Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Collaborative learning approach to teach computer coding in informal spaces

ABSTRACT This study examines the participation of the Less Effective Learning Group(LELG) students in Collaborative Learning in Informal Space (CLIS) to gain more insights in two of the five principles of the Framework of Participation. Their participation is based on relationships of mutual recognition and acceptance and participation requires learning to be active and collaborative.Of note, the LELG students focus more on individual work and less on group discussion and the informal learning space includes both the physical and virtual spaces without the presence of a lecturer. The study aims to contribute new pedagogical practices to the framework that are suitable for the LELG students. The research involved 90 Information Technology undergraduates. Data gathered through semi-structured focus group interview were analysed deductively with predetermined codes using the conceptual content analysis. The findings emphasise the importance of teaching LELG students’ self-regulation and the appreciation of interdependence that implies accepting theirpeers’ views and also defending their contributions. To co-construct knowledge effectively in a collaborative manner they have to regulate their cognitive processes. The pedagogical proposals include promoting group co-regulation and teaching students how to collaborate effectively.
The Impact of Childhood School Suspension on Dropout and Arrest in Adolescence: Disparate Relationships by Race and Adverse Childhood Experiences

Despite its widespread use, school suspension is related to negative outcomes in adolescence, including delinquency and low academic attainment. However, it remains less clear how other sources of adversity affect the relationship between suspension and negative outcomes. Drawing on longitudinal data on a sample of at-risk youth, this study examines the roles of two sources of disadvantage—being a racial minority and experiencing high levels of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—in the relationships between school suspension in childhood and arrest and high school dropout in adolescence. Results reveal that suspension increased odds of dropout and arrest regardless of race, even after accounting for high ACEs and other covariates. Among Black youth only, the impact of suspension on dropout was amplified for those with high ACE exposure. Findings shed light on the complex connections between sources of adversity and their relation to negative outcomes in adolescence.
Breeding dynamics of overabundant koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations subject to fertility-control management

Abstract Context. The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) sometimes occurs as an overabundant folivore in south-eastern Australia, where high-density populations have caused defoliation of preferred food trees, threatening habitat. Kangaroo Island, South Australia and Budj Bim National Park, Victoria, are two regions where such eruptive population dynamics have arisen. One way of mitigating their damage is through management via fertility control. Aims. This paper examines the outcomes of fertility control (surgical sterilisation and treatment with levonorgestrel implants) on breeding dynamics at the population level, using data obtained from two separate koala management programs conducted by State Government wildlife agencies, South Australia Department for Environment and Water and Parks Victoria. Methods. The relationships between female body condition, reproductive status, fertility control, age and population density were examined using linear mixed effects models. Population density (koalas/ha) was estimated using annual census data and modelled in a Bayesian framework. Key results. Body condition was a key influence on breeding success in female koalas, with sexual maturity being defined by both age and body condition, whereas the effect of reproductive experience was minimal. It is likely that reduced densities have led to decreased intraspecific competition for food resources and territory, leading to increased breeding success at one management site (BBNP) and by allowing females to begin breeding at a lower overall body condition. The reduction in densities to sustainable levels at both management sites, despite differing fertility-control methods, supports the use of the less invasive and more cost-effective levonorgestrel implants as the preferred fertility-control method. Conclusions. In addition to contraceptive effects, broad-scale fertility control may have resulted in a compensatory higher breeding success in the untreated population, possibly in response to decreasing densities, increased resource availability or behavioural responses to population management. Implications. Although compensatory breeding mechanisms can reduce the effectiveness of fertility control at the population level, ongoing fertility-control management can still be successful at reducing overabundant koala populations to sustainable levels with significant long-term commitment, provided that annual control targets are continuously met.
Emotional Agents in Educational Game Design: Heroes of Math Island

Evaluating the subjective playing experience and engagement in learning is important in the design of advanced learning technologies (ALTs) that respond to the learners’ cognitive and emotional states. This article addresses students’ attitudes toward an educational game, Heroes of Math Island, and their responses to the emotional agent, an animated monkey. Fifteen students (seven boys and eight girls) from grades six and seven participated in this quasi-experimental study (pretest, intervention, post-test, followed by post-questionnaire and interview). This research presents a detailed analysis of students’ subjective reactions with respect to Heroes of Math Island and to the underlying mathematics content, their learning gains and emotions triggered during gameplay, and design issues resulting from the evaluation of the game and of its emotional agent. The findings from this study inform how ALTs and educational games can be designed in order to be effective and provide emotional engagement, enjoyment, and learning.
National identity, cosmopolitanism, and attitudes toward immigrants

This study examines the effects of national and cosmopolitan self-identity on xenophobic attitudes across 33 countries with a multilevel analysis of data from the National Identity Module III of the International Social Survey Programme. Of primary interest is how country contexts are intertwined with the sense of national belonging to predict individuals’ anti-immigrant attitudes. The study finds that individuals with a stronger ethnicity-based national identity tend to evidence stronger xenophobia. Net of the individual-level effect of ethnic national identity, citizens of countries with a higher average of ethnic national identity also tend to be more xenophobic. Interestingly, the link between ethnic national identity and xenophobia is stronger in countries where this perspective is not shared as strongly. In the seemingly more ‘open’ country context, individuals’ belief in the requirement of ancestral roots for national membership may entail stronger exclusivism as a fringe ideology.
Acute Effects of Vibration Foam Rolling Warm-Up on Jump and Flexibility Asymmetry, Agility and Frequency Speed of Kick Test Performance in Taekwondo Athletes

The effect of asymmetry on flexibility and jump in taekwondo athletes and the influence of vibration foam rolling on asymmetry and frequency speed of kick test has not been examined. This study examined the effects of three warm-up protocols on subsequent sports performance in elite male taekwondo athletes. Fifteen elite male taekwondo athletes (20.63 ± 1.18 years) completed three warm-up protocols in a randomized order: general warm-up [GW], GW with vibration foam rolling [GW + VR], and GW with double VR for the weaker leg [GW + double VR]), was delivered before the subsequent tests: flexibility, single-leg countermovement jump (CMJ), 505 agility, hexagon test, and multiple frequency speed of kick tests (FSKTs). Relative to GW, the GW + VR significantly improved the hexagon test (GW + VR = 11.60 ± 1.01 s; GW = 12.80 ± 1.58 s). In addition, the GW + VR and GW + double VR yielded greater kick numbers in FSKT 5 (GW + VR = 21.13 ± 1.96 reps; GW + double VR = 20.93 ± 1.67 reps; GW = 19.27 ± 1.62 reps) and a higher kick decrement index (GW + VR = 5.45 ± 2.57%; GW + double VR = 5.88 ± 3.22%; GW = 9.54 ± 5.00%). However, the GW + VR and GW + double VR did not significantly improve the flexibility and CMJ asymmetry performance. The GW + VR is more beneficial for warming up than the GW is among male collegiate taekwondo athletes.
Impacts of temperature and humidity changes on air‐conditioning design load under the climate change conditions in different climate zones of China

Meteorological parameters, as the important basis for improving building energy efficiency, will show apparent changes under climate change conditions. In this study, outdoor design temperature and humidity for air‐conditioning system in 12 cities, representing major climatic zones of China, were analysed to determine the impacts of temperature and humidity on the design load of air‐conditioning system. The results showed that outdoor design temperature largely increased during the last few decades and relative humidity apparently decreased except for two cities belonging to the severe cold and hot summer and cold winter climate zones. The increase in temperature and decrease in humidity have made obvious changes in the design load of air‐conditioning system. The design loads for cooling increased 1.8%–10% in these selected cities during 1991–2017 compared with 1961–1990. By contrast, the design loads for dehumidification decreased 0.8%–7% in 1991–2017 relative to 1961–1990. When the cooling and dehumidification were considered together, the design loads changed from −1.5% to 4.1% in the two periods, depending on cities or climate zones. These results demonstrated that, under the condition of climate change, the combined changes of humidity and temperature rather than temperature alone should be fully considered to determine the design capacity of air‐conditioning system, especially for temperature and humidity independent control (THIC) air‐conditioning system, to save energy and improve indoor comfort.
COVID-19 Detection from Spectral Features on the DiCOVA Dataset

In this paper we investigate the cues of COVID-19 on sustained phonation of Vowel-/i/, deep breathing and number counting data of the DiCOVA dataset. We use an ensemble of classifiers trained on different features, namely, super-vectors, formants, harmonics and MFCC features. We fit a two-class Weighted SVM classifier to separate the COVID-19 audio from Non-COVID-19 audio. Weighted penalties help mitigate the challenge of class imbalance in the dataset. The results are reported on the stationary (breathing, Vowel-/i/) and nonstationary( counting data) data using individual and combination of features on each type of utterance. We find that the Formant information plays a crucial role in classification. The proposed system resulted in an AUC score of 0.734 for cross validation, and 0.717 for evaluation dataset. Copyright © 2021 ISCA.
Synthesis and Evaluation of C2-Symmetric SPIROL-Based bis-Oxazoline Ligands

This communication describes the synthesis of new bis-oxazoline chiral ligands (SPIROX) derived from the C2-symmetric spirocyclic scaffold (SPIROL). The readily available (R,R,R)-SPIROL (2) previously developed by our group was subjected to a three-step sequence that provided key diacid intermediate (R,R,R)-7 in 75% yield. This intermediate was subsequently coupled with (R)- and (S)-phenylglycinols to provide diastereomeric products, the cyclization of which led to two diastereomeric SPIROX ligands (R,R,R,R,R)-3a and (R,R,R,S,S)-3b in 85% and 79% yield, respectively. The complexation of (R,R,R,R,R)-3a and (R,R,R,S,S)-3b with CuCl and Cu(OTf)2 resulted in active catalysts that promoted the asymmetric reaction of α-diazopropionate and phenol. The resultant O–H insertion product was formed in 88% yield, and with excellent selectivity (97% ee) when ligand (R,R,R,R,R)-3a was used.
Employee Voice: The Missing Factor in Sustainable HRM?

Sustainable Human Resource Management (HRM), has the potential to facilitate organisations development of principles, policies and practices for the challenges of the 21st century. However, to do this we argue a fundamental element in this process has yet to be fully addressed and incorporated into the theory and practice of sustainable HRM; this is employee voice. Additionally, the actual and potential role of trade unions in facilitating employee voice is yet to be conceptualised within sustainable HRM literature. We argue that the development of effective employee voice mechanisms is vital in the implementation and maintenance of sustainable HRM. In this conceptual paper, we outline the nature of the voice architecture, the impact of the employment relationship on voice mechanisms, how it can be effectively measured, and propose a framework for further exploring these concepts. These key factors we identify as critical in implementing and assessing the effectiveness of the relationship between employee voice and sustainable HRM, to potentially serve as a basis of future research into sustainable HRM.
A Noise Robust Method for Word-Level Pronunciation Assessment

The common approach for pronunciation evaluation is based on Goodness of pronunciation (GOP). It has been found that GOP may perform worse under noise conditions. Traditional methods compensate pronunciation features to improve the performance of pronunciation assessment in noise situations. This paper proposed a noise robust model for word-level pronunciation assessment based on a domain adversarial training (DAT) method. We treat the pronunciation assessment in the clean and noise situations as the source and target domains. The network is optimized by incorporating both the pronunciation assessment and noise domain discrimination. The domain labels are generated from unsupervised methods to adapt to various noise situations. We evaluate the model performance based on English words recorded by Chinese English learners and labeled by three experts. Experimental results show on average the proposed model outperforms the baseline by 3% in Pearson correlation coefﬁcients (PCC) and 4% in accuracy under different noise conditions.
How are children’s rights to housing, safety and protection implemented in practice in Malmö?

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to examine how the rights of homeless children to housing and protection in accordance with articles 27 and 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are upheld in Malmö. The two research questions that are of particular interest in relation to this objective are firstly whether the Swedish parliament’s decision to incorporate the Convention on children’s rights into Swedish law has had a concrete effect on the implementation of children’s rights to housing and protection, and secondly how new guidelines that were introduced in Malmö in 2019 have had an impact on the same. The study is qualitative and employs an ethnographic approach based on conversations with 14 girls and 6 boys, which proceeded from photographs the children had taken of their housing situation and daily lives. The results show that homeless children and their needs and rights remain largely unseen in the work of the social services. The situation of this already vulnerable group has also worsened since our conversations with the children, since a majority no longer are part of the social services’ target group according to Malmö’s guidelines regarding homeless persons. It may be argued that such a result provides an indication both of society’s approach to children located on the extreme margins of society and of the way in which welfare provision has developed in Sweden.
Stable jump control for the wheel-legged robot based on TMS-DIP model

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel jump control method based on Two Mass Spring Damp Inverted Pendulum (TMS-DIP) model, which makes the third generation of hydraulic driven wheel-legged robot prototype (WLR-3P) achieve stable jumping. Design/methodology/approach First, according to the configuration of the WLR, a TMS-DIP model is proposed to simplify the dynamic model of the robot. Then the jumping process is divided into four stages: thrust, ascent, descent and compression, and each stage is modeled and solved independently based on TMS-DIP model. Through WLR-3P kinematics, the trajectory of the upper and lower centroids of the TMS-DIP model can be mapped to the joint space of the robot. The corresponding control strategies are proposed for jumping height, landing buffer, jumping attitude and robotic balance, so as to realize the stable jump control of the WLR. Findings The TMS-DIP model proposed in this paper can simplify the WLR dynamic model and provide a simple and effective tool for the jumping trajectory planning of the robot. The proposed approach is suitable for hydraulic WLR jumping control. The performance of the proposed wheel-legged jump method was verified by experiments on WLR-3P. Originality/value This work provides an effective model (TMS-DIP) for the jump control of WLR-3P. The results showed that the number of landing shock (twice) and the pitch angle fluctuation range (0.44 rad) of center of mass of the jump control method based on TMS-DIP model are smaller than those based on spring-loaded inverted pendulum model. Therefore, the TMS-DIP model makes the jumping process of WLR more stable and gentler.
Suspect and positive cases of bovine tuberculosis in the Republic of Croatia from 2017 to 2020

During regular implementation of the bovine tuberculosis-free cattle herd certification programme in the period from 2017 to 2020, the Laboratory for Bacterial Zoonoses and Molecular Diagnostics of Bacterial Diseases of Croatian veterinary institute Zagreb, Croatia tested material from 161 cattle from 27 holdings in 11 counties. The material was submitted following findings of pathoanatomical changes detected in the slaughter line suggesting tuberculosis, or after a positive reaction of cows to the tuberculin comparative methods. Species from the M. tuberculosis complex (M. bovis and M. caprae) were isolated from samples of 58 bovines (36%) from 16 holdings in eight counties. M. caprae was confirmed in 55 bovines (34%) originating from 13 holdings in seven counties, and M. bovis in three bovines (2%), each from a different holding in a different county. Saprophytic mycobacteria were isolated from four bovine samples (2.5%) from three holdings in two counties, i.e., M. gordonae (1), M. celatum (1) and two unidentified species (M. sp.). Based on the obtained results, we can conclude that the main causative agent of bovine tuberculosis in the Republic of Croatia is M. caprae, which confirmed previous findings. Control of bovine tuberculosis in the Republic of Croatia is still needed and, in the future, should be further suppressed using tuberculinisation, controls on slaughter lines, depopulation of infected herds, and etiological determination of the causative agents.
The effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing in different tasks: Evidence from late Chinese–English bilinguals

Although it has been well established that emotional content influences language comprehension, the effects of emotionality on L2 (second language: English) word processing require further clarification. Notably, most previous studies unsystematically mixed words of different lexical categories, although they often showed processing differences. Here, using the same set of tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words across three lexical categories (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives), we examined the effects of emotionality and lexical category on L2 word processing by conducting three experiments. In these experiments, three groups of late Chinese–English bilinguals performed three tasks: the emotional Stroop task (Experiment 1), the lexical decision task (Experiment 2), and the emotional categorisation task (Experiment 3), respectively. Overall, our data suggested that emotionality and lexical category exerted no influence on L2 word processing in the emotional Stroop task, but acted interactively to influence it in the other two tasks. The results evidenced that the processing of L2 emotional words was sensitive to task type. Therefore, we conclude that future research on L2 word processing should fully consider the emotionality, lexical category, and task type.
The Art of Inducing Hypoxia

Many cells in the human body strongly react on decreased oxygen concentrations, generally defined as hypoxia. Therefore, inducing hypoxia in vitro is essential for research. Classically, hypoxia is induced using a hypoxia chamber, but alternative methods exist that do not require special equipment. Here, we compared three different methods to induce hypoxia without a hypoxia chamber: the chemical stabilization of HIF-1α by CoCl2, the decrease in pericellular oxygen concentrations by increased media height, and the consumption of oxygen by an enzymatic system. Hypoxia induction was further analyzed within three different cell culture systems: 2D (adherent) osteoprogenitor cells, monocytic (suspension) cells, and in a 3D in vitro fracture hematoma model. The different methods were analyzed within the scope of fracture healing regarding inflammation and differentiation. We could show that all three induction methods were feasible for hypoxia induction within adherent cells. Increased media heights did not stimulate a hypoxic response within suspension cells and in the 3D system. Chemical stabilization of HIF-1α showed limitations when looking at the expression of cytokines in osteoprogenitors and monocytes. Enzymatic reduction of oxygen proofed to be most effective within all three systems inducing inflammation and differentiation.
Online Speaker Diarization Equipped with Discriminative Modeling and Guided Inference

Despite considerable efforts, online speaker diarization remains an ongoing challenge. In this study, we propose to tackle the challenge from two perspectives, to endow diarization model with discriminability and to rectify less-reliable online inference with guidance. Speciﬁcally, based on the current prior art, UIS-RNN, two enhancement approaches are proposed to concretize our motivations. The effectiveness of our proposals is experimentally validated by results on the AMI evaluation set. With substantial relative improvement of 48.7%, our online speaker diarization system signiﬁcantly outperformed its base-line. More impressively, its performance in terms of diarization error rate is better than most state-of-the-art ofﬂine systems.