (mean = 3.46). The results of multiple regression analysis showed that the five sociodemographic characteristics explained 15.8% and 8.2% of the variance in parental warmth and guan respectively. The mothers were warmer than the fathers; parents with higher monthly household income, higher educational attainment and with their smallest child young in age were warmer than parents of lower household income, lower educational attainment and with their smallest child older in age. However, parental guan did not vary among the five sociodemographic characteristics except educational attainment. Implications of the study for social work practice are discussed.
Reduced Response to Reward in Smokers and Cannabis Users

Background: Cannabis is one of the most commonly used illicit drugs. Reduced neural and behavioral reactions to reward have been demonstrated in other forms of addiction, as expressed by reduced mood reactivity and lack of striatal activation to rewards, but this effect has not yet been investigated in cannabis users. Methods: We hypothesized that cannabis users and tobacco smokers would evidence lower positive mood ratings in rewarded conditions than control participants and that this reduction would be greater in cannabis users than in smokers. We examined the influence of reward on mood and performance in a group of regular cannabis users, a group of tobacco smokers and a group of nonsmokers while they performed a spatial recognition task with delayed response that incorporated 3 levels of difficulty. Correct responses were either not reinforced or reinforced with money. We measured the accuracy of reactions, reaction times and mood ratings throughout the trials. Results: Cannabis users rated their mood as significantly worse than the smokers and nonsmokers during the easiest level of the rewarded condition. A significant positive correlation between mood ratings and monetary reward was found in the nonsmokers but not in the cannabis users and smokers. The groups did not differ with regard to task performance. Conclusions: Our results suggest that regular cannabis use affects certain aspects of motivation and that both tobacco smoking and cannabis use lead to similar motivational changes. However, the use of cannabis seems to affect motivation in a stronger way than does tobacco smoking alone.
‘Maybe I'm not as good as I think I am.’ How qualification users interpret their examination results

Background: Assessment grades are ‘estimates’ of ability or performance and there are many reasons why an awarded grade might not meet a candidate's expectations, being either better or poorer than anticipated. Although there may be some obvious reasons for grade discrepancies, such as a lack of preparation or under-performance, there are a number of technical issues to consider, such as the potential effects of random measurement error, human error and grade misclassification. However, traditionally, there has been limited information available to the public about such issues. Purpose: This study formed part of a two-year investigation into the reliability of public examination outcomes in England and the current paper explores participants’ narratives relating to one of the themes that emerged from the study of public perceptions of assessment reliability. It examines how individuals interpreted and rationalised their examination results, particularly those that failed to meet expectations, and discusses the impact that such results may have on individuals’ academic self-concept. Sample and method: Ten focus groups were conducted across five qualification user groups: two each with employees, employers, teachers, trainee teachers, and job-seekers (74 participants in total). A flexible discussion schedule was employed to explore participants’ experiences and perceptions of assessment reliability. Main findings: Participants tended to internalise ‘blame’ for results that were poorer than expected by constructing explanations that focused on a perceived lack of preparation, ability or knowledge. These experiences appeared to have a negative impact on individuals' academic self-concept. Secondary school teacher participants shared experiences of marking, technical and standard setting errors, and were more aware than other qualification user groups of the external factors that can impact on assessment outcomes. Conclusion: Examination results that are poorer than expected can threaten individuals’ academic self-concept, confidence in their ability, and influence their study and career intentions and opportunities. A better understanding of educational measurement issues may offer individuals a more informed framework for understanding their examination results, especially where results do not meet expectations.
XPay: practical anonymous payments for tor routing and other networked services

We design and analyze the first practical anonymous payment mechanisms for network services. We start by reporting on our experience with the implementation of a routing micropayment solution for Tor. We then propose micropayment protocols of increasingly complex requirements for networked services, such as P2P or cloud-hosted services. The solutions are efficient, with bandwidth and latency overheads of under 4% and 0.9 ms respectively (in ORPay for Tor), provide full anonymity (both for payers and payees), and support thousands of transactions per second.
Why do subjects with irritable bowel syndrome seek health care for their symptoms?

Objective. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is common in the population, but not all subjects seek professional health care for their symptoms. The aim of this study was to compare consulters in secondary/tertiary care with those in primary care and non-consulters by using questionnaires to investigate factors of importance for health-care seeking in IBS. Material and methods. The study included 218 subjects with IBS: 70 non-consulters, 53 patients from primary care and 95 from secondary/tertiary care. The subjects completed questionnaires on gastrointestinal (GI) and psychological symptoms, coping resources, health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and reasons for not seeking health care. Results. Consulters (primary and secondary/tertiary care combined) had poorer HRQOL, more severe psychological symptoms, higher levels of GI-specific anxiety and poor coping resources compared with non-consulters, but the GI symptom severity was similar. Mental health and poor social, emotional and physical functioning were independently predictive of being a health-care seeker (r2=0.41). Independent predictors for being a consulter in secondary/tertiary care were a high degree of anxiety, low scores on physical functioning, physical role and food (IBSQOL) (r2=0.65). Several non-consulters reported mild symptoms and ability to control symptoms as reasons for not seeking health care. Having a close relative with similar symptoms reduced the need to seek health care. Thirty-six non-consulters had sought alternative care or advice from friends and/or relatives about their GI symptoms. Conclusions. GI symptom severity alone cannot explain the illness behavior in IBS. HRQOL and psychological symptoms are important for experience of GI symptoms and the health-care seeking pattern in IBS.
The Process of Restabilization for Mother-Headed Homeless Families: How Social Workers Can Help

ABSTRACT Although homelessness among mother-headed families has been increasing steadily in recent years, little is known about how such families successfully emerge from homelessness. This study addresses this gap by exploring the process by which mother-headed homeless families become stably rehoused through interviews with ten formerly homeless mothers. The grounded theory method of qualitative research, including constant comparison data analysis techniques, was used. Findings indicate a three stage process of restabilization: Meeting Immediate Family Needs (locating shelter, maintaining parental role, keeping up morale, and preserving stability); Creating a New Home (managing cash flow, addressing personal and interpersonal problems, locating and furnishing the new home); and Maintaining Family Stability (managing finances, managing ongoing personal and interpersonal problems, and reestablishing family relationships). Social workers have a major role to play in helping families successfully navigate .
Do Women Need Women Representatives?

This article analyses the relationship between the representatives and the represented by comparing elite and mass attitudes to gender equality and women’s representation in Britain. In so doing, the authors take up arguments in the recent theoretical literature on representation that question the value of empirical research of Pitkin’s distinction between substantive and descriptive representation. They argue that if men and women have different attitudes at the mass level, which are reproduced amongst political elites, then the numerical under-representation of women may have negative implications for women’s substantive representation. The analysis is conducted on the British Election Study (BES) and the British Representation Study (BRS) series.
Premature Ventricular Contraction Beat Detection with Deep Neural Networks

A deep neural networks is proposed for the classification of premature ventricular contraction (PVC) beat, which is an irregular heartbeat initiated by Purkinje fibers rather than by sinoatrial node. Several machine learning approaches were proposed for the detection of PVC beats although they resulted in either achieving low accuracy of classification or using limited portion of data from existing electrocardiography (ECG) databases. In this paper, we propose an optimized deep neural networks for PVC beat classification. Our method is evaluated on TensorFlow, which is an open source machine learning platform initially developed by Google. Our method achieved overall 99.41% accuracy and a sensitivity of 96.08% with total 80,836 ECG beats including normal and PVC from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database.
A Multi-Scale Approch for Retreiving Proportional Cover of Life Forms

This study presents a multi-scale procedure to derive continuous proportional cover of woody vegetation in savanna ecosystems. QuickBird data was classified to define a continuous training and validation data set of woody cover proportions. Using a regression tree algorithm based on Landsat TM data, this woody cover information was extrapolated to an area of approximately 185 km times 185 km. The resulting 30 m map of the Namibian North-eastern Kalahari Woodland was aggregated to 250 m and 500 m resolutions. Comparisons of the global MODIS VCF product with the regionally adjusted multi-scale fractional cover map indicate that VCF tree cover is generally underestimated in the study area and confusions between tree and dense shrub cover occur.
Support for activity-based computing in a personal computing operating system

Research has shown that computers are notoriously bad at supporting the management of parallel activities and interruptions, and that mobility increases the severity of these problems. This paper presents activity-based computing (ABC) which supplements the prevalent data- and application-oriented computing paradigm with technologies for handling multiple, parallel and mobile work activities. We present the design and implementation of ABC support embedded in the Windows XP operating system. This includes replacing the Windows Taskbar with an Activity Bar, support for handling Windows applications, a zoomable user interface, and support for moving activities across different computers. We report an evaluation of this Windows XP ABC system which is based on a multi-method approach, where perceived ease-of-use and usefulness was evaluated together with rich interview material. This evaluation showed that users found the ABC XP extension easy to use and likely to be useful in their own work.
One-sided laughter in academic presentations: a small-scale investigation

This investigation focuses on analysing one-sided laughter (i.e. laughter initiated by the speaker and not shared with other parties) in academic presentations — a form of ‘institutional talk’ (Drew and Heritage, 1992) defined here as goal-oriented talk about and for the business (in the broadest sense) at hand, and given at structural settings of certain formality as the lecture theatre in this case. The analytical tool employed is a partial adoption of Partington’s (2006) laughter classification/categorization drawing on the theories of ‘Politeness’ (Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987) and ‘Face’ (Goffman, 1967, 1981). This is a rather new approach which, nonetheless, contributes positively to the field of laughter analysis since these theories are ‘much less examined in relationship to institutional settings’ (Harris, 2001: 452). The data analysed for this purpose is David Nunan’s (2006) presentation entitled ‘Action Research and Professional Growth’, given at the JALT First Joint Conference in Japan. The findings suggest that one-sided laughter is a communication strategy of mainly rhetorical nature capable of revealing the underlying meaning of the interaction: its hidden ideology, purpose and goal.
A Model of Cognitive Control in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: Integrating Schema Theory and Basal Ganglia Function

We present a schema-based model of a classic neuropsychological task, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), where competition between motor and cognitive schemas is resolved using a variation of a neuroanatomically detailed model of the basal ganglia (Gurney et al., 2001). We show that the model achieves a good fit with existing data at the group level, and correctly identifies two distinct cognitive mechanisms held to underlie two distinct types of error. However, at the individual level, the correlations amongst other error types produced by the model differ from those observed in the human data. To address this, we cluster participant performance into distinct groups and show, by fitting each group separately, how the model can account for the empirically observed correlations between error types. Methodologically, this demonstrates the importance of modelling participant performance at the sub-group or individual level, rather than modelling group performance. We also discuss implications of the model for the WCST performance of elderly participants and Parkinson’s patients.
PCRLB-Based Cluster Selection for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks

To deal with the problem of tracking a maneuvering target in range-based sensor networks, we firstly derive the expression that describes the relation of the PCRLB and the distance from the sensor to the target, and on the basis of this expression, choose the sensor subset that may attend the incoming tracking event. Secondly, we design the cluster head selection strategy under communication constraint, and further pick up the optimal sensor or the cluster head. Thirdly, we can estimate the state of the maneuvering target and the model index by making use of the interacting multiple model (IMM) algorithm. Finally, the simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Application of S-transform for removing baseline drift from ECG

The three major sources of noise in an ECG signal are baseline drift, powerline interference and other electromagnetic interferences. With the recent success of Wavelet transform in identifying and eliminating noise from a wide variety of signals, frequency transformation techniques are gaining more and more importance for eliminating noise from ECG signals. This paper applies S-transform in eliminating baseline wander from ECG signals and the proposed approach is subsequently compared with the method based on wavelet transform.
Making the Most of Advice: New Correlation Breakers and Their Applications

A typical obstacle one faces when constructing pseudorandom objects is undesired correlations between random variables. Identifying this obstacle and constructing certain types of “correlation breakers” was central for recent exciting advances in the construction of multi-source and nonmalleable extractors. One instantiation of correlation breakers is correlation breakers with advice. These are algorithms that break the correlation a “bad” random variable Y ' has with a “good” random variable Y using an “advice” - a fixed string α that is associated with Y which is guaranteed to be distinct from the corresponding string α' associated with Y '. Prior to this work, explicit constructions of correlation breakers with advice require the entropy of the involved random variables to depend linearly on the advice length. In this work, building on independence-preserving mergers, a pseudorandom primitive that was recently introduced by Cohen and Schulman, we devise a new construction of correlation breakers with advice that has optimal, logarithmic, dependence on the advice length. This enables us to obtain the following results. We construct an extractor for 5 independent n-bit sources with min-entropy (log n)1+o(1). This result puts us tantalizingly close to the goal of constructing extractors for 2 sources with min-entropy O(log n), which would have exciting implications to Ramsey theory. We construct non-malleable extractors with error guarantee ε for n-bit sources, with seed length d = O(log n)+ (log(1/ε))1+o(1) for any min-entropy k = Ω(d). Prior to this work, all constructions require either very high minentropy or otherwise have seed length ω(log n) for any ε. Further, our extractor has near-optimal output length. Prior constructions that achieve comparable output length work only for very high min-entropy k ≈ n/2. By instantiating the Dodis-Wichs framework with our non-malleable extractor, we obtain near-optimal privacy amplification protocols against active adversaries, improving upon all (incomparable) known protocols.
Contrast enhancement in video sequences using variable block shape adaptive histogram equalization

This paper describes a new method for enhancing the local contrast of high dynamical range images on conventional low dynamical range displays. We use the mean shift clustering algorithm to segment the image and enhance segments using contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) in combination with a new kernel based interpolation technique. Our main application is the enhancement of welding image sequences, but we tested our method on a larger image database. Experiments demonstrate improvements over the traditional CLAHE based image enhancement.
Refining the Results of Automatic E-Textbook Construction by Clustering

The abundance of knowledge-rich information on the World Wide Web makes compiling an online e-textbook both possible and necessary. The authors of [7] proposed an approach to automatically generate an e-textbook by mining the ranking lists of the search engine. However, the performance of the approach was degraded by Web pages that were relevant but not actually discussing the desired concept. In this paper, we extend the work in [7] by applying a clustering approach before the mining process. The clustering approach serves as a post-processing stage to the original results retrieved by the search engine, and aims to reach an optimum state in which all Web pages assigned to a concept are discussing that exact concept.
Do Recipients of an Association-Sponsored Quality Award Program Experience Better Quality Outcomes Compared With Other Nursing Facilities Across the United States?

Background: This study explores the relationship between recipients of an association-sponsored Quality Award Program and select measures of quality in U.S. nursing facilities, examined both cross-sectionally and over time. Method: Data used came from Quality Award Program recipients over 9 years (2003-2011) and a set of quality indicators from the Online Survey Certification and Reporting (OSCAR) database. These data were analyzed using a variety of multivariate regression techniques. Results: Cross-sectionally, the award recipients demonstrated higher performance on most of the quality indicators, compared with both the broader field of nursing facilities and also a more stringent comparison group of facilities. Comparing quality from the 4 years before the award was received to the 4 years after the award, the majority of quality indicators demonstrated improvement in those facilities receiving an award. Conclusion: These results indicate that, in general, the nursing facilities that participate in and receive the Silver or Gold American Health Care Association (AHCA) and National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) National Quality Award perform at a higher level of quality for residents and sustain that heightened performance over a period of time.