Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metacognitive Knowledge and Metacognitive Control of Writing Strategy between High- and Low-performing Chinese EFL Writers

This study investigated metacognitive knowledge and control of writing strategy in English among 65 Chinese EFL learners in two argumentative writing tasks. Metacognitive knowledge was measured using a questionnaire written in simple present tense. Metacognitive control required writers to respond to a questionnaire written in simple past tense immediately following completion of each writing task according to the actual strategy use in the writing tasks. Students were grouped into high- and low-performing EFL writers using one standard error above or below the Mean scores of the writing tasks. One-way ANOVA was conducted on the four kinds of writing strategies (i.e., planning, cognitive, monitor-control, and evaluating). We found that while there were no differences on any type of the writing strategies for metacognitive knowledge, the two groups differed in the actual writing strategy use on each occasion. For the more familiar and easier writing topic, high- and low-performing students differed only in cognitive writing strategies. For the less familiar and more challenging writing task, high-achievers adopted significantly more planning, cognitive, and evaluating strategies than low-achievers. This research supported for distinction between metacognitive knowledge and control in EFL writing.
Gene Expression Patterns of some Transcription Factors (Zpt2-1, CBF4, bHLH) under Salt Stress in Alfalfa by Using qPCR

Researchers need continuously improve their views on mechanisms of salt toler- ance in crop plants in order to overcome their limitations and improve yields under stress conditions including salt stress. One of the most important methods of con- trolling stresses in plants is through making adjustments during the process of gene transcription. Transcription factors adjust the degree of expression in many genes by binding to DNA and are thus very important in salt tolerance of plants. There- fore, the present research studied the role of transcription factors bHLH, CBF4, and Zpt2-1in salt tolerance by investigating their expression patterns under salt stress in the leaf and root tissues of the Yazdi (salt tolerant) and the Diabloverde (sensitive to salinity) genotypes of Alfalfa. Results showed that short-term salt stress affects on expression patterns of the CBF4, Zpt2-1, and bHLH genes in leaf and root tis- sues of both genotypes. Using qRT-PCR (Real-Time PCR) analysis, it was shown that the transcription factors Zpt2-1 and CBF4 in the salt tolerant genotype (Yazdi) were expressed at a higher level in root tissues. In other words, it seems that higher expression levels of the transcription factors Zpt2-1 and CBF4 were accompanied by greater salt tolerance. This finding can help plant breeders to use these transcrip- tion factors for selecting salt-tolerant genotypes in alfalfa. Keywords: Medicago sativa, Real-Time PCR, Salt Tolerance
Design for sodal interaction through physical play

Nine very interesting position papers were submitted to our workshop on Design for Social Interactioll and Physical Play. The papers, present.ed in these proceedings, cover design concepts for very diverse user groups and eontexts of use. Creating novel concepts is often done using theories about human behaviour a~ all inspiration source. This introduction describes the content of our workshop along three dimensions: user groups, context of use and related theories.
Deconstructing "The Iron Cage"--towards an Aesthetic of Folding

This essay develops elements of an aesthetic of folding. It uses the metaphor of the fold as a moving concept, which allows overcoming dualistic modes of thinking, which separate inside and outside, organization and environment. The paper starts with the deconstruction of the story of the "Iron Cage" which haunted members of a concrete organization in which the author is positioned. Similarly, organizational theorists in the Weberian and Foucauldian tradition have been haunted by the image of the "Iron Cage" which led to a concentration on the limitations imposed by organization and the competitive pressures of the market. An aesthetic of folding attempts to shift attention to the creative process of organizing, which happens always on the boundary. It positions organizational actors in a field of tensions from which experiences and possibilities of creative re-formation arise. It leads to a view of organization as a process in which various materials are connected and related into productive forms.
Regulated large‐scale annual shutdown of Amazonian isoprene emissions?

We perform Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis on 12 years of global GOME and SCIAMACHY formaldehyde (HCHO) column observations to determine the most significant spatial and temporal HCHO variations. In most regions, we find that HCHO variability is predominantly driven by seasonal variations of biogenic emissions and biomass burning. However, unusually low HCHO columns are consistently observed over the Amazon rainforest during the transition from the wet‐to‐dry seasons. We use MODIS leaf area and enhanced vegetation indices, to show variations in vegetation are consistent with the observed decrease in HCHO during this period (correlations of 0.69 and 0.67, respectively). Based on this evidence, we suggest isoprene emitting vegetation experience widespread leaf flushing (new leaf growth) prior to the dry season, resulting in a large‐scale annual shutdown of Amazonian isoprene emissions.
Double-exchange mechanisms for Mn-doped III-V ferromagnetic semiconductors

A microscopic model of indirect exchange interaction between transition metal impurities in dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) is proposed. The hybridization of the impurity d-electrons with the heavy hole band states is mainly responsible for the exchange of electrons between the impurities, whereas the Hund rule for the electron occupation of the impurity d-shells makes it spin selective. The model is applied to such systems as n-type (Ga,Mn)N and p-type (Ga,Mn)As, p-type (Ga,Mn)P. In n-type DMS with Mn 2+/3+ impurities the exchange mechanism is rather close to the kinematic exchange proposed by Zener for mixed-valence Mn ions. In p-type DMS ferromagnetism is governed by the kinematic mechanism involving the kinetic energy gain of the heavy hole carriers caused by their hybridization with 3d electrons of Mn 2+ impurities. Using the molecular field approximation, the Curie temperatures TC are calculated for several systems as functions of the impurity and hole concentrations. Comparison with the available experimental data shows a good agreement.
Effective Black Hole Attacks in MANETs

Black hole or packet drop attack is a denial of ser vice attack on routing protocols in which malicious nodes fabricate routing information, attract packets rout ed through them and then deliberately drop these pa ckets. Most of the black hole attack simulations are perfo rmed by constantly fabricating routing information and thus consistently attracting packets to them, which can be easily detected by the intrusion detection system. In this study, a complicated and difficult to detec t black hole attack is proposed. The malicious node s only perform packet drop when they are in the advantageous positions or locations in the networks. This stu dy investigates the impact of the proposed black hole attack performed by random as well as critical node s, to the network performance. Critical nodes are nodes t hat reside along the most active traffic paths and results show that the attacks performed by these nodes caus e significant damage to the networks or substantial reduction in packet delivery ratio in comparison to that of random nodes.
Profitability of Commercial Banks Revisited: New Evidence from Oil and Non-Oil Exporting Countries in the MENA Region

This paper investigates the determinants of commercial bank profitability in oil and non-oil countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using data from 11 countries over the period 2004–2014. Since banks are under no obligation to fill reports to Bankscope database, irregular reporting banks are omitted from the sample and the model is re-estimated using only regular reporting banks, and a comparative analysis between total banks' sample and regular reporting banks' sample is provided. Using the two-step system GMM and fixed effects models, the results indicate that credit risk is negative and highly significant when irregular reporting banks are omitted from the sample particularly in non-oil countries unlike the oil countries case, which indicates that adding irregular reporting banks to the sample could lead to bias in some estimated coefficients if they constitute a considerable percentage of the total banks' sample. Diversification is a key determinant for profitability in oil countries. No enough evidence to support the impact of financial inclusion and financial openness on bank profitability. In addition, the global financial crisis has significantly affected bank profitability in oil countries. Several policy implications are provided to the bank management to follow based on each country group.
Emergency nurses’ preparedness for disaster in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Background and objective : The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has recently faced many man-made and natural disasters. Since disaster victims are transferred to hospitals, nurses are among the first health care providers to respond to an emergency. Therefore, to improve disaster management it is essential to examine the current state of nurses’ preparedness. The aim of the study was attempts to determine the disaster preparedness of emergency nurses in Saudi Arabia. Methods : The study data were collected using two survey tools from the research literature, and 72 participants were recruited from two government hospitals in Riyadh. The response rate was 31.7%. Results : The study revealed that most nurses understood their roles after reading the disaster plan. Although half of the respondents had completed training in the previous 12 months, only 60% answered the item related to confidence after training. There was a significant difference between the confidence of those who had participated in a disaster or mass casualties training program and that of those who had not. Only 26% answered the item related to confidence after being involved in a real disaster, and no significant difference was found between the confidence of those who had attended a real disaster or mass casualties event and that of those who had not. Conclusions : The study found that respondents had minimal and limited disaster experience, as reflected in their low levels of confidence after being involved in real disaster events. This highlights the need for continued efforts to expand disaster training and ensure that nurses are appropriately prepared.
NUMERICAL APPROACH TO MICROSTRUCTURAL CHARACTERIZATIONS FOR DENSE AND POROUS THERMAL BARRIER COATINGS

During spray coating, especially in an air plasma spray (APS), pores, cracks, and splat boundaries are developed and those factors exert influence on thermomechanical properties such as elastic modulus, thermal conductivity, and coefficient of thermal expansion. Moreover, the thermo mechanical properties are crucial elements to determine the thermoelastic characteristics, for instance, temperature distribution, displacements, and stresses. Two types of thermal barrier coating (TBC) model, the dense and porous microstructures, are taken into account for the analysis of microstructural characterizations. TriplexPro TM -200 system was applied to prepare TBC samples, and the METECO 204 C-NS powder is adopted for the relatively porous microstructure and METECO 204 NS powder for the dense microstructure in the top coat of TBCs. Governing partial differential equations were derived based on the thermoelastic theory and approximate estimates for the thermoelastic characteristics were obtained using a finite volume method for the governing equations.
Modeling & Simulation of High Performance Nanoscale MOSFETs

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) has been the forerunner of the CMOS technology in the last few decades offering superior CMOS devices with higher speed, higher density and reduced second order effects for submicron VLSI applications.A new type of transistor without junctions and no doping concentration gradients is analysed and demonstrated. These device structures address the challenge of short channel effects (SCEs) resulting with scaling of transistor dimensions and higher performance for deep submicron VLSI integration. Recent experimental studies have invigorated interest in partially depleted (PD) SOI devices because of their potentially superior scalability relative to bulk silicon CMOS devices. SELBOX structure offer an alternative way of suppressing kink effect and self heating effects in PD-SOI devices with a proper selection of oxide gap length. Also in order to mitigate the difficulties in fabrication of ultra thin devices for the semiconductor industry, resulting from scaling of gate length in MOSFET, a new device structure called junctionless (JL) transistors have recently been reported as an alternative device. In conclusion, extensive numerical simulation studies were used to explore and compare the electrical characteristics of SELBOX SOI MOSFET with a conventional single-material gate (SMG) bulk MOSFET. The proposed work investigates the DC and AC characteristics of the junctionless transistors. Also the performance analysis of JL transistors is compared and presented with the conventional DG MOSFET structure. The results presented in this work are expected to provide incentive for further experimental exploration.
Relative Activity of Brook Trout and Walleyes in Response to Flow in a Regulated River

Abstract Coded electromyogram telemetry transmitters were used to examine the effects of varying flows on the relative activity of brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis and walleye Sander vitreus in a regulated river. The relative activity levels of two brook trout and two walleyes were continuously monitored for a minimum of 24 h, and measurements were compared with river flow values logged at nearby gauging stations. Generally, fish relative activity levels mimicked patterns of flow change, peaks in activity level corresponding to peaks in flow. Mean relative activity was generally greatest at extreme high (≥25-m3/s) and low (<15-m3/s) flows. High flows may have elicited hyperactivity (increased activity) as fish sought suitable refugia, increased activity to hold position in the water column, or increased feeding activity on increased levels of drifting invertebrates. Hyperactivity at low flows may have been caused by relocation due to habitat loss or ease of movement at lower flow regimes. Physiological t.
D G ] 2 5 A pr 2 01 8 WEYL SCALARS ON COMPACT RICCI SOLITONS

We investigate the triviality of compact Ricci solitons under general scalar conditions involving the Weyl tensor. More precisely, we show that a compact Ricci soliton is Einstein if a generic linear combination of divergences of the Weyl tensor contracted with suitable covariant derivatives of the potential function vanishes. In particular we recover and improve all known related results. This paper can be thought as a first, preliminary step in a general program which aims at showing that Ricci solitons can be classified finding a “generic” [k, s]-vanishing condition on the Weyl tensor, for every k, s ∈ N, where k is the order of the covariant derivatives of Weyl and s is the type of the (covariant) tensor involved.
How Making It Easier to Succeed Reduces Success: IPO Reform and New Firm Performance

We examine how institutional changes that lower the barriers to successful exit influence the rate of IPO, and the initial capitalization and performance of subsequent ventures. Such IPO market reforms are widespread, but their effectiveness is unclear. We take advantage of a quasi-natural experiment in which the IPO listing requirements in Japan were dramatically reduced. Using a unique database of over 30,000 new firms incorporated after 1982, we find that IPO market reform is a powerful institutional lever that increases the rate of IPOs, attracts capital, and improves the performance of some ventures. But it is also a blunt instrument that influences only some industries, triggers poor performance among firms where it has an effect, and improves performance for only elite entrepreneurs. Overall, we find that IPO market reform is a complex institutional change. We conclude with contributions at the nexus of institutional theory and entrepreneurship that indicate where and for whom institutional change will be effective, and indicate that lowering barriers to successful exit like IPOs amplifies the performance variance among new firms.
Noise estimation and diusion signal reconstruction: From cradle to parallel imaging

Noise is known to be one of the main sources of quality deterioration in magnetic resonance (MR) data. Not only visual inspection but also processing techniques such as segmentation, registration or tensor estimation in diusion tensor MRI (DT-MRI) will be aected or biased due to the presence of noise. In High Angular Resolution Diusion Imaging (HARDI) for instance, to achieve a speedup in the acquisition time the temporal averaging is reduced; as a consequence, the strength of the noise is increased proportionally to the square root of the speedup. Noise in the k-space in MR data is usually assumed to be a zero-mean uncorrelated complex Gaussian process in each scanner coil, with equal variance in both the real and imaginary parts. As a result, sometimes it is easy to derive the distributiuon of the magnitude data (as in single coil systems) and other not-so easy, as in multiple coil parallel reconstruction. Many ltering methods have been proposed either to remove the noise or to estimate the signal out of the noise. Dierent approaches may be found in the literature: (1) general ltering methods (anisotropic diusion ltering, total variation methods) and (2) methods based on the statistical properties of the signal and noise (LMMSE, ML.). The talk will concentrate on discussing the nature of noise and means to address the challenges associated with it.
Extensions of the complex Jacobi iteration to simulate photonic wavelength scale components

We have extended the complex Jacobi iteration to simulate nonlinear optical components. The size of these components is comparable to the used wavelength (µm). In this paper we will give an overview of the technique and several simulation results. The algorithm uses a central dierence analogue of the Helmholtz equation. The used nonlinearity is the third order Kerr eect, which is modelled as an instantaneous intensity-
Climate‐growth analysis for a Mexican dry forest tree shows strong impact of sea surface temperatures and predicts future growth declines

Tropical forests will experience relatively large changes in temperature and rainfall towards the end of this century. Little is known about how tropical trees will respond to these changes. We used tree rings to establish climate‐growth relations of a pioneer tree, Mimosa acantholoba, occurring in tropical dry secondary forests in southern Mexico. The role of large‐scale climatic drivers in determining interannual growth variation was studied by correlating growth to sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Annual growth varied eightfold over 1970–2007, and was correlated with wet season rainfall (r=0.75). Temperature, cloud cover and solar variation did not affect growth, although these climate variables correlated with growth due to their relations with rainfall. Strong positive correlations between growth and SSTA occurred in the North tropical Atlantic during the first half of the year, and in the Pacific during the second half of the year. The Pacific influence corresponded closely to ENSO‐like influences with negative effects of high SSTA in the eastern Pacific Niño3. 4 region on growth due to decreases in rainfall. During El Niño years growth was reduced by 37%. We estimated how growth would be affected by the predicted trend of decreasing rainfall in Central America towards the end of this century. Using rainfall predictions of two sets of climate models, we estimated that growth at the end of this century will be reduced by 12% under a medium (A1B) and 21% under a high (A2) emission scenario. These results suggest that climate change may have repercussions for the carbon sequestration capacity of tropical dry forests in the region.
Design of a Nutrient Reclamation System for the Cultivation of Microalgae for Biofuel Production and Other Industrial Applications

Microalgal biomass has been identified as a promising feedstock for a number of industrial applications, including the synthesis of new pharmaceutical and biofuel products. However, there are several economic limitations associated with the scale up of existing algal production processes. Critical economic studies of algae-based industrial processes highlight the high cost of supplying essential nutrients to microalgae cultures. With microalgae cells having relatively high nitrogen contents (4 to 8%), the N fertilizer cost in industrial-scale production is significant. In addition, the disposal of the large volumes of cell residuals that are generated during product extraction stages can pose other economic challenges. While waste streams can provide a concentrated source of nutrients, concerns about the presence of biological contaminants and the expense of heat treatment pose challenges to processes that use wastewater as a nutrient source in microalgae cultures. The goal of this study was to evaluate the potential application of ultrafiltration technology to aid in the utilization of agricultural wastewater in the cultivation of a high-value microalgae strain. An ultrafiltration system was used to remove inorganic solids and biological contaminants from wastewater taken from a swine farm in Savoy, Arkansas. The permeate from the system was then used as the nutrient source for the cultivation of the marine microalgae Porphyridium cruentum. During the ultrafiltration system operation, little membrane fouling was observed, and permeate fluxes remained relatively constant during both short-term and long-term tests. The complete rejection of E. coli and coliforms from the wastewater was also observed, in addition to a 75% reduction in total solids, including inorganic materials. The processed permeate was shown to have very high concentrations of total nitrogen (695.6 mg L) and total phosphorus (69.1 mg L). In addition, the growth of P. cruentum was analyzed in a medium containing swine waste permeate, and was compared to P. cruentum growth in a control medium. A higher biomass productivity, lipid productivity, and lipid content were observed in the microalgae cultivated in the swine waste medium compared to that of the control medium. These results suggest that, through the use of ultrafiltration technology as an alternative to traditional heat treatment, agricultural wastewaters could be effectively utilized as a nutrient source for microalgae cultivation.
The Parisi ultrametricity conjecture

In this paper we prove that the support of a random measure on the unit ball of a separable Hilbert space that satisfies the Ghirlanda-Guerra identities must be ultrametric with probability one. This implies the Parisi ultrametricity conjecture in mean-field spin glass models, such as the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and mixed $p$-spin models, for which Gibbs' measures are known to satisfy the Ghirlanda-Guerra identities in the thermodynamic limit.