Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The language barrier:using concept inventories to teach science to first-year university students

The effective use of language in science is a perennial topic in science education. In studying science students are confronted not only with the scientific concepts of the disciplinary area but also with its discipline specific language. In English, this challenge is compounded by the overlap in meaning between discipline specific terminology and everyday language. Science concept testing tools, which have been developed to deal with these issues, are widely used for testing understanding of science concepts. However, Science educators are facing new challenges with the increasing diversity of the student cohort accessing tertiary education. These students’ educational, cultural and linguistic backgrounds combined with their unfamiliarity with the academic discourse of their discipline may be an obstacle to their smooth transition. In the past, the specially written Concept Inventories supported lecturers and students in this transition but these inventories were not designed for the student cohorts of the twenty-first century. This paper reports on our study of one of the more proven concept testing tools ‘The Force Concept Inventory’ (physics) and its application in large first-year classes with non-traditional students.
THE ROLE OF EXTRACORPOREAL SHOCK WAVE LITHOTRIPSY ESWL IN THE TREATMENT OF UPPER URETERAL STONE DISEASE

Purpose: To evaluate the role of extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) in the management of upper ureteral stones. Patients and methods Between May 2009 and June 2011, 115 patients with radio-opaque upper ureteral stones who referred to lithotripsy unit in Al-hussain teaching hospital in Thiqar, 83 male( average 48 years) and 32 female (average 51years), treated with extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL). The patients were discharged from the hospital on the same day of treatment and patients were asked to return after two weeks for fallow up plain film together with ultrasound examination, to be able to detect fragmentation and stone clearance together with the effect of treatment and obstruction on the upper tract. Results The over all success rate for the patient at 3 months of follow up was 64.3% (74 pt.) the success rate decreases as the stone size increases. It decrease from 76% to patients with stone <10 mm to only 52% to patients with stone > 15mm. The remaining 41 patients (٣5.6%) were considered failure, either due to non fragmentation of the stone despite repeated sessions (3 sessions) or fragments are large that failed to pass (5 cases). All patients were treated on an outpatient basis; the complications were minimal and treated conservatively. Conclusions ESWL is safe, effective, noninvasive and a convenient way of treatment for upper ureteral stones. ESWL being an outpatient procedure without any need for anesthesia or any pretreatment intervention, it should be considered as the first line of treatment for all stones in the upper ureter. However the clearance rates for stones larger than 15 mm were low.
ONTOLOGY-CONCEPTS WEIGHTING FOR ENHANCED SEMANTIC CLASSIFICATION OF DOCUMENTS

Automatic document classification has become increasingly important and difficult due to the large scale of the electronic documents used in the last years. Traditional information retrieval systems are based on the extraction of keywords from documents; these keywords serve as a basis for documents classification. This paper proposes a new semantic approach for documents classification. Specifically, our approach captures, in addition to the keywords frequency, the meaning of these keywords in documents using domain ontology. The main idea is to represent documents by concepts rather than keywords, and calculates weights for these concepts to reflect their importance in the documents where they appear. The presence of concepts in the same paragraph, section, document, or document set, provides important information to better extract and understand the semantic content of the document and therefore improves its classification. The experimental evaluation is carried out using the Reuters document collection RCV1-v2 and the GALEN medical ontology. The documents are classified using the SVM classifier. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach yields higher accuracy, precision and recall compared to the traditional keyword-based information retrieval approaches.
1 Production Outsourcing and Demand Variability

We examine the relation between demand variability and firms’ production outsourcing decisions. Contrary to the traditional intuition, we predict that demand variability has a negative impact on outsourcing by a manufacturer from a supplier. The analytical intuition is that the manufacturer does not smooth its production orders from the supplier under outsourcing, increasing supply chain costs. When demand variability is high, this is likely to outweigh the supplier’s cost advantage, leading to a negative relation between demand variability and outsourcing. We test this prediction using a large sample of manufacturing firms in Turkey. As predicted, we find that firms facing a more variable demand outsource a smaller proportion of their manufacturing costs on average, and are less likely to engage in outsourcing. The results are significant both statistically and economically and are robust to alternative specifications.
A Test of the Theory of DSS Design for User Calibration: The Effects of Expressiveness and Visibility on User Calibration

This paper reports a test of the theory of decision support systems design for user calibration that compares the efficiency of the visual computing paradigm with that of the conventional text paradigm over varied levels of problem novelty. Perfect user calibration exists when a user’s confidence in a decision equals the quality of the decision. The laboratory study reported here compared the effects on user calibration of problems depicted either using a text paradigm or visual computing paradigm. The results support the theory. When problems are new and novel, visual depiction improves user calibration. As problems became more familiar and problem novelty decreases, no difference was found in user calibration between subjects exposed to visibility diagrams and those exposed to a traditional text paradigm.
Envisaged the potential of sustainable sacred tourism in Java Indonesia

Indonesian domestic tourism industries reach 123 million tourists in 2011 and contributed $16.35 Billion. This research conducted from July 2011 till December 2012, 304 respondents were collected by purposive and stratified sampling, in Java Island where were inhabited by 58% of total Indonesian peoples.The data was tabulated by content analysis. The objective of this research is to envisage the potential of sustainable sacred tourism in Java Indonesia.Based on sustainable tourism, the carrying out of sustainable sacred tourism in Java Island showed 57.89 percent are sustainable sacred tourisms. The rest 42. 11 percent of sustainable sacred tourisms would be improved by implementing sustainable tourism concept.High-end sustainable operation shares the benefits of sustainable sacred tourism with surrounding communities through employment as trickle-down effect s of revenue that result of it.The benefit from sustainable sacred tourism is not only to improve environmental performance, but it is also improving domestic tourist visitation up to 42 percent and market share of domestic tourism as well.
IMPACT OF FEEDING MILK REPLACER ON GROWTH RATE AND BLOOD PARAMETERS IN HOLSTEIN X KANKREJ CROSSBRED CALVES

An experiment was conducted on 18 Holstein x Kankrej crossbred calves of either sex to study the effect of formulated milk replacer on growth, body measurements and blood biochemical parameters. The new born calves were fed colostrum @ 10% for first 3 days and whole milk @ 12.5% of body weight up to 9 th day of age. From tenth day calves were randomly distributed in to three treatment group. T1 group received whole milk as per routine farm practice; T2 group was fed whole milk and commercial milk replacer as per instruction of manufacturer, whereas T3 calves were fed formulated milk replacer @ 12.5 % of body weight with upper limit of 4 kg. The average weight and body measurements at 10 th day of age in all groups were statistically similar. The overall mean values of body weight, daily growth rate, body length, height at wither and heart girth were 33.90±0.89 kg, 205.92±13.44 g, 69.47±0.58 cm, 73.65±0.47 cm and 73.51±1.53 cm, respectively. The growth rates of T3 and T2 calves were significantly lower (p<0.05) than the T1 calves; the difference between T2 and T3 was non-significant. The measurements for body length, height at wither and heart girth at the end of experiment (94 th day of age) were significantly (p<0.05) higher under T1 than T3 and T2 groups, the values for T2 were also significantly lower than T3 group. Blood serum biochemical parameters like total protein, albumin, creatinine, calcium and phosphorus of calves fed milk or milk replacer were within normal range. The serum calcium and phosphorus were higher for calves fed whole milk. In general, the crossbred calves can be raised on milk replacer without adverse effect on growth and blood biochemical parameters, and it provides better option for commercial dairy farmer to spare whole milk for human consumption and get more income.
Overcoming Citizen Mistrust and Enhancing Democratic Practices : Results from the E-participation Platform México Participa

This article reviews the experiences, obstacles, and lessons learned from development and deployment of the México Participa e-participation platform as a case study for future platforms, both in Mexico and in transitional democracies with similar sociopolitical characteristics such as pervasive distrust of public institutions and limited civic participation. México Participa was released three months before the June 2015 midterm Mexican presidential election. Although the platform continues to operate, this article focuses on the period leading up to the election. 3,054 participants offered 336 suggestions and provided 14,033 peer-to-peer assessments. A postelection survey highlighted the need for a platform such as México Participa to be continually available to sustain citizen evaluation of government performance and to promote transparency and accountability.
Voltage Harmonic Suppression by Means of Grid-Connected Converters Using only Local Measurements

A single-phase grid-connected converter is considered in this paper in the presence of harmonic problems introduced non-linear loads. In order to compensate the harmonics caused by the loads, a local voltage support scheme is proposed. This is an added feature because its implementation is in parallel with a conventional current control method. Distinctively, the measurements of the grid or load current are not needed since the scheme is based on only local measurements. On top of a fundamental part for desired power injection, the converter output current comprises a harmonic part for compensation. Thus, the grid current harmonic distortion is minimized and the enhancement of the local voltage quality is achieved. A comprehensive model analysis indicates that the proposed strategy can help to attenuate harmonics of the local voltage without compromising on the quality of the fundamental current injection. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. Moreover, the impact of grid frequency estimation error on the control strategy’s performance is quantified theoretically and experimentally.
Environmental news and stock markets performance: Further evidence for Argentina

More and more firms tend nowadays to adopt environment-friendly attitudes. Their motivation originates in local environmental regulations or requirements of foreign markets to which firms export (both induced by consumers and investors´ valuation of pro-environment initiatives). There is a well-established literature capturing the impact on stock prices of environmental information releases using the event study methodology. Studies are usually based on information environmental regulation (i.e., the regulator announcement of emissions or compliance status with respect to standards) or on simple media coverage of environmental news. Dasgupta, Laplante and Mamingi (2001) is one of the few references to show that public information on environmental behavior has impact on stock prices in the developing world. It includes Argentina in its analysis together with Chile, Mexico and the Philippines. In this manuscript, we focus specifically on Argentina. We find that positive environmental news have no impact, while negative news do have an effect on average rates of return a few days following its appearance. But, when focusing on different types of positive news, we find that ISO certification has no effect whatsoever, while investment decisions do have some positive significant influence on returns. On the other side, negative news influence on stock returns is particularly significant for events linked to citizen complaints and government rulings (confirming other studies results) and for media coverage of oil company issues. However, we find abnormal returns of a much smaller magnitude than other studies for developing countries. We believe that is readonable because there seem to be no reason why the level of abnormal returns (not its volatility) should be larger for environmental news in developing countries than in developed ones.
Rainfall induced shallow landslides on sandy soil and impacts on sediment discharge: A flume based investigation

The impact of rainfall induced shallow landslides on hillslope sediment discharge is not well understood. The aim of the research was to investigate how varying soil profile depth affects the location and occurrence of shallow slope failures as well as how it impacts sediment yields. Four flume based experiments were conducted using a sandy soil and a 30 and 10 degree compound slope configuration under average rainfall intensity of 50 mm/hr for soil profile’s depths set to 20, 30, 40 and 50 cm. Sediment discharge and runoff were collected from the flume outlet at 15 minute intervals. Changes in soil profiles after landslides and changes in soil properties like soil armouring were also recorded. Results showed that sediment yields at the outlet, before landslides occurred, were very low and limited to the finer soil particles as would be expected for a sandy soil. However subsequent variations in sediment discharge were strongly related to failure events and their proximity from the outlet. The sediment yield was also affected by the original soil thickness. The results provide a clear link of landslides and sediment discharge to hydrological processes occurring in the hillslope which are related to the soil thickness.
APPLICATION OF GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR TRAJECTORY PLANNING OF TWO DEGREE-OF-FREEDOM ROBOT ARM WITH TWO DIMENSIONS

In this work, the trajectory planning problem of two-link robot arm in the two dimensions workspace with containing obstacles was considered. The objectives of this research were to apply genetic algorithm (GA) to minimise the rotation angles of two-joint robot arm. The algorithm was used to find interior points, which were then used to interpolate the robot trajectory by avoiding obstacles. The methods for point-to-point interpolation including linear and cubic spline interpolation methods were investigated. However, due to the nature of stochastic search conducted within the GA, the investigation of this study was not only focused on the quality of the solution itself but also on the investigation of appropriate setting of GA parameters. Haft fractional factorial experimental design was carried out with five replications. The results were then analyzed using a general linear form of analysis of variance and main effect plots. It was found that the experimental results obtained by using the cubic spline interpolation method generally produced better results than those of using linear spline interpolation method. The analysis of variance on the results suggested some GA parameters were found to be statistically significant factors.
The RoboCup Logistics League as a Benchmark for Planning in Robotics

Planning in robotics as task-level executive is still an exception rather than the norm. Domains are often too dynamic or complex and therefore developers resort to more reactive or deliberative tools. In this paper, we characterize the RoboCup Logistics League (RCLL) as a medium complex robotics planning domain in terms of domain properties, implementation strategies, and planning models. We propose the RCLL in simulation and on real robots as a suitable testbed for a comparison of planning systems.
COMPARISON OF UV IRRADIANCE PRODUCTS FROM OMI WITH BREWER MEASUREMENTS IN THE COASTAL AREA OF THE GULF OF CADIZ ( SPAIN ) : INFLUENCE OF AEROSOLS

Several validation studies have shown the notable overestimation of the UV irradiance at the Earth's surface derived from satellite sensors as TOMS and OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) with respect to ground-based UV data in many locations. Main part of this positive bias is attributed to boundary layer aerosol absorption that is not accounted in the current satellite algorithms. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to compare the erythemal CIE-UV irradiance (UVER) and spectral UV irradiances (at 305, 310 and 324 nm) from OMI with ground-based measurements from a Brewer spectroradiometer, focusing the comparison in a detailed study over the aerosol effect on OMI irradiances and its correction. The analyzed period comprises more than four years, from July 2004 to December 2008 and the site of study is the El Arenosillo station which is representative of the South-West of Spain and Europe. Here, we have carried out the OMI irradiance correction based on a detailed study about the characterization of absorbing aerosols at our site-station based on AERONET-PHOTONSRIMA data. First we consider AOD, Angstrom exponent and also OMI-AI index to determine absorbing aerosol but finally aerosol optical thickness (AAOT) or single scattering albedo (SSA) was taken as a more suitable approach. An aerosol formula already proposed in previous publications was applied for OMI bias correction taking two approaches. The first approach was based on a constant SSA value of 0.915 (then as depending on AOD features) which reduces OMI UVER bias from 13.38% to 8.4% and the second approach using daily SSA values reduces to 11.65%, thus with a less reduction than that of the SSA constant approach, contrarily to that expected. Our results reflect the level of accuracy that may be reached at present in this type of comparison, which may be considered as satisfactory taking into account the remaining influences of other factors. Nevertheless, improvements must be accomplished to determine reliable absorbing aerosol properties, which appears as a limiting factor to improve OMI bias.
Listening to Young Children: Applying Montessori’s Method to English as an Additional Language (EAL) Education

Increasing globalization means that many families are moving into English speaking environments, and so too are their young children. To date, research on English as an Additional Language (EAL) education has largely been focused on primary, secondary, and post-secondary schooling. EAL research should include preschool aged children, since this group is also a part of the globalization trend. Likewise, discourse in education surrounding social justice has largely focused on older student groups. Here, the focus is on preschool aged children, bridging the gap between globalization, EAL education, and social justice disciplines. The action research conducted here employed the Montessori Method to promote a socially just learning environment for young preschool EAL children that focused primarily on experiential learning. Data analysis of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) checklists, used to monitor language progress, indicates that such an educational pedagogy has a positive outcome for English development when social justice is placed in a prominent role in the education process. The education being provided in this study sought to establish that socially just EAL education can be provided, but that the educator must take on the role of a listener in order for this educational model to be successful. This application seeks to give even the youngest of students a voice in their education, without jeopardizing the rate at which English is acquired.
Effect of CNT quantity and sintering temperature on electrical and mechanical properties of CNT-dispersed Si3N4 ceramics

Electrically conductive carbon nanotube (CNT)-dispersed ceramics with high strength were fabricated by varying the CNT quantity and the firing temperature. We investigated the effect of these factors on density, electrical conductivity, bending strength, and microstructure of the developed ceramics. The relative density of the CNT dispersed Si3N4 ceramics was higher than 90% except for the sample containing less than 1 wt % of CNTs and fired at a temperature of 1800°C. It was confirmed that CNTs exist in the samples with a higher density. The pullout length of CNTs on the fracture surface in samples fired at higher temperatures was shorter because of the degradation of the CNTs. By TEM observation, CNTs were found to exist in the grain boundary in the Si3N4 ceramics, and their diameter was found to be almost the same as that of raw CNTs. Electrical conductivity appeared in the samples by adding CNTs more than 1 wt % though the sample by adding 0.5 wt % CNTs was insulator. The electrical conductivities of the samples increased with an increase in the firing temperature, which was explained by the grain growth of β-Si3N4. The bending strength of the samples with 1 wt % of CNTs was as high as that of samples without CNTs. Thus, CNT-dispersed Si3N4 ceramics having both electrical conductivity and a higher bending strength were obtained by controlling the CNT quantity and the firing temperature.
Sustainable meta-labeling : an effective measure to facilitate more sustainable consumption and production ? ”

One of the most prominent measures to facilitate more sustainable production and consumption has been the instrument of product labelling. But with a plethora of labelling schemes having been implemented over the last decade many now accuse them of being confusing rather than facilitating. As a result, governments in France, UK and Germany, as well as businesses such as Walmart and non-governmental organisations like WWF have begun to consider seriously the implementation of some form of ‘meta’ scheme that condenses existing product labels and other communication measures. Using a novel theoretically integrative framework to analyse the current labelling arena, this paper investigates different implementation options for such an overarching scheme and discusses what their prospects are for effectively guiding behavioural changes across the production and consumption system. The findings suggests multiple potential hurdles for the effective institutionalisation of a sustainability meta labelling scheme, the most problematic of which is probably finding agreements on focus and trade off decisions in a way that ensures a balance between understandability, procedural and consequential legitimacy aspects.