Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Value of Children and the Framing of Fertility: Results from a Cross-Cultural Comparative Survey in 10 Societies

To overcome incomplete explanations of cross-cultural differences in fertility behaviour, three complementary approaches are systematically related to each other: the ‘demand’-based economic theory of fertility (ETF), a revised version of the ‘supply’-based ‘value-of-children’-approach (VOC) as a special theory of the general social theory of social production functions, and the framing theory of variable rationality. A comprehensive model is specified, which accounts both for the variable efficiency of having children for the optimization of physical well-being and of social esteem of (potential) parents, and for the variable rationality of fertility decisions. The model is tested with a data set, which comprises information on VOC and fertility of women within social settings of 10 societies (Peoples Republic of China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Ghana, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, the Czech Republic, and Germany), using multivariate models with births of different parity as dependents. As empirical research both on ETF and VOC only exists for intra-societal comparisons, the simultaneous test in a cross-cultural context goes beyond the current state of fertility research. It provides evidence about the cross-cultural validity of the model, systematic effects of VOC on fertility, and changing rationality of fertility decisions in the demographic transition.
Teachers’ Beliefs About Administrators and Parents of Handicapped and Nonhandicapped Students

AbstractThis investigation assessed elementary and secondary level regular classroom and special education teachers’ beliefs about administrators, parents of handicapped and nonhandicapped students, and parental perceptions of educators. This was accomplished by administering the Teachers’ Beliefs About Parents, Teachers’ Beliefs About Administrators, and Perceptions of Parental Beliefs Concerning Teachers scales to 462 experienced educators. The major finding was that teachers, across demographic variables, held significantly more positive beliefs about parents of nonhandicapped students than parents of handicapped students. Three approaches to influence teacher beliefs about parents of handicapped students are presented.
"Everybody Does It"

Making and evaluating excuses is a central part of administrative ethics. This article examines one of the most common excuses, "Everybody does it," by first providing examples of cases where the excuse might be used to justify action in public administration settings and then distinguishing several different senses of the excuse. "Everybody does it" may be an appeal to consensus, to tacit consent, or to fairness. The article provides tools for identifying which version of the excuse is relevant to the case at hand and for assessing whether a particular use of it is strong or weak.
Black sexuality: A test of two theories

Testing the theoretical statements of Alfred Kinsey and James Coleman regarding racial differences in sexual experience (Coleman, 1966; Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948), data from three samples, covering the period 1938–70, are brought to bear on the following hypotheses: (a) Black men and women are more sexually permissive than white men and women, but such differences are more a function of social class than race (Kinsey); and (b) differences in sexual permissiveness between black men and women are less than for white men and women because of the power of the black woman in determining family status (Coleman). Results show that blacks were more likely than whites to engage in premarital sex earlier and more frequently (men and women), and with more partners (men only). They were also more likely to engage in extramarital sex (men and women), and with a greater number of partners (men only). Additionally, blacks were more liberal and accepting of sex, pursued it more, were more open about it, and reporte.
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SINGING STYLES OF THE DUNAS

r I ^HE investigation of the singing styles of the Dunas was made on behalf of •*■ colleagues with the Summer Institute of Linguistics.1 Dennis and Nancy Cochrane have lived with the Dunas for several years, and their ability to converse in the Duna language facilitated the collection of music data. Through the Cochranes specific questions could be asked and a differentiated list of song types checked quickly. To test the adequacy of the analysis, new songs were composed in the music system specified by the analysis. These songs were then sung to the Dunas to see if they would accept them as their own. They readily accepted the new songs and adopted them into their active repertoire. They have not been known to adopt any western songs. Analytical techniques from both music and linguistics were used, one contributing to the other. Music is regarded here as language, meaningful expression intelligible within the culture. Linguistic techniques have therefore proven useful. The aim of the investigation was to aid the linguistic team in their acculturation into the Duna music system so that they might comfortably and intelligently participate in it. The presentation will from time to time rely upon linguistic terminology, because : (a) music is here viewed as language, (b) the paper is directed to linguists and linguistically oriented anthropologists, and (c) descriptive linguistics offers useful tools for music analysis. In reference to the latter, the vocabulary of our traditional western music theory is directed chiefly at teaching or analyzing and composing in one particular music system, the European system. Western music theory provides little in the way of either terms or procedures for entering another music system, especially one which is unwritten. Descriptive linguistics in working with unwritten languages has developed both methodology and terminology for the analysis and description of diverse systems. These may appropriately be used in the analysis and description of diverse musical systems. The following concept and its terminology was borrowed from linguistics for the analysis of Duna music : Crucial to any primary investigation involving human activity is the differentiation
Rethinking Diversity in Public Organizations for the 21st Century

The 21st century promises a more diverse public workplace in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, gender, age, and disabilities. In light of the shifting composition of public organizations, this article applies three different paradigms of diversity developed to understand private organizations and analyze practices in and research about public organizations. Building on these paradigms, this article proposes a new process for managing diversity that facilitates the development and promulgation of a multicultural organization. This paradigm of multiculturalism cultivates a climate in which individuals from dominant and nondominant cultures coexist and thrive. Consequently, agencies will be more effective in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce, structuring internal processes, and serving clients.
Interferon γ Contributes to Initiation of Uterine Vascular Modification, Decidual Integrity, and Uterine Natural Killer Cell Maturation during Normal Murine Pregnancy

The dominant lymphocytes in human and murine implantation sites are transient, pregnancy-associated uterine natural killer (uNK) cells. These cells are a major source of interferon (IFN)-γ. Implantation sites in mice lacking uNK cells (alymphoid recombinase activating gene [RAG]-2−/− common cytokine receptor chain γ [γc]−/−) or IFN-γ signaling (IFN-γ−/− or IFN-γRα−/−) fail to initiate normal pregnancy-induced modification of decidual arteries and display hypocellularity or necrosis of decidua. To investigate the functions of uNK cell–derived IFN-γ during pregnancy, RAG-2−/−γc −/− females were engrafted with bone marrow from IFN-γ−/− mice, IFN-γ signal-disrupted mice (IFN-γRα−/− or signal transducer and activator of transcription [Stat]-1−/−), or from mice able to establish normal uNK cells (severe combined immunodeficient [SCID] or C57BL/6). Mated recipients were analyzed at midgestation. All grafts established uNK cells. Grafts from IFN-γ−/− mice did not reverse host vascular or decidual pathology. Grafts from all other donors promoted modification of decidual arteries and decidual cellularity. Grafts from IFN-γRα−/− or Stat-1−/− mice overproduced uNK cells, all of which were immature. Grafts from IFN-γ−/−, SCID, or C57BL/6 mice produced normal, mature uNK cells. Administration of murine recombinant IFN-γ to pregnant RAG-2−/−γc −/− mice initiated decidual vessel modification and promoted decidual cellularity in the absence of uNK cells. These in vivo findings strongly suggest that uNK cell–derived IFN-γ modifies the expression of genes in the uterine vasculature and stroma, which initiates vessel instability and facilitates pregnancy-induced remodeling of decidual arteries.
Polysaccharide-Protein Interactions and Their Relevance in Food Colloids

Polysaccharides and proteins are natural polymers that are widely used as functional ingredients for various food colloids or emulsion formulations. Majority of food emulsions are constituted with polysaccharide and protein combinations. They are the essential ingredients of any food colloid formulation mainly due to their ability to change product shelf life by varying food texture (Schmidt & Smith, 1992; Schorsch, Jones & Norton 1999). Their interaction in the formulation thus finds many applications particularly in new food formulation development. Due to complex formation and creation of nano or micro structures (aggregation and gelation behavior) they generally change the rheological properties of food colloids which may affect the food product texture and colloidal stability (Benichou, 2002; McClements, 2005, 2006, 2007; Dickinson, 2003). Polysaccharide and protein interactions in solution and interfaces have been studied by several groups (Dickinson, 2003, 2008; Bos V Carrera & Rodriguez Patino 2005; Kragel, Derkatch, & Miller, 2008; Koupantis, & Kiosseoglou, 2009; Mackie, 2009). However, despite the vast advancement made in the recent past, polysaccharide and protein interactions in food hydrocolloids continue to be one of the most challenging topics to understand.
Towards Developing an Online Social Media-based Mobile Learning System

The advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Internet revolution gave rise to the several learning technologies on the web and mobile platform. During the last decade, the social media network became available for users to socialise and collaborate among peer group. Hence, The integration of e-learning and social media using mobile device as access point is to allow for learning and collaboration anytime, anywhere. This study seeks to provide learning on the social network platform for users to view the application on a mobile device and also foster collaboration among scholars. The system was developed using an open source Content Management System (CMS) Wordpress and Buddypress running on a WAMP or XAMPP server. MySQL was used as database. The usability of the System on the different mobile devices used was evaluated by identifying the usability attributes; designing a questionnaire based on those attributes and then analyzing the results with Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The results showed that the learning system had a good usability score on mobile devices.
Molecular Genetic Study of the Interaction of Sindbis Virus E2 with Ross River Virus E1 for Virus Budding

ABSTRACT Glycoprotein PE2 of Sindbis virus will form a heterodimer with glycoprotein E1 of Ross River virus that is cleaved to an E2/E1 heterodimer and transported to the cell plasma membrane, but this chimeric heterodimer fails to interact with Sindbis virus nucleocapsids, and very little budding to produce mature virus occurs upon infection with chimeric viruses. We have isolated in both Sindbis virus E2 and in Ross River virus E1 a series of suppressing mutations that adapt these two proteins to one another and allow increased levels of chimeric virus production. Two adaptive E1 changes in an ectodomain immediately adjacent to the membrane anchor and five adaptive E2 changes in a 12-residue ectodomain centered on Asp-242 have been identified. One change in Ross River virus E1 (Gln-411→Leu) and one change in Sindbis virus E2 (Asp-248→Tyr) were investigated in detail. Each change individually leads to about a 10-fold increase in virus production, and combined the two changes lead to a 100-fold increase in virus. During passage of a chimeric virus containing Ross River virus E1 and Sindbis virus E2, the E2 change was first selected, followed by the E1 change. Heterodimers containing these two adaptive mutations have a demonstrably increased degree of interaction with Sindbis virus nucleocapsids. In the parental chimera, no interaction between heterodimers and capsids was visible at the plasma membrane in electron microscopic studies, whereas alignment of nucleocapsids along the plasma membrane, indicating interaction of heterodimers with nucleocapsids, was readily seen in the adapted chimera. The significance of these findings in light of our current understanding of alphavirus budding is discussed.
Rational design of potent domain antibody inhibitors of amyloid fibril assembly

Antibodies hold significant potential for inhibiting toxic protein aggregation associated with conformational disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases. However, near-stoichiometric antibody concentrations are typically required to completely inhibit protein aggregation. We posited that the molecular interactions mediating amyloid fibril formation could be harnessed to generate antibodies with potent antiaggregation. Here we report that grafting small amyloidogenic peptides (6–10 residues) into the complementarity-determining regions of a single-domain (VH) antibody yields potent domain antibody inhibitors of amyloid formation. Grafted AMyloid-Motif AntiBODIES (gammabodies) presenting hydrophobic peptides from Aβ (Alzheimer’s disease), α-Synuclein (Parkinson's disease), and islet amyloid polypeptide (type 2 diabetes) inhibit fibril assembly of each corresponding polypeptide at low substoichiometric concentrations (1:10 gammabody:monomer molar ratio). In contrast, sequence- and conformation-specific antibodies that were obtained via immunization are unable to prevent fibrillization at the same substoichiometric concentrations. Gammabodies prevent amyloid formation by converting monomers and/or fibrillar intermediates into small complexes that are unstructured and benign. We expect that our antibody design approach—which eliminates the need for immunization or screening to identify sequence-specific domain antibody inhibitors—can be readily extended to generate potent aggregation inhibitors of other amyloidogenic polypeptides linked to human disease.
Therapeutic alliance rupture as a therapy event for empirical investigation.

An alliance rupture consists of an impairment or fluctuation in the quality of the alliance between the therapist and client. Alliance ruptures vary in intensity, duration and frequency, depending on the particular therapist-client dyad. In more extreme cases, the client may overtly indicate negative sentiments to the therapist or even terminate therapy prematurely. At the other end of the continuum are minor fluctuations in the quality of the therapeutic alliance which may be extremely difficult for the outside observer or for even the skilled therapist to detect. While the features of alliance ruptures vary from case to case, most therapy cases, even the more successful ones, are characterized by at least one or more ruptures in the therapeutic alliance over the course of therapy. While much of what we will have to say in the course of our discussion will ring true to the reader, our intention is to "unpack" familiar concepts such as the therapeutic alliance in a fashion which leads to more differentiated understanding and research.
Empirical Evidence on the Relationship between Democratic Classroom and Social Skills Development of Students

The concept of democratic classroom is controversial for being vague and idealistic. It has been termed more rhetorical than a realistic. Despite of this, the role of democratic classroom in socialization of students has well recognized in every age. Therefore, a noticeable need exists to assess the degree and direction of relationship between democratic classroom and students’ social skill development. Previous studies have reported that classroom environment is a good predictor of social development of students. However, little research has explored the perspectives of students about their social skill development in a classroom environment, particularly focusing the three social skills such as listening to others carefully, waiting for turn and raising hands to ask questions. The present study fills this gap in the current literature on the relationship between democracy and education. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of democratic classroom environment on social skills development of students. Based on causal comparative design, the study used a self-developed questionnaire to examine the perceptions of 80 male and female students selected on random sampling basis from 20 secondary schools in one district of Khyber Pkahtunkwa, Pakistan. For data analysis, Chi-square test was applied. Results of the study showed that there was no significant difference in the perceptions of male versus female secondary school students regarding the effect of classroom environment on social skills of students. Both equally considered democratic classroom environment important for social skills development. The study concludes that democratic classroom has a positive effect on all the three social skills development of students. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015. v6n2s1p18
An Exploratory Study of Downsized Survivors' Work Behaviour

Downsizing is ideally aimed at reducing manpower and increasing profitability. But if the survivors' work behaviours are ignored, the very purpose of downsizing could be defeated. Thus, the current study intends to understand the impact of downsizing on the perception of survivors and the extent of different coping strategies used by them. A sample comprising of 68 managers was taken into account for the purpose of the study. The findings revealed that managers with more work experience and higher designation differed significantly from those with less work experience and lower designation in their perception of the downsizing scenario. Keeping in mind the scenario, the former appraised communication, perception of fairness, participation in decision making, team spirit and attitude more favorably than the latter. In terms of their coping strategies, the managers with more work experience resorted to more of problem-focused coping strategies and least avoidance/resignation coping strategies. The senior level managers also differed significantly from the junior level and resorted more to help seeking coping strategy.
Single-dose intravenous sodium valproate (Depakine) versus dexamethasone for the treatment of acute migraine headache: a double-blind randomized clinical trial

Objective Migraine headache is a chronic and disabling condition in adults. Some studies have investigated the efficacy of sodium valproate in the treatment of acute migraine, but the effectiveness and tolerability of intravenous valproate as abortive therapy remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of sodium valproate and dexamethasone in the treatment of acute migraine. Methods We conducted a double-blind randomized clinical trial including 90 patients aged 18 to 65 years with acute migraine headache but no aura. Patients were randomized to receive intravenous dexamethasone (8 mg) or sodium valproate (400 mg) diluted into 4 mL of normal saline. The primary outcome measure was pain relief after 0.5, 1, 3, or 6 hours after administration. The secondary outcome criteria were the associated symptom recovery, rate of headache recurrence after 24 hours, and medication side effects. Pearson’s chi square and the t-test were employed in the data analysis. Results Of the 90 patients, 80 were investigated. The percentage of headache improvement at 0.5 hours after treatment was 55% and 67.5% in the sodium valproate and dexamethasone groups, respectively. Before-treatment and 0.5 hour after treatment pain severity visual analog scale scores were 9.05±0.90 and 3.8±3.09 in the sodium valproate group and 8.92±0.79 and 3.10±2.73 in the dexamethasone group, respectively. There were no significant intergroup differences. Conclusion This randomized clinical trial showed that the intravenous injection of sodium valproate 400 mg has similar effects to those of dexamethasone for improving acute migraine headache.
iVISA: a framework for flexible layout block-level storage system

High performance, high bandwidth, and scalable network storage system is the requirement tendency of most data-intensive applications. Distributed RAID, as a storage architecture, is widely used in cluster and distributed computing environments. But the data placement is mechanical and penalty for maintaining consistency is suffered. In this paper we propose a novel block-level storage architecture called iVISA (iSCSI based virtual interface storage architecture) which employs the concepts both distributed RAID and virtualization storage. All storage resources distribute in a high performance VI network and are managed by a metadata server. A number of iSCSI target nodes act as the entrances of iVISA system for accessing through iSCSI connections. The storage resources are dynamically allocated to users during I/O accessing. The users' logical block addresses are intelligently and flexibly mapped to the physical block addresses based on the current workload of storage nodes and data layout. The evaluation result shows that better performance can be achieved by allocation and mapping dynamically and flexibly with optimized allocation strategy. A hybrid strategy considering both data layout and load of storage nodes has a 30% higher I/O performance than conventional distributed RAID.
Ndrg4 enhances NGF‐induced ERK activation uncoupled with Elk‐1 activation

Ndrg4 is expressed predominantly in the early postnatal rat brain and may be related to neural cell differentiation. PC12 cell lines stably expressing increased levels of Ndrg4 protein display enhanced NGF‐induced phosphorylation of MEK and ERK. In contrast, the Ndrg4‐C2‐overexpressed PC12 cell lines showed attenuated NGF‐promoted phosphorylation of Elk‐1, which is a nuclear target of ERK. A reporter assay also indicated that Ndrg4‐C2 suppresses Elk‐1‐mediated transcriptional activation and SRE reporter expression. The suppressive effect of Ndrg4‐C2 on NGF‐induced activation of Elk‐1 was abolished by colchicine but not by cytochalasin D, suggesting that microtubules are involved in the reduced activation of Elk‐1 by Ndrg4. Ndrg4 may play a role in supporting the activation of ERK and its target proteins needed for neuronal differentiation and in reducing the activation of Elk‐1 implicated in cell growth. J. Cell. Biochem. 98: 185–193, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.