Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Socio-scientific Issues in Problem Based Learning to Enhance Science Literacy

Context issue in science learning can be referred as one of the solutions to improve students’ science literacy e.g. the socio-scientific issues. The socio-scientific context is presented in a problem where scientific knowledge and social awareness arise in mental conflicts that require science literacy to make responsible decisions. In addition, using problems in learning can provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge in solving problems. Therefore, this paper discusses the usage of socio-scientific context in problem based learning to enhance students’ science literacy. We show that problem-based learning with the socio-scientific issue can improve students’ science literacy. Using socio-scientific issue makes it easier for students to make explanations of scientific phenomena.
Application of Cellular Automata Simulation in Marketing

Cellular Automata provide us a new approach to investigate complex dynamical systems in society and economy. In this paper, the dynamic evolution behavior of market with network externality is investigated using cellular automata simulation technoogy. The simulation gives a microeconomic foundation to the theory of the diffusion process of new products and new technology.
Collimator-detector response compensation in molecular SPECT reconstruction using STIR framework

Introduction:It is well-recognized that collimator-detector response (CDR) is the main image blurring factor in SPECT. In this research, we compensated the images for CDR in molecular SPECT by using STIR reconstruction framework. Methods: To assess resolution recovery capability of the STIR, a phantom containing five point sources along with a micro Derenzo phantom were investigated. Influence of the lesion size on SPECT quantification was addressed by calculating recovery coefficients (RCs) as well as spill-over ratios (SORs) for reconstructed NEMA image-quality phantom. Impact of the resolution modeling on noise properties was also studied. The RCs were then compared with those of experimentally obtained. In all cases, the images were iteratively reconstructed using an OSEM algorithm with 4 subsets and 32 subiterations. Results: CDR compensation gives rise to a significant drop in tomographic resolution from 2.45 mm to 1.55 mm. RC for hot rods of the NEMA IQ phantom monotonically grows as rod diameter increases, and results in an improvement of the RC up to a factor of 1.24 for the 5-mm rod diameter. PSF modeling also leads to a reduction in SOR from 0.24 to 0.16 averaged for the two cold cylinders. As a consequence of resolution recovery, a 15.5% overshoot near sharp edges imposing Gibbs ringing artifact occurs. In addition, a blobby noise texture is also observed. Furthermore, STIR results are consistent with the experimental ones. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that resolution recovery is required for quantitative molecular SPECT imaging, and CDR compensation by the STIR framework offers superior SPECT image quality.
Design of the Erhai Lake Water Quality Monitoring System Based on Wireless Sensor Networks and LabVIEW

In view of the existing flaws of current water quality monitoring system,the wireless sensor network method was adopted to monitor the water quality of Erhai Lake.Several wireless sensor nodes deployed around Erhai Lake transmitted the monitoring data to the terminal in a self-organized way so as to achieve the regional water quality monitoring.The back office software realized the real-time data collection,data display,data storage and warning with the support of the kits,functions and powerful programming functions provided by the LabVIEW graphical programming software design.The system achieved the real-time monitoring of Erhai water quality and had practical significance to the comprehensive analysis of water quality status.
Effects of summary length and line spacing on fixations, decision time, correctness, and preference of search engine results on a phablet

EFFECTS OF SUMMARY LENGTH AND LINE SPACING ON FIXATIONS, DECISION TIME, CORRECTNESS, AND PREFERENCE OF SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS ON A PHABLET by Anne-Marie McReynolds In previous studies, a positive relationship has been suggested between the screen size of a mobile device and the preferred summary length of a search result: the bigger the screen, the longer the summary preferred for judging the relevance of a result. While prior research has been focused on three types of devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops), this study was concentrated on a new class of smartphone called a phablet that could eventually replace all three. In the current research, we investigated how two factors in the design of search result pages—summary length and line spacing—affect performance, behavioral and subjective measures on an information-seeking task executed on a phablet. We examined the effects of summary length (1, 3, 7, 10 lines) and line spacing (single, one and a half, double) on fixations, decision time, correctness, and preference. A direct relationship between summary length, fixations and decision time was found: as summary length increased, fixations and decision time also increased. No relationship between summary length and decision correctness was found. The optimal summary length for effectively judging the relevance of a search result—the one requiring the fewest fixations and shortest decision time—is one line. Because participants did not prefer one-line summaries, it is best to show three lines. As such, three-line summaries suggest a minimal tradeoff between performance and preference.
Method for Mobile Robots

In this paper, the Q-Learning based univector field method is proposed for mobile robot to accomplish the obstacle avoidance and the robot orientation at the target position. Univector field method guarantees the desired posture of the robot at the target position. But it does not navigate the robot to avoid obstacles. To solve this problem, modified univector field is used and trained by Q-learning. When the robot following the field to get the desired posture collides with obstacles, univector fields at collision positions are modified according to the reinforcement of Q-learning algorithm. With this proposed navigation method, robot navigation task in a dynamically changing environment becomes easier by using double action Qlearning [8] to train univector field instead of ordinary Qlearning. Computer simulations and experimental results are carried out for an obstacle avoidance mobile robot to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Affiliation of Indonesian Audit Firms with Big4 and Second‐Tier Audit Firms and the Cost of Debt

This paper documents that in Indonesia, where litigation risk is low and foreign audit firms can only enter the market through affiliation with a local audit firm, the appointment of a local audit firm affiliated either with a Big4 or a second-tier audit firm reduces the cost of debt for listed companies significantly. This finding holds irrespective of the risk profile of the client and is independent of whether or not we control for endogenous auditor choice. There is less conclusive evidence of a difference in the magnitude of the effect of Big4 affiliation versus affiliation with a second-tier audit firm. Our evidence is in line with the idea that Big4 and second-tier audit firms are perceived as applying uniform quality criteria around the world, regardless of the local circumstances in which they operate.
Social Media and Mental Health: Does Relationship Status moderate the Relationship between Instagram Usage and Self-esteem?

While a growing body of research has focused on the relationship between Instagram usage and self-esteem, no studies have yet been conducted on whether an individual’s relationship status (being single vs. being in a romantic relationship) would potentially moderate this relationship. The present study therefore aimed to fill this existing gap in the literature. For this purpose, an online survey was created and the responses of n = 169 predominantly German Instagram users between 18 and 24 year of age (M = 20.3, SD = 1.5) were subjected to correlation and moderation analyses. Results indicated that no negative relationship existed between an individual’s Instagram usage and self-esteem. However, relationship status was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between Instagram use and self-esteem. More specifically, the relationship between Instagram usage and self-esteem turned out to be negative for singles, while it was positive for individuals who were in a romantic relationship. It is argued that future research is necessary to investigate the direction of potential causality between mentioned variables.
Mobile phone use and its effect on quality of sleep in medical undergraduate students at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Professional college students are very prone to sleep deprivation and have poor quality of sleep. Mobile phone use may have a significant impact on sleep quality and length. There is paucity of information regarding mobile phone usage and quality of sleep among the medical students in India. The present study was undertaken to evaluate the prevalence of mobile phone use among medical undergraduate students and its effect on sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study involving 100 medical undergraduate students. Participants were categorised into low, medium, and high mobile phone users based on duration of mobile phone use and frequency of calls/short message service (SMS) per day. Sleep quality and daytime sleepiness were assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS) questionnaires respectively. The impact of phone usage on various sleep quality parameters was also assessed. Results: A total of 36%, 32%, and 32% students were in high, medium, and low mobile phone users groups respectively. The mean PSQI scores were 4.57±1.22, 5.56±1.01, and 7.44±1.21 (p<0.0001) for the low, medium, and high users respectively while the corresponding values for mean ESS scores were 6.23±1.55, 7.16±2.06, and 9.26±1.76 (p<0.0001; one way ANOVA=23.93). All the sleep quality parameters except habitual sleep efficiency and use of sleep medications were adversely affected with increasing mobile phone usage. Conclusion: Increasing mobile phone use adversely affects the sleep quality and causes daytime sleepiness among the medical undergraduate students.
Electromagnetic Momentum in a Dielectric: a Back to Basics Analysis of the Minkowski-Abraham Debate

After more than a century of debate, there remains continuing discomfort over what is the correct expression for the electromagnetic momentum in a dielectric medium. This is the so-called the Minkowski-Abraham controversy. We show that there is indeed a consistent picture for the electromagnetic momentum associated with waves in a dielectric, but one must start with the fields E and B, not D and H as fundamental objects. The momentum flow is described by a tensor T^EB, where the expression is identical to that in vacuum. The Minkowski tensor and the Abraham force result from a fractured decomposition of the material momentum. However, for well localized fields, the Minkowski momentum is conserved, consistent with its identification as the canonical momentum. Several cases are discussed to demonstrate that this perspective is consistent and complete. In addition, it is shown that that care must be taken to include momentum transfer to bound charges at dielectric interfaces to correctly describe, for example, oblique reflections, where there is a normal component of the electric field.
Homogeneous circular polarizers using a bilayered chiral metamaterial

We propose a homogeneous circular polarizer based on a bilayered chiral metamaterial with two enantiomeric wheel patterns. The transmitted field of an arbitrarily polarized incident wave through this bilayered structure is nearly circularly polarized with a circular polarization extinction ratio of more than 30 dB at resonance. We show that the origin of this phenomenon is the excitation of spinning electric dipoles in the wheel patterns, which blocks the transmission of one-handed circularly polarized component but exert little influence on the other. We also demonstrate that the operation bandwidth can be enhanced by stacking functional layers in the propagation direction.
Assessing Guest Nationality Composition from Hotel Reviews

Many hotels target guest acquisition efforts to specific markets in order to best anticipate individual preferences and needs of their guests. Likewise, such strategic positioning is a prerequisite for efficient marketing budget allocation. Official statistics report on the number of visitors from different countries, but no fine-grained information on the guest composition of individual businesses exists. There is, however, growing interest in such data from competitors, suppliers, researchers and the general public. We demonstrate how machine learning can be leveraged to extract references to guest nationalities from unstructured text reviews in order to dynamically assess and monitor the dynamics of guest composition of individual businesses. In particular, we show that a rather simple architecture of pre-trained embeddings and stacked LSTM layers provides a better performance-runtime tradeoff than more complex state-of-the-art language models.
Landscape Economic Attractiveness: An Integrated Methodology for Exploring the Rural Landscapes in Piedmont (Italy)

The present paper focuses on an integrated evaluation methodology aimed at measuring the attractiveness of rural landscapes. The landscapes under observation are two exceptional contexts in Piedmont (Italy): The Moraine Amphitheatre of Ivrea and the vineyard landscape of Langhe, Roero and Monferrato, which have recently been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The proposed investigation tool consists of the use of a system of landscape indicators, from which a synthetic index called the landscape economic attractiveness index has been obtained, and the integration of the results in a dynamic model, considering the synthetic index as a factor of people mobility in a multi-pole system. This integrated approach aims at supporting the decision-making process in the definition and orientation of landscape and territorial transformation policies, respecting the landscape components.
The Impact of Faba Bean Theft in Rural Ethiopia: To Dispute or to Reside Together in Harmony?

Previous studies have shown that faba bean cultivation in Ethiopia has been abandoned, in part, because of widespread theft. In order to solve this problem, many rural and farming communities agreed to formulate by-laws using an existing local institution called Iddir to punish the thieves and to support farmers in their efforts to start growing faba beans again. However, in some areas farmers have not yet switched back to growing faba beans. The overall aim of this study was to examine the factors that affected the reintroduction, or lack thereof, of faba bean growing. The results revealed that the effects of villagization, fear of conflict, small landholdings, population growth and migration, and lack of women participation in decision making were among the factors that affected the non-adoption of bean growing. Moreover, unemployment, poverty, and delinquent behaviours have also been found to be contributing factors.
Funding Liquidity and Market Liquidity: The Broker-Dealer Perspective

We provide direct evidence of how dealers’ funding liquidity affects their liquidity provision in securities markets. Worse funding liquidity (higher repo haircuts and rates) leads to larger bid-ask spreads and transaction costs in corporate bonds. We also find that dealers’ relationships with money funds are important determinants of their repo haircuts and rates. Using dealers’ exposure to the 2016 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) money fund reform as an instrument, we show that funding liquidity indeed has a causal effect on market liquidity. Finally, dealers with lower funding liquidity tend to have smaller market shares and execute more trades on an agency basis. This paper was accepted by Haoxiang Zhu, finance.
A revisit to low volatility anomaly

The relation between risk and return has been debated for a long period. Apart from the debates on the relation being negative or positive, academics have reached the consensus that the security market line is much flatter than as implied by CAPM. Recently an increasing amount of empirical studies have provided evidences to support the existence of low volatility anomaly, arguing that bearing additional risk would give rise to lower expected returns. Some even move one step further, documenting that volatility earns significant risk premium therefore volatility should be incorporated into the asset pricing models to explain the cross section of stock returns. Different opinions strike back by concluding that after controlling for well-known anomalous factors, volatility factor becomes insignificant. In this thesis, total volatility and idiosyncratic volatility are examined separately. Evidences show that on the basis of risk-adjusted returns, low volatility anomaly strongly persists. Different weighting approaches on portfolio formation should also be taken into consideration since value-weighted approach tends to generate better results supporting low volatility anomaly. Volatility factors are also constructed based on the 2x3 portfolios after the double sorting. Results from Fama-MacBeth two-step regression presents that over the period from February 1900 to December 2015 (311 months), neither total volatility factor nor idiosyncratic volatility factor earns significant risk premium. Regression results from Carhart fourfactor model prove that large, value and momentum lie behind low volatility anomaly. Robust profitability and conservative investment are also captured by Fama French five-factor model. But persistent variables independent of either Carhart or FF framework maintain explanatory power on low volatility anomaly. Keyword: Low Volatility Anomaly, Asset Pricing, Volatility, Idiosyncratic Volatility.
On the creative reading

The creative reading is a new trend of new Chinese language course innovation, whose conditions are as follows: 1) establish an equal and democratic relationship between the teacher and his (her) students; 2) explore students'reading skills and experience; 3) carefully select and adapt reading material; 4) optimize the reading process; 5) improve the reading evaluation system.
An assessment on public art effect on increasing social capital in Iran (Case study: Sandy Carpet and Gavkhouni Wetland in Iran)

In recent decades, Iran has gone through serious environmental problem. Draught, foods and deforestation are all among the top environmental issues that Iranian society has had challenges with. There have been different strategies in governmental level to improve the situation but it seems without a comprehensive mobilization of all people all efforts will be lost. Public art is a new tool to revive the lost interest of people to environmental crisis and there have been several public art projects in Iran with focus on environment. This paper tries to evaluate the effects of public art projects on social capital. We used from questionnaire to generate data and according to Cochran formula, a total number of 384 questionnaire is distributed to people. For analyzing data, we used from structural equation modeling in Smart PLS 3 and our findings show that public art projects have left inspiring effects on social capital in both structural and cognitive level.
“A casual teacher is a gardener”: metaphors and identities of casual relief teachers in the Australian primary school context

ABSTRACT While previous studies have highlighted the significance of metaphors in studying teacher identities and values, little is known about metaphorical representation of teaching as given by casual relief teachers (CRTs). This study examines metaphors from participants who teach or have taught on a casual basis in Australian primary schools. Responses from 39 CRTs were collected using a survey and categorised according to the tripartite model of self, then thematically analysed to discern any commonalities across the metaphors. The major themes generated by CRTs include adopting survival strategies while teaching; feelings of diminished status compared to other staff; and taking on a nurturer role with students. This study adds depth to current research surrounding teacher metaphors and experiences of CRTs.
Experimental Testing of a Decentralized Model Reference Adaptive Controller for a Mobile Robot

Adaptive controllers allow robots to perform a wide variety of tasks, but the extensive computations required have generated an interest in developing decentralized adaptive controllers. Horner has designed an adaptive controller for a four-degree-of-freedom mobile robot and tested it through simulations. The study described in this thesis uses the techniques described by Horner to design and test a decentralized model reference adaptive controller (DMRAC) for a physical four-degree-of-freedom mobile robot. The study revealed several difficulties in implementing this design. Most notably, the robot available for the research did not allow for the measurement of joint velocity, so it was necessary to estimate the velocity as the derivative of the position measurement. The noise created by this estimation made completion of testing impossible. Future research should be performed on a robot that provides joint velocity measurement. Alternatively, a study could include state estimation as part of the controller, thus reducing and possibly eliminating the need for velocity measurement. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Mehdi Ahmadian for all of his assistance while doing this research, and for his patience while I wrote this thesis. Thanks also go to Drs. Charles Reinholtz and Don Leo for being on my committee and to Derek Devnich for his assistance with proofing and editing this document. Very special thanks go to my wife, Heather. Without her support and assistance, this work may never have been completed.
Health Literacy, Health Numeracy, and Trust in Doctor: Effects on Key Patient Health Outcomes

This research examines the roles of health literacy, health numeracy, and trust in doctor on: (1) patient anxiety when consulting a doctor; (2) frequency of physician consultations; and (3) patient subjective well-being (SWB). Our sample consisted of 4,040 adults representative of the United States in terms of age, income, and education, but equally split among White/Caucasian (50%) and Black/African American (50%) respondents. We found that functional and communicative health literacy and trust in doctor have linear and curvilinear relationships with anxiety when consulting a doctor. Health numeracy had no effect. Anxiety when consulting a doctor was associated with a lower number of physician consultations and lower SWB. We observed direct linear effects of health literacy, health numeracy, and trust in doctor on frequency of physician consultations and SWB, as well as some curvilinear effects. We found a negative relationship between health numeracy and SWB. We discuss implications of these findings for health and public policy.