Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes towards Sex Offenders and the Role of Empathy, Locus of Control and Training: A Comparison between a Probationer Police and General Public Sample

The current study aimed to explore attitudes towards sex offenders in a probationer police sample and a general sample, with a focus on the role of empathy and locus of control. There was a subsidiary aim of assessing the impact of education awareness training on the attitudes held by police officers. Ninety-nine members of the general population (49 men and 50 women) and 75 probationer police officers (50 men and 25 women) completed the Attitudes Towards Sex Offenders scale (ATS), a measure of cognitive and emotional empathy (IRI: Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and the Locus of Control of Behaviour scale (LOC). Results indicated that police officers were more likely than the general population to report positive attitudes towards sex offenders. This supported the prediction that there would be a difference between samples. Locus of control did not feature as a strong associating factor with attitudes, failing to associate with overall attitudes towards sex offenders. Attitudes were found to associate with levels of empathy but the nature of the relationship differed in accordance with the specific component of empathy and the population (i.e. police or general sample). Women overall were reported to be more empathic than men but no interaction between gender and status was found. Police officers were found, however, to present with lower overall empathy levels than the general population but this was not consistent across all types of empathy, with increased perspective-taking abilities compared with those of the general sample being reported. Interestingly, following awareness training on sex offenders, police officers reported more negative attitudes towards sex offenders. The study concludes by discussing the implication of these findings for practice.
Virtual data center allocation with dynamic clustering in clouds

Clouds are being widely used for leasing resources to users in the form of on-demand virtual data centers, which comprise sets of virtual machines interconnected by sets of virtual links. Given a user request for a virtual data center with specific resource requirements, a critical problem is to select a set of servers and links in the physical data center of a cloud to satisfy the request in a manner that minimizes the amount of reserved resources. In this paper, we study the main aspects of this Virtual Data Center Allocation (VDCA) problem, and decompose it into three subproblems: virtual data center clustering, virtual machine allocation, and virtual link allocation. We prove the NP-hardness of VDCA and propose an algorithm that solves the problem by dynamically clustering the requested virtual data center and jointly optimizing virtual machine and virtual link allocation. We further compare the performance and scalability of the proposed algorithm with two existing algorithms, called LoCo and SecondNet, through simulations. We demonstrate that our algorithm generates 30%-200% more revenue than LoCo and 55%-300% than SecondNet, while being up to 12 times faster.
WiFi action recognition via vision-based methods

Action recognition via WiFi has caught intense attention recently because of its ubiquity, low cost, and privacy-preserving. Observing Channel State Information (CSI, a fine-grained information computed from the received WiFi signal) resemblance to texture, we transform the received CSI into images, extract features with vision-based methods and train SVM classifiers for action recognition. Our experiments show that regarding CSI as images achieves an accuracy above 85%. Our contributions include:, · To our best knowledge, we are the first to investigate the feasibility of processing CSI by vision-based methods with extendable learning-based framework. · We regard CSI of each Tx-Rx pair as a channel and investigate early and late fusion of multi-channels. · We could know where and what action user performs with location-awareness classification.
Developmental Work Personality Scale

The research reported in this article involved using the Developmental Model of Work Personality to create a scale to measure work personality. The Developmental Work Personality Scale (DWPS) consists of 26 items that measure the structural components of the model. Results from statistical analysis suggested that the DWPS measures the overall construct of work personality, that it has good internal consistency (α = .91), and that the overall construct validity of the scale was supported by three of the five WPP-SR factors, creating a unique relationship with the overall score on the DWPS. Overall, results indicated that the DWPS may have potential applications for assessing work personality prior to client involvement in comprehensive return-to-work rehabilitation programs.
Virological and immunological features of active cytomegalovirus infection in nonimmunosuppressed patients in a surgical and trauma intensive care unit

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) reactivation occurs frequently in critically ill patients. The natural course of CMV infection and the interaction between CMV and the adaptive immune system in this setting remain poorly defined. Fifty‐three CMV‐seropositive patients in a surgical and trauma intensive care unit were included in this study. The CMV DNA load in tracheal aspirates (TA) and plasma (PL) was monitored by qPCR. CMV‐specific T‐cell immunity was assessed by intracellular cytokine staining. Plasma TNF‐α levels were determined by ELISA. CMV reactivation occurred in 39.7% of patients (23% had CMV DNA detected only in TA). The analysis of TA allowed an earlier diagnosis in 28% of patients. Clearance of CMV DNAemia preceded that of CMV DNA in TA in some episodes. Peak CMV DNA levels were significantly higher in TA than in PL (P = 0.02). CMV reactivation developed in the presence of CMV‐specific T cells. Termination of CMV reactivation was associated with an expansion of functional CMV‐specific T cells. Plasma levels of TNF‐α did not allow for the prediction of the occurrence of CMV reactivation. CMV‐specific T‐cell immunity is preserved in most critically ill patients experiencing CMV reactivation. Analysis of respiratory specimens is imperative for an optimal monitoring of CMV reactivation in this setting. J. Med. Virol. 82:1384–1391, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Rollover Risk and Credit Risk

This paper models a firm's rollover risk generated by conflict of interest between debt and equity holders. When the firm faces losses in rolling over its maturing debt, its equity holders are willing to absorb the losses only if the option value of keeping the firm alive justifies the cost of paying off the maturing debt. Our model shows that both deteriorating market liquidity and shorter debt maturity can exacerbate this externality and cause costly firm bankruptcy at higher fundamental thresholds. Our model provides implications on liquidity-spillover effects, the flight-to-quality phenomenon, and optimal debt maturity structures.
A Review Paper On Exploring Text, Link And Spacial-Temporal Information In Social Media Networks

The objective of this paper is to have a literature review on the various methods to mine the knowledge from the social media by taking advantage of embedded heterogeneous information. Specifically, we are trying to review different types of mining framework which provides us useful information from these networks that have heterogeneous data types including text, spacial-temporal and data association (LINK) information. Firstly, we will discuss the link mining to study the link structure with respect to Social Media (SM). Secondly, we summarize the various text mining models, thirdly we shall review spacial as well the temporal models to extract or detect the frequent related topics from SM. Fourthly; we will try to figure out few improvised models that take advantage of the link, textual, temporal and spacial information which motivates to discover progressive principles and fresh methodologies for DM (Data Mining) in social media networks (SMNs).
Unscented Kalman Filter for location in Non-Line-Of-Sight

This paper deals with the problem of Non Line Of Sight (NLOS) in wireless communications systems devoted to location purposes. It is well known that NLOS condition, which is mainly due to blocking of transmitted signal by obstacles, biases Time Of Arrival (TOA) estimates therefore providing biased position. The objective of this paper is to analyze the improvements in positioning accuracy tracking the TOA bias with the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) proposed for location estimation. The evaluation of the approach has been carried out in Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) communications systems.
Interactive 3D visualization of highly connected ecological networks on the WWW

Food webs describe who eats whom among species within a habitat. These networks depict interlinked food chains and have long been a central ecological paradigm for studying biocomplexity. As food-web data encompasses more species, the network structure of the feeding links among those species results in a highly connected network that is difficult to visualize in 2D. Such simple representations often obscure important details critical for understanding the structure and function of ecosystems. Graph layout is thus critically important for enhanced understanding of complex food webs. In this paper, we describe 3D visualizations of food webs that use intuitive node placement, minimal edge-crossing and link length, hierarchical node aggregation, and analysis tool integration. We also describe our deployment of "Webs on the Web" (WoW) visualization and analysis tools on the WWW. These tools will facilitate food-web research, collaboration, and education. Given the variety of 3D visualization technologies on the WWW, our WoW visualization pipeline supports diverse formats and adapts to users' preferences by employing XML and a flexible architecture. Currently, WoW uses XML to semantically markup food-web data (FoodWebML), extracts visual information into X3D format, and then uses the information to create a direct display on VRML/X3D browsers or feed a Shockwave 3D visualization.
Are There Similar Sources of Environmental Concern? Comparing Industrialized Countries*

Despite the emergence of environmental concern worldwide, the social forces underlying its expression are not well understood. This research extends previous cross-national studies by employing multi-item indicators of environmental concern in order to more accurately portray concern for the environment as a multifaceted concept and to determine whether the sources of environmental concern are similar among industrialized countries. Copyright (c) 2008 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.
Gender-Related Discourses as Mediators in the Association Between Internalization of the Thin-Body Ideal and Indicants of Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating

This study examined whether the gender-related discourses of self-objectification, self-silencing, and anger suppression mediated the association between internalization of the thin-body ideal and body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. We employed a cross-sectional design to study both university (n = 140) and community (n = 76) samples of women from Ireland ranging from 17 to 30 years of age (M = 21.48, SD = 3.05). Structural equation modeling was used to test for mediation, with the final model suggesting that gender-related discourses (silencing the self/anger suppression and body surveillance) mediated the association between thin-body ideal internalization and attitudes and behaviors characteristic of disordered eating. Limitations of the current study and directions for future research are highlighted.
A Process Mining Technique Using Pattern Recognition

Several works have proposed process mining techniques to discover process models from event logs. With the existing works, mined models can be built based on analyzing the relationship between any two events seen in event logs. Being restricted by that, they can only handle special cases of routing constructs and often produce unsound models that do not cover all of the traces in the logs. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for process mining based on using a pattern recognition technique called Maximal Pattern Mining (MPM). Our MPM technique can handle loops (of any length), duplicate tasks, non-free choice constructs, and long distance dependencies. Furthermore, by using the MPM, the discovered models are generally much easier to understand.
P2G: A Framework for Distributed Real-Time Processing of Multimedia Data

The computational demands of multimedia data processing are steadily increasing as consumers call for progressively more complex and intelligent multimedia services. New multi-core hardware architectures provide the required resources, but writing parallel, distributed applications remains a labor-intensive task compared to their sequential counter-part. For this reason, Google and Microsoft implemented their respective processing frameworks MapReduce and Dryad, as they allow the developer to think sequentially, yet benefit from parallel and distributed execution. An inherent limitation in the design of these batch processing frameworks is their inability to express arbitrarily complex workloads. The dependency graphs of the frameworks are often limited to directed acyclic graphs, or even pre-determined stages. This is particularly problematic for video encoding and other algorithms that depend on iterative execution. With the Nornir runtime system for parallel programs, which is a Kahn Process Network implementation, we addressed and solved several of these limitations. However, it is more difficult to use than other frameworks due to its complex programming model. In this paper, we build on the knowledge gained from Nornir and present a new framework, called P2G, designed specifically for developing and processing distributed real-time multimedia data. P2G supports arbitrarily complex dependency graphs with cycles, branches and deadlines, and provides both data- and task-parallelism. The framework is implemented to scale transparently with available (heterogeneous) resources, a concept familiar from the cloud computing paradigm. We have implemented an (interchangeable) P2G kernel language to ease development. In this paper, we present a proof of concept implementation of a P2G execution node and some experimental examples using complex workloads like Motion JPEG and K-means clustering. The results show that theP2G system is a feasible approach to multimedia processing.
Optimal chunk-based resource allocation for OFDMA systems with multiple BER requirements

We investigate the chunk-based resource allocation for OFDMA downlink, where data streams contain packets with diverse bit-error-rate (BER) requirements. Supposing adaptive transmissions based on a number of discrete modulation and coding modes, we derive the optimal scheme that maximizes the weighted sum of average user rates under the multiple BER and total power constraints. With the relevant optimization problem cast as an integer linear program, we show that the optimal strategy can be obtained through Lagrange dual-based gradient iterations with fast convergence and low computational complexity per iteration. Furthermore, a novel on-line algorithm is developed to approach the optimal strategy without knowledge of intended wireless channels a priori.
Marketing Genius: The Impact of Educational Claims and Cues on Parents' Reactions to Infant/Toddler DVDs

type="main" xml:id="joca12023-abs-0001"> Infant/toddler-directed DVDs have become commonplace in American homes. Most of these DVDs carry direct claims or implied cues of educational benefit, despite complaints from the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood and others regarding a lack of confirmatory research. Using a DVD package created for this study, this experiment tested the impact of DVD brand name, educational claim specificity, and a personality dimension (i.e., regulatory focus orientation) on parents' perceptions of educational value and purchase intentions. Parents reacted similarly to specific and ambiguous educational statements, but gave higher educational value estimations when the brand name had an educational cue. An interaction suggested that the effect of the claim outcome specificity depended on the claim verb specificity. Parents with a strong focus on pursuing possible rewards (promotion focus) had higher perceptions of educational value and stronger desires to purchase the DVD. Implications for policy and further research are discussed.
The Ignored Religious Other: Atheist/Agnostic Pre-Service Teachers

The purpose of this case study was to investigate how four American Atheist/Agnostic (A/A) elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) planned, taught, and reflected on a world religions field experience with 7th-grade students, as well as to examine the role self- and professional-identity. Data sources included at least three interviews with each participant, lesson observations, and document analysis of their lesson plans and reflection journals. All four of the PSTs experienced discrimination and exclusion during childhood because of their lack of religiosity. The A/A PSTs desire to teach in a manner that promotes critical thinking and student interpretation of historical events, yet they are indifferent about ubiquity of religion in schools and are nervous about offending students and parents. A/A teachers are likely to feel isolated and marginalized, which are key factors in teachers leaving the profession. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014. v4n6p503
Error Recognition and Feedback with Lexical Functional Grammar

This paper describes the error recognition module of an interactive ICALL system with a special focus on the underlying grammar theory. Using the system, language learners are invited to produce complete written sentences in small question-answer dialogs with the computer. This setting challenges learners to use language interactively in order to enhance the development of communicative competence. Emphasis is put on the possibility of giving adequate feedback to the learner if a syntactically ill formed sentence is encountered. It is argued that the theory of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is well suited to be used in the parsing and error recognition module of the system as well as to provide intelligent feedback to learners. The concepts and structures used in LFG closely resemble the descriptive knowledge of language learners about a language, and, therefore, the results of an automatic analysis can easily be translated from a computationally tractable form to language easily understood by the learner.
Evaluating Materials for Handicapped Adolescents

Selecting the most appropriate educational materials for young children with learning disabilities requires a great deal of time and expertise. Perhaps, it is even more difficult to choose materials for handicapped adolescents because so few suitable guidelines and criteria for selecting appropriate materials at this age level exist. A record factor is that little or no research is available on the effectiveness of specific materials for the young adult group. To assist teachers in choosing materials for their handicapped adolescent students, we propose a comprehensive evaluation method which consists of two phases: (a) "static" and (b) "dynamic. " The purpose of a static evaluation is to obtain information that will be used to decide which of several programs or materials to purchase and/or implement. The results of dynamic evaluation are useful in deciding whether a material that currently is being used should be altered or discontinued. These two phases of total evaluation are discussed more fully in the following sections of this article.
Principal centered professional development

As a result of this new awareness three major policy implications have emerged across the land: Strengthen the preservice training of aspiring principals by improving certification requirements and formal academic course work; improve the process of selecting principals; and improve and increase the professional development opportunities for practicing principals (Barth, 1982). The last of these implications is the focus of this article.
Effects on Second Language Learning of Variations in Written Feedback on Homework Assignments

This study assessed the effects on second language learning of variations in homework written feedback that either suppressed student errors or made them salient. Eighty students from two college Spanish courses were randomly assigned to treatment groups for a six-week period. Performance data were collected before and after treatment, as well as from homework during treatment. Analysis of variance blocking on pretest revealed significant achievement increases for treated students independent of course membership. Planned comparisons pooled across courses showed achievement was consistently superior under salient error conditions and in particular with constructively critical feedback. Results support the notion that the written performance of students learning a second language can benefit most by focusing on homework errors in a motivationally favorable manner. Relevance of the findings for instructional theory and second language teaching are discussed.
The Role of Environmental Control on Environmental Satisfaction, Communication, and Psychological Stress

The main purpose of this quasi–field experiment was to test whether an office ergonomics training program reduces employees’ psychological stress and improves their environmental control, environmental satisfaction, and communication levels. A conceptual model was developed and used to test these relationships. Preintervention and postintervention survey data were collected from 89 knowledge workers. The office ergonomics training program significantly improved workers’ self-reported perceptions of environmental control, satisfaction with the work environment, and the degree to which the environment supported communication with coworkers. However, psychological stress was unchanged. Environmental control was found to mediate the relationship between preenvironmental and postenvironmental satisfaction. Overall, the results confirm the importance of incorporating ergonomics training into office workplaces to enhance the effective use of work environments and of knowledge workers’ sense of control and environmental satisfaction.
A MultiView Appearance Model for people re-identification

Tracking moving objects across events that break the continuity of the trajectory, such as occlusions or temporary exits from the scene, usually requires that a model of the objects of interest is created and maintained. Commonly used model representations are prone to errors when the objects can change the direction of their motion. In this paper we introduce a novel model representation, the MultiView Appearance Model, specifically devised to deal with the issue. The algorithms that create and update the model also take into account the problem of object apparent size changes due to perspective. An experimental evaluation of the proposed model representation has been performed on the PETS2010 dataset. The results show a consistent improvement of the performances in comparison with another well-known appearance model.
Density-tapered planar arrays for multibeam and shaped beam coverage in satellite communications

Interest in uniformly illuminated density-tapered planar antenna arrays has recently revived. For arrays consisting of concentric rings of elements, we present a non-stochastic algorithm that calculates ring radii for generation of pencil beams without the need for prior specification of the number of rings. If element phases are allowed to differ, the algorithm also synthesizes density-tapered arrays generating axially symmetric shaped footprint beams (to which the usual distortion methods can be applied to obtain beams with other contour shapes).