Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self-concept research in science and technology education – theoretical foundation, measurement instruments, and main findings

ABSTRACT This article gives an overview of the current state of science and technology self-concept research. Following a defined selection process, we analysed 74 peer-reviewed journal articles published from 1998 to 2017, which are indexed in the ERIC database and that deal with science and technology self-concepts (STSC) of school children and adolescents. In our analysis, we focus on the theoretical foundations, measurement instruments, and main findings from this area. (i) Theoretical foundations: today’s research on STSC is mainly based on the Shavelson and Marsh models of self-concept, i.e. it follows the tradition of educational psychology. (ii) Measurement instruments: a number of established and validated measurement instruments are available. However, the existing methodological resources should be employed more rigorously. (iii) Main findings: Some findings are well documented, such as the positive relation with achievement, the gender gap, and the fact that students of non-dominant ethnic groups tend to have lower STSCs. Recommendations: in order to gain a deeper understanding of these phenomena, it could be fruitful to further elaborate connections with science identity research and to enrich STSC research with qualitative data.
Blood lactate and rectal temperature can predict exit velocity of beef feedlot steers

Abstract: Interest in beef cattle temperament has increased due to growing consumer awareness of animal welfare and increased concern for handler safety. Temperament measures are based on behavioral responses to a perceived stressor. Subjective chute scoring has been used to give a numeric value to temperament; however, the subjectivity and variability among observers have been questioned. To deal with the perceived subjectivity and variability, other researchers have used exit velocity. Researchers have related faster exit velocities to increased cortisol and plasma lactate. The objectives of this study were to compare temperament between feedlot steers and heifers and to confirm chute side measures of temperament relationship to physiological responses to stress. Body temperature, blood and plasma lactate, serum glucose, salivary and serum cortisol concentrations were measured on Bos taurus commercial crossbred feedlot cattle (n = 197). Fast, medium, and slow classifications were developed from exit velocities. Plasma lactate was significantly different between all exit velocity classes. Exit velocity and physiological measures indicated that heifers were more excitable (faster exit velocities (P = 0.003), higher plasma lactate concentrations (P = 0.03), and cortisol concentrations (P = 0.001)). Simple correlations among these variables indicated body temperature (heifers r = 0.44, P < 0.0001; steers r = 0.45, P < .0001), plasma lactate (heifers r = 0.52, P < 0.0001; steers r = 0.63, P < 0.0001), blood lactate (heifers r = 0.53, P < 0.001; steers r = 0.59, P < 0.001), and glucose (heifers r = 0.54, P < 0.001; steers r = 0.32, P <0.003) were all related to exit velocity. Cortisol measures were not correlated to exit velocity in steers but were in heifers. Linear models constructed and evaluated using the Akaike information criterion indicated that blood lactate in combination with rectal temperature were strong candidates to predict exit velocity. Using the discriminate function analysis, the model correctly categorized fast and slow classifications 69.23% and 61.54%, respectively, indicating that in combination measures of body temperature and blood lactate can potentially increase accuracy of temperament identification or replace exit velocity as a measure of temperament. The plasma lactate and rectal temperature have the potential to become strong objective measures to augment or replace exit velocity.
Latent Conditional Individual-Level Models and Related Topics in Infectious Disease Modeling

Latent Conditional Individual-Level Models and Related Topics in Infectious Disease Modeling Lorna E. Deeth Advisor: University of Guelph, 2012 Rob Deardon Individual-level models are a class of complex statistical models, often fitted within a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo framework, that have been effectively used to model the spread of infectious diseases. The ability of these models to incorporate individual-level covariate information allows them to be highly flexible, and to account for such characteristics as population heterogeneity. However, these models can be subject to inherent uncertainties often found in infectious disease data. As well, their complex nature can lead to a significant computational expense when fitting these models to epidemic data, particularly for large populations. An individual-level model that incorporates a latent grouping structure into the modeling procedure, based on some heterogeneous population characteristics, is investigated. The dependence of this latent conditional individual-level model on a discrete latent grouping variable alleviates the need for explicit, although possibly unreliable, covariate information. A simulation study is used to assess the posterior predictive ability of this model, in comparison to individual-level models that utilize the full covariate information, or that assume population homogeneity. These models are also applied to data from the 2001 UK foot-and-mouth disease epidemic. When attempting to compare complex models fitted within the Bayesian framework, the identification of appropriate model selection tools would be beneficial. The use of deviance information criterion (DIC) as model comparison tool, particularly for the latent conditional individual-level models, is investigated. A simulation study is used to compare five variants of the DIC, and the ability of each DIC variant to select the true model is determined. Finally, an investigation into methods to reduce the computational burden associated with individual-level models is carried out, based on an individual-level model that also incorporates population heterogeneity through a discrete grouping variable. A simulation study is used to determine the effect of reducing the overall population size by aggregating the data into spatial clusters. Reparameterized individual-level models, accounting for the aggregation effect, are fitted to the aggregated data. The effect of data aggregation on the ability of two reparameterized individual-level models to identify a covariate effect, as well as on the computational expense of the model fitting procedure, is explored. Dedicated to everyone who has helped me achieve this goal, whether it was family, through friendship, or sound statistical advice. But most of all, to Rick.
The Strain of Procedural Injustice in Parole among Former Prisoners: A Test with a Mixed-Gender Sample

Abstract The concept of procedural justice has been examined in a plethora of studies that encompass topics from citizens’ trust in police to their wiliness to obey the law. However, extant research has not moved beyond “if” procedural justice matters to “why” procedural justice matters. What’s more, the concept of procedural justice, though received substantial attention in policing studies, has not been explored sufficiently in the correctional context in general and in parole efficacy in particular. This study examines the why questions—the mechanism through which procedural injustice in parole can influence the reentry outcomes of released prisoners. Using longitudinal data from a mixed-gender sample of released prisoners, we test the applicability of strain mechanism on procedural injustice and disentangle the nexus of procedural injustice, negative emotions and reentry success. Additionally, we test the gendered effects of negative emotions. Findings indicate that the strain of procedural injustice on respondents is positively associated with an increase in criminal propensity, and depression mediates this relationship. Additionally, we find that the interplay of gender and negative emotions affects respondents’ criminal propensity and substance use.
Weekly Hedonic House Price Indexes: An Imputation Approach with Geospatial Splines and Kalman Filters

The hedonic imputation method provides a flexible way of constructing quality-adjusted house price indexes. However, the method becomes unreliable at higher frequencies (e.g., for weekly indexes), since then the underlying price trend will be close to zero and even in large data sets there may not be enough price observations in each period. As a consequence computational and statistical problems occur (e.g., no observations for some postcodes, a loss in degrees of freedom, or an increased variance of estimated parameters). We show how the reliability of weekly indexes can be improved by replacing postcode dummies by a geospatial spline and then using a Kalman filter. This approach has two advantages. First, the dimensionality of the model is reduced. Replacing postcode dummies by values from the geospatial spline function at each location in the data set very significantly reduces the number of parameters that need to be estimated, and the number of covariance restrictions that must be imposed to make the Kalman filter operational. Second, the small number of observations in each period causes larger variability in estimated parameters (shadow prices) which should not change that much from one week to the next. Estimation of a dynamic linear model with the Kalman filter interconnects those parameters over time. Applying this hedonic geospatial spline/Kalman filter approach to data for Sydney (Australia) we show that it outperforms competing alternatives for computing house price indexes at a weekly frequency.
X FOR DESIGN, A DESCRIPTIVE FRAMEWORK FOR MODELLING THE COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF DIFFERENT DESIGN ACTIVITIES

Classic design activities start from functions and end defining the product structure. The literature offers tools to model the cognitive aspects of these activities. The analysis of recent design activities highlights inadequacies of these tools because of the variety of starting points and goals. This research develops a descriptive framework, the X for Design - XfD, to model different design activities showing any combination of starting points and goals, by putting the existing FBS framework into relationship with the product experience and human behaviour in design concepts.
If France continues this strategy, taxes will destroy domestic investment and economic growth

The aim of this article is to study empirically the nexus between tax revenue, domestic investment and economic growth in France, since it's never been done before. In addition, there were many problems and repercussions that criticized France's tax policy and its danger to the economic structure, which encourages us to do this research. To attempt this objective, annual data for the period 1972 - 2016 was tested by using correlation analysis and estimation based on vector error correction model. Our results suggest that in the long run there is a negative relationship between tax revenue, domestic investment and economic growth. It is seen that the strategy tax policy of France is not safe for domestic investment and economic growth. For this reason, immediate intervention should be encouraged to carry out the necessary measures before the situation becomes more disastrous.
System and method for providing a way memoization in a processing environment

Provides a method of reducing the energy of the cache memory, which is implemented using a memory address buffer element path memory as cache memory, the memory element address buffer is operable to store information relating to the address previously visited. The access to the memory address buffer element to reduce power consumption in accessing the cache memory. A plurality of entries can be stored in the memory address associated with the plurality of buffer elements of data segments. For the selected one or more of the entries, indicating an address field comprising a plurality of paths particular desired path data segment. One or more previously accessed address may be replaced with one or more identifiers, and one or more of the group index associated with the one or more previously visited addresses, access the memory address whereby said cushioning element without a cache memory data required for determining the current segment is present in the cache memory access.
LIVVIL: Logging Interactive Visualizations and Visualizing Interaction Logs

A BSTRACT This paper describes two visual analytic tools designed to support sensemaking through the visualisation of interaction log and analytic provenance. The ﬁrst tool, SensePath, aims to reduce the time re- quired for the transcription and coding during qualitative analysis such as thematic analysis (making sense of the experiment data). The second tool, SenseMap, is designed to help online sensemaking with everyday tasks such as buying a digital camera. User evaluation leads to early insight of how the visualisation of interaction log and analytic provenance can help these sensemaking tasks.
Does passage context and word type impact accuracy in maze tasks

by STACY-ANN A. BAXTER (Under the Direction of Scott P. Ardoin) ABSTRACT Despite evidence that the maze is a reliable measure of reading comprehension, research suggests great potential for improvement. Specifically, distracters are susceptible to guessing and the syntactic structure of words (i.e., function or content) may affect accurate completion of a maze. The purpose of the current study was to examine variation in student performance as a function of context and the syntactic structure of missing words. Following the administration of an intact maze probe, 225 elementary students were administered, in counterbalanced order, a second intact maze, and a probe with sentences drawn randomly from 3 mazes. Results indicated that students performed significantly better on intact versus randomized sentences, but performance did not differ based upon the syntactic structure of word choices. Findings of this study further question the extent to which mazes measure students’ passage comprehension.
Evaluation of Workplace Safety Culture Implementation and Practice Using Agglomerative Hierarchy Clustering

This study assessed safety culture and practices in selected companies from the oil and gas, construction, transportation and logistics companies operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The questionnaire design utilized 15 safety cultural parameters and practices peculiar to 11 companies formed the basis of questionnaire distributed to 663 respondents in the study area. Purposive sampling was employed in the choice of companies sampled while random sampling technique was applied with respect to questionnaires distribution within the selected companies. XLSTAT 2016 statistical computer package was applied as aid for data analysis which includes Shapiro-wilks test of normality as an aid for the choice of analysis of variance option, the Friedman’s test to determine the variance among the various sampled groups which also includes a post-hoc test (Nemenyi’s Procedure) and Agglomerative Hierarchy Clustering (AHC) for clustering of workplace safety culture practices within the sampled groups. The output from the analysis of variance showed that there is a significant difference between the safety cultural Original Research Article Akalonu et al.; ACRI, 10(2): 1-15, 2017; Article no.ACRI. 36464 2 practices of the three sampled industrial sectors with the alpha = 0.5 being lower than computed p-value (< 0.0001). Further analysis by AHC resulted in 4, 3 and 3 clusters of workplace safety cultural practices for oil and gas, construction and transportation and logistics sectors, respectively. The cultural practice were supervisors are authorized to stop unsafe work was identified as common between the construction and oil and gas sector while the practice of periodic hazards hunts and inspections by staff and management was identified as common among the construction and transportation and logistics industrial sector.
Can women's self‐help groups improve access to information, decision‐making, and agricultural practices? The Indian case

Abstract Effective agricultural extension is key to improving productivity, increasing farmers’ access to information, and promoting more diverse sets of crops and improved methods of cultivation. In India, however, the coverage of agricultural extension workers and the relevance of extension advice is poor. We investigate whether a women's self‐help group (SHG) platform could be an effective way of improving access to information, women's empowerment in agriculture, agricultural practices, and production diversity. We use cross‐sectional data on close to 1,000 women from five states in India and employ nearest‐neighbor matching models to match SHG and non‐SHG women along a range of observed characteristics. We find that participation in an SHG increases women's access to information and their participation in some agricultural decisions, but has limited impact on agricultural practices or outcomes, possibly due to financial constraints, social norms, and women's domestic responsibilities. SHGs need to go beyond provision of information to changing the dynamics around women's participation in agriculture to effectively translate knowledge into practice.
An Iteration-Based Simulation Method for Getting Semi- Symbolic Solution of Non-coherent FSK/ASK System by Using Computer Algebra Systems

The paper presents a development of an IBSM (Iteration-Based Simulation Method) to obtain semi-symbolic solutions of digital telecommunication non-coherent FSK/ASK system by using computer algebra systems. These solutions are applied for derivation of the symbol error probability (SEP) needed for quantitative and qualitative analysis of performances of telecommunication systems in optimization and design of low-complexity implementation into highcomplexity structures. Various software tools, used in telecommunications for calculating, designing and analysing, have been developed from the viewpoint of numeric-only algorithms. But, many shortcomings cannot be neglected, such as generating of a great amount of numeric data, losing insight into the phenomenon of investigation, and numerical computation manipulates with numerical values. For these reasons, IBSM provides design, optimization, manipulation, and simplification by introducing a new parameter of iteration. The IBSM is applied to aforementioned system when the uncorrelated and correlated noise and the interferences are present in both upper and lower frequencies, respectively. The impact of number of iterations, number of bits, correlation coefficient and different values of interferences to symbol error probability are derived on semi-symbolic forms. Making use of IBSM gives an opportunity to solve very complex analyses and derive many sophisticated conclusions.
Social and Political Regional Interactions in the Context of "Reactive Relationships": The Possibilities of Hybrid Methodology

Social and political interactions are in a situation of rapid transformation of social relations, their qualitative and quantitative characteristics. The paper provides insight into stable traditions of civil initiatives from the position of sociocultural foundations of social and political interaction. In the study of rapidly changing “reactive relations”, new methodological approaches based on the priorities of network methods begin to dominate. It is possible to note the possibilities of interdisciplinarity in this approach, the “open architecture” of the research project itself (discussion, weighting of risks and difficulties, coordination of opportunities, search for additional
The oil-growth nexus in oil producers: macro panel evidence.

José Alberto Fuinhas, NECE and University of Beira Interior, Management and Economics Department, Estrada do Sineiro, 6200-209 Covilhã, Portugal. Phone: + 351 275 319 600 (fuinhas@ubi.pt); António Cardoso Marques, NECE and University of Beira Interior, Management and Economics Department, Estrada do Sineiro, 6200-209 Covilhã, Portugal. Phone: + 351 275 319 600 (amarques@ubi.pt); Alcino Pinto Couto, NECE and University of Beira Interior, Management and Economics Department, Estrada do Sineiro, 6200-209 Covilhã, Portugal. Phone: + 351 275 319 600 (acouto@ubi.pt).
Framework Proposal for Open Innovation Implementation in SMEs of Regional Innovation Systems

In the literature of Open Innovation (OI), some specific themes, such as elaboration of methods, strategies and systematized processes of implementation are still little discussed. In attempted to fill this research gap, this study aims to present a proposal for a framework for the implementation of OI in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises of Regional Innovation Systems (RIS). As such, it can support the theoretical development related to OI implementation methods and tools. The constructivist method was used in the development of the framework, which represents the Implementation Process of OI (IPOI), consisting of 5 stages: (i) diagnosis of RIS; (ii) diagnosis of the enterprise; (iii) preparation; (iv) implementation; and (v) monitoring and control. The unfolding of this process in stages and measurement systems allows us to understand the elements and Critical Success Factors (CSF) that interfere in the improvement of the capacity of innovation in SMEs inserted in RIS.
Static Yet Flexible: Expander Data Center Network Fabrics

Recent work has indicated that any static data center network is fundamentally limited, due to its inability to move around network capacity. Is this truly the case, is the static network not flexible enough to handle varying (skewed) traffic scenarios through only traffic engineering? Can we only find refuge in dynamic topologies, introducing on-the-fly re-arrangement of network links at a cost? In pursuit of these research goals, three main data center topologies were evaluated: traditional (oversubscribed) fat-trees, expanders and dynamic topologies. Using flow optimality evaluation via a linear program, worst case traffic scenarios were identified and their respective performance measured under perfect traffic engineering. A custom discrete packet simulator was used to evaluate the two static topologies under a wide range of traffic scenarios and compare results to performance claims of recent dynamic topology research. It was found that the modeling of server up-links is crucial to a meaningful comparison. Equivalent performance to that of the most recent dynamic topology was achieved. At 67.5-80% of its cost, the expander was able to rival the fat-tree in all traffic scenarios using at least one of its routing strategies. Three factors had significant impact in this: (a) the high ToR-ratio (per-ToR network up-links divided by per-ToR server up-links), (b) the low average shortest path length, and (c) the property that every cut in the network is traversed by many links. It was found that oversubscription of the fat-tree indeed creates problematic traffic scenarios, where communication between only a small fraction of active servers is severely impaired. The work raises new potential inquiries pertaining to the vast space of routing logic and their parametrization, engineering challenges in the deployment of expanders, exploration and topology-independent characterization of workload in the data center, further verification through use of other simulators or physical deployment, and theoretical understanding of the capabilities of dynamic topologies.