Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personal, family, and academic factors affecting low achievement in secondary school.

Introduction. Understanding different parameters which contribute directly to low achievement is a frequent topic, especially when international surveys such as the one carried out by the OEDC show that 26% of secondary students in Spain (6% above the average of the all other countries surveyed) do not attain the corresponding diploma. The present study aims to establish relationships between personal, family and academic factors that account for school failure, as well as determine how these factors influence each other. Method. The sample was composed of a total of 1178 students from four secondary schools in Almeria city (Spain), including the four years of Mandatory Secondary Education. In order to collect the data two measuring instruments were used: an adaptaion of the TAMAI questionnaire and a measurement of school failure. Results. The results of this survey make clear the direct influence of variables such as parents' academic level, gender, motivation, relationships between peers, and others. Discussion. The hypotheses were fulfilled differentially, showing the selective predictive power of the different contextual variables (family and school related) in accounting for school failure in students of Secondary Education. Such results offer us very relevant information for better understanding and for decision-making with an aim towards prevention of school failure during this educational stage.
Orally Administered Amyloidophilic Compound Is Effective in Prolonging the Incubation Periods of Animals Cerebrally Infected with Prion Diseases in a Prion Strain-Dependent Manner

ABSTRACT The establishment of effective therapeutic interventions for prion diseases is necessary. We report on a newly developed amyloidophilic compound that displays therapeutic efficacy when administered orally. This compound inhibited abnormal prion protein formation in prion-infected neuroblastoma cells in a prion strain-dependent manner: effectively for RML prion and marginally for 22L prion and Fukuoka-1 prion. When the highest dose (0.2% [wt/wt] in feed) was given orally to cerebrally RML prion-inoculated mice from inoculation until the terminal stage of disease, it extended the incubation periods by 2.3 times compared to the control. The compound exerted therapeutic efficacy in a prion strain-dependent manner such as that observed in the cell culture study: most effective for RML prion, less effective for 22L prion or Fukuoka-1 prion, and marginally effective for 263K prion. Its effectiveness depended on an earlier start of administration. The glycoform pattern of the abnormal prion protein in the treated mice was modified and showed predominance of the diglycosylated form, which resembled that of 263K prion, suggesting that diglycosylated forms of abnormal prion protein might be least sensitive or resistant to the compound. The mechanism of the prion strain-dependent effectiveness needs to be elucidated and managed. Nevertheless, the identification of an orally available amyloidophilic chemical encourages the pursuit of chemotherapy for prion diseases.
“That chair work thing was great”: a pilot study of group-based emotion-focused therapy for anxiety and depression

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is an evidence-based treatment for depression and it has shown promise for the treatment of anxiety. Only one other published study has examined EFT in a group therapy setting. Using mixed-methods, the current study explored the feasibility and outcomes of an EFT group with adults referred for anxiety and depression. Pre-, post-, and 12-month follow-up measures of depression, anxiety, and difficulties in emotion regulation were administered in addition to a semi-structured interview at one-year follow-up. The analysis of individual interviews suggested improvements in various areas of functioning and quantitative data revealed a significant decrease in emotion regulation difficulties. The results of this study provide preliminary support for the application and further study of group-based EFT for clinical presentations of anxiety and depression.
Multilayered temporal modeling for the clinical domain

OBJECTIVE To develop an open-source temporal relation discovery system for the clinical domain. The system is capable of automatically inferring temporal relations between events and time expressions using a multilayered modeling strategy. It can operate at different levels of granularity--from rough temporality expressed as event relations to the document creation time (DCT) to temporal containment to fine-grained classic Allen-style relations. MATERIALS AND METHODS We evaluated our systems on 2 clinical corpora. One is a subset of the Temporal Histories of Your Medical Events (THYME) corpus, which was used in SemEval 2015 Task 6: Clinical TempEval. The other is the 2012 Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) challenge corpus. We designed multiple supervised machine learning models to compute the DCT relation and within-sentence temporal relations. For the i2b2 data, we also developed models and rule-based methods to recognize cross-sentence temporal relations. We used the official evaluation scripts of both challenges to make our results comparable with results of other participating systems. In addition, we conducted a feature ablation study to find out the contribution of various features to the system's performance. RESULTS Our system achieved state-of-the-art performance on the Clinical TempEval corpus and was on par with the best systems on the i2b2 2012 corpus. Particularly, on the Clinical TempEval corpus, our system established a new F1 score benchmark, statistically significant as compared to the baseline and the best participating system. CONCLUSION Presented here is the first open-source clinical temporal relation discovery system. It was built using a multilayered temporal modeling strategy and achieved top performance in 2 major shared tasks.
Integration of Monte Carlo Localization and place recognition for reliable long-term robot localization

This paper proposes extending Monte Carlo Localization methods with visual information in order to build a long term robot localization system. This system is aimed to work in crowded and non-planar scenarios, where 2D laser rangefinders may not always be enough to match the robot position with the map. Thus, visual place recognition will be used in order to obtain robot position clues that can be used to detect when the robot is lost and also to reset its positions to the right one. The paper presents experimental results based on datasets gathered with a real robot in challenging scenarios.
Experimental results for set-based control within the singularity-robust multiple task-priority inverse kinematics framework

Inverse kinematics algorithms are commonly used in robotic systems to achieve desired behavior, and several methods exist to ensure the achievement of numerous tasks simultaneously. The multiple task-priority inverse kinematics framework allows a consideration of tasks in a prioritized order by projecting task velocities through the null-spaces of higher priority tasks. Recent results have extended this framework from equality tasks to also handling set-based tasks, i.e. tasks that have an interval of valid values. The purpose of this paper is to further investigate and experimentally validate this algorithm and its properties. In particular, this paper presents experimental results where a number of both set-based and equality tasks have been implemented on the 6 Degree of Freedom UR5 which is an industrial robotic arm from Universal Robots. The experiments validate the theoretical results.
Rule extraction from Support Vector Machines : a geometric approach

Despite the success of connectionist systems in prediction and classi¯cation problems, critics argue that the lack of symbol processing and explanation capability makes them less competitive than symbolic systems. Rule extraction from neural networks makes the interpretation of the behaviour of connectionist networks possible by relating sub-symbolic and symbolic process- ing. However, most rule extraction methods focus only on speci¯c neural network architectures and present limited generalization performance. Support Vector Machine is an unsupervised learning method that has been recently applied successfully in many areas, and o®ers excellent generalization ability in comparison with other neural network, statistical, or symbolic machine learning models. In this thesis, an algorithm called Geometric and Oracle-Based Support Vector Machines Rule Extraction (GOSE) has been proposed to overcome the limitations of other rule-extraction methods by extracting comprehensible models from Support Vector Machines (SVM). This algorithm views the extraction as a geometric task. Given a trained SVM network, GOSE queries the synthetic instances and draws conjunction rules by approximating the optimization problem. The extracted rule set also represents the approximation of the SVM classi¯cation boundary. Unlike previous works in SVM rule-extraction, GOSE is broadly applicable to different networks and problems because it need not rely on training examples and network architectures. Theoretical proof guarantees that GOSE is capable of approximating the behavior of SVM networks. Empirical experiments are conducted on di®erent SVM networks from binary classification networks to multi-class networks in various classi¯cation domains. The result of experiments demonstrates that GOSE can extract comprehensible rules with high levels of accuracy and ¯delity for their corresponding networks. GOSE also exhibits superior consistency. After analyzing and applying several optimizing measures, the complexity of GOSE was improved. In brief, GOSE provides a novel way to explain how an SVM network functions.
Generations and trust

Both themes of this issue are topical products of the last two decades. As such they may be read as intellectual symptoms of social change. The interest in trust is part of a political and cultural success of liberalism and individualism since about l980. But in contrast to its hardnosed sisters economic neoliberalism and rational choice, trust refers to a concern with others, not with their eventual plight but how they will act and react, and with how some common good might be achieved. Once individuals are substituted on the centre-stage for collective forces and institutional structures, social cooperation becomes inherently problematic. Trust is one way of addressing that problem. It has become a central concept of political science, as an important take on liberal democracy, going back at least to the l960s classic by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963) but boosted recently by the reception of the work of Robert Putnam (1993, 2000). While the main domicile of the concept of trust is political science and political sociology, it is also deployed in game theory and economic transaction analysis, and Piotr Sztompka (1999) has put it into the mainstream of sociological theory. Generations have come to the forefront because of demographic change, the ageing of European and other developed societies. Old age is no longer an individual status of a few, but a large aggregate of many, which is being seen either as a social burden or as a significant social force, or, at the very least, as a non-negligible component of contemporary society. Intergenerational relations have become a major focus, of public political discourse as well as sociological investigation. An important theme, as in this issue, is intergenerational exchanges and their possible asymmetries and conflicts. The classical sociological conceptualization of generation had a very different background and perspective than the current one. While there are very good reasons for the new approach, the classical one has hardly become obsolete or irrelevant. The classical sociological theorist of generation was Karl Mannheim (1952): Mannheim, actually writing in the interwar period, was primarily interested in ‘the dynamic of historical development’ and looked at generations and generational consciousness from a class analogy. Generations were defined by a common, historically
Note takers who review are less vulnerable to the influence of stereotypes than note takers who do not review

Abstract The current research investigated whether the opportunity to review reduced note takers' vulnerability to the influence of stereotypes when making decisions. Participants were presented with a trial in which a man or a woman had been charged with a stereotypically masculine crime. Results revealed that note takers who did not review were more likely to find a man guilty than a woman, and attributed a higher degree of offender relevant traits to a man than to a woman. Non-note takers and note takers who reviewed did not engage in stereotype-based processing. It was concluded that the provision of dedicated review periods reduced the extent to which note takers were influenced by stereotypes during decision making. Future research may consider investigating whether the benefit of dedicated review periods remains when jurors are presented with longer trials and when they are required to engage in deliberation.
Design and Fabrication of a Slanted-Beam MEMS Accelerometer

This paper presents a novel capacitive microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometer with slanted supporting beams and all-silicon sandwich structure. Its sensing mechanism is quite similar to an ordinary sandwich-type MEMS accelerometer, except that its proof mass is suspended by a beam parallel to the {111} plane of a (100) silicon wafer. In this way, each sensing element can detect accelerations in two orthogonal directions. Four of these sensing elements could work together and constitute a 3-axis micro-accelerometer by using a simple planar assembly process. This design avoids the traditional 3-axis accelerometer’ disadvantage of possible placement inaccuracy when assembling on three different planes and largely reduces the package volume. The slanted-beam accelerometer’s performance was modeled and analyzed by using both analytical calculations and finite element method (FEM) simulations. A prototype of one sensing element was fabricated and tested. Measured results show that this accelerometer has a good bias stability 76.8 ppm (1σ, tested immediately after power on), two directional sensitivities (sensitivity angle α = 45.4°) and low nonlinearity (<0.5%) over a sensing range up to ±50 g, which demonstrates a great opportunity for future high-precision three-axis inertial measurement.
The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective

From the early decades of the 14th century until 1650, continental Europeans executed between 200,000 and 500,000 witches, 85% or more of whom were women. The character and timing of these executions and the persecutions which preceded them were determined in part by changed objectives of the Inquisition, as well as by a differentiation process within medieval society. The which craze answered the need for a redefinition of moral boundaries, as a result of the profound changes in the medieval social order. The fact that these executions and the accompanying demonological theories enjoyed widespread and popular acceptance can be explained through the anomie which permeated society at that time. While these conditions provided the intellectual, cognitive background for the witch-hunts,economic and demographic changes, together with the emotional need for a target, explain why the witch-hunts were directed at women.
Re-examining salesperson goal orientations: Personality influencers, customer orientation, and work satisfaction

Several scholars have noted the importance of relationship marketing and the critical role that salesperson knowledge plays in the formation of buyer-seller relationships. However, research on salesperson learning motivations has been relatively scarce compared with research on firm-level learning orientations. One promising stream of research in this area is salesperson goal orientation. Drawing from previous work in control theory, the authors extend previous research in this area by proposing relationships between personality influencers, goal orientations, customer/selling orientation, and overall work satisfaction. Their hypotheses are tested using data obtained from a sample of 190 real estate agents. The results provide support for their hypothesized model. Specifically, learning orientation is shown to positively influence customer orientation, while performance orientation is shown to positively influence selling orientation.
Essentialism, Power, and the Representation of Social Categories: A Folk Sociology Perspective

This paper synthesizes two perspectives on essentialism: cognitive and social. The cognitive essentialist perspective argues that our bias to appeal to the psychological belief that categories have innate essences enables us to make inferences about social categories such as race, caste, and gender. The social essentialist perspective argues that essentialist thinking serves the needs of those in power to justify existing social and economic hierarchies. Examining the relationship between essentialism and power, this paper expands the framework for folk sociology, incorporating cognitive and social essentialist accounts to examine folk theories of social differences between caste, race, gender, and class, with a particular emphasis on social marginality and cultural narratives. Further, this paper discusses the relevance of the folk sociology perspective to the study of children’s emerging understanding of their social world.
Health underachievement and overachievement in English local authorities

Objective: To identify English local authorities that “overachieve” and “underachieve” in health terms, given their level of deprivation, sociodemographic context, and region. Design: Cross sectional study using data from the 1991 UK census and mortality data from 2000–2. Setting: England. Participants: 354 local authorities (total population 49 558 000). Main outcome measures: Life expectancy. Residual life expectancy after regression analysis. Results: In general, the more materially deprived the population of a local authority was in 1991, the lower its life expectancy a decade later, with men being more sensitive to the effects of deprivation than women. Many local authorities, however, did not follow this general trend, and these shared common characteristics. Mining, Manufacturing and Industry, and Urban Fringe authorities collectively had lower life expectancies than predicted by their level of deprivation, as did authorities located in the north west. Outer London and Education Centres and Inner London authorities had much higher life expectancies than predicted, as did authorities located in the east, south east, and south west. Given their level of deprivation, sociodemographic context, and region, 11 local authorities significantly overachieved for male life expectancy and 10 underachieved, while 12 overachieved for female life expectancy and three underachieved. Conclusions: Life expectancy in English local authorities is strongly associated not only with material deprivation, but with the local sociodemographic context and the region where the authority is located. Some authorities defy their contexts, however, and overachieve in health terms, while others, including some in affluent areas, underachieve.
Instant messaging on chemistry for scientific collaboration

Scientific collaboration needs efficiently communication within a team. At the same time, Instant Messaging (IM) is a popular real-time communication technology on the Internet. Whereas, chemists need to exchange information of chemical structure and chemical-reaction formula in time when doing their research work collaboratively. Thus, an instant messaging system named eChemIM is introduced in this paper to support communication with textual messages as well as 2D, 3D chemical structure, and protein sequence of bioinformatics. These special information can be transmitted and displayed on the communicate process with eChemIM. Moreover, if necessary, 2D chemical structure could be edited or analyzed by a visual chemical structure editor. In more than one years' use, it is indicated that eChemIM can help chemists to share resources and ideas, keep track of their issues. Accordingly it facilitates chemists' collaboration work.
Realizations of English Final Stops by Chinese Speakers in Taiwan

This study examines the production of English final stops /p, b, t, d, k, g/ by native Chinese speakers in Taiwan. Sixteen females in four age groups performed structured production tasks involving the reading of CVC items in a word list, sentences, and a connected prose passage. Results show variation for task, final stop, age, and native linguistic variety (Amoy vs. Mandarin).
A duality principle for the Legendre transform.

Summary: We present a duality principle for the Legendre transform that yields the shortest path between the graphs of functions and embodies the underlying Nash equilibrium. A useful feature of the algorithm for the shortest path obtained in this way is that its implementation has a local character in the sense that it is applicable at any point in the domain with no reference to calculations made earlier or elsewhere. The derived results are applied to optimal stopping games of Brownian motion and diﬀusion processes where the duality principle corresponds to the semiharmonic characterization of the value function.
Surgery and duality

Surgery, as developed by Browder, Kervaire, Milnor, Novikov, Sullivan, Wall and others is a method for comparing homotopy types of topological spaces with difieomorphism or homeomorphism types of manifolds of dimension‚ 5. In this paper, a modiflcation of this theory is presented, where instead of flxing a homotopy type one considers a weaker information. Roughly speaking, one compares n-dimensional compact manifolds with topological spaces whose k-skeletons are flxed, where k is at least [n=2]. A particularly attractive example which illustrates the concept is given by complete intersections. By the Lefschetz hyperplane theorem, a complete intersection of complex dimension n has the same n-skeleton as n and one can use the modifled theory to obtain information about their difieomorphism type although the homotopy classiflcation is not known. The theory reduces this classiflcation result to the determination of complete intersections in a certain bordism group. This was under certain restrictions carried out in [Tr]. The restrictions are: If d = d1¢:::¢dr is the total degree of a complete intersection X n1;:::;dr of complex dimension n, then the assumption is, that for all primes p with p(pi1)• n+1, the total degree d is divisible by p [(2n+1)=(2pi1)]+1 . Theorem A. Two complete intersections X n