Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing the impact of entrepreneurship education programmes : A new methodology

Purpose – Facing the multiplication of entrepreneurship education programmes (EEP) and the increasing resources allocated, there is a need to develop a common framework to evaluate the design of those programmes. The purpose of this article is to propose such a framework, based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Design/methodology/approach – TPB is a relevant tool to model the development of entrepreneurial intention through pedagogical processes. The independent variables are the characteristics of the EEP and the dependent variables are the antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour. To illustrate and test the relevance of the evaluation methodology, a pilot study is conducted.Findings – Data are consistent and reliable, considering the small scale of this experiment. The EEP assessed had a strong measurable impact on the entrepreneurial intention of the students, while it had a positive, but not very significant, impact on their perceived behavioural control.Research implications/limitations – This.
A methodology of forest monitoring from hyperspectral images with sparse regularization

This paper presents a methodology to extract information on existing conditions of a forest from hyperspectral images and SAR images for the forest management. To overcome the difficulties in hyperspectral image analysis such as optimal band selection and model overfitting, a machine learning technique called sparse regularization was adopted. Experimental results show the effectiveness of this approach.
Action research: improving graduate-level writing

I am a doctoral student enrolled in an educational research program. While completing an action research course, I conducted research to improve my academic writing and to develop skills for formulating arguments about educational issues. From this research I developed an appreciation for and an understanding of good writing habits and elements of strong arguments. Writing allowed me to explore how my experience shaped my perception of educational issues. I used writing as a tool for advocating for individuals to own their development and advancement and for addressing complexities inherent in education. The results illustrate that academic writing can be perceived as a form of action research, in that writing allows for exploration of possibilities of individual and institutional growth, generates knowledge of self and social and political worlds, and creates relevant knowledge that can contribute to change.
Efficient image transmission over low-power IEEE802.15.1 network over correlated fading channels

The paper studies the colored image (JPEG) transmission over mobile Bluetooth network using Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) packets. The paper uses the 2DH3 EDR Asynchronous Connectionless (ACL) packets. It presents the proposed chaotic interleaving technique to improve a transmission of colored images over Bluetooth systems. Also, it studies different interleaving schemes for this purpose. A comparison study between different propositions is held in the paper to choose an effective technique over mobile Bluetooth network. The fragmentation of the transmitted image is discussed. The simulation experiments are carried over correlated Rayleigh fading channel. Our experiments reveal that the proposed chaotic interleaving technique enhances the received colored image. In our simulation, we propose the image compression is lossless type. The experimental results reveal using the encoded EDR Bluetooth packets reduces the dropped packets. Also, the paper shows the standard error control scheme of old versions is ineffective in the case of colored image transmission over mobile Bluetooth network. The paper shows there is an error factor from fragmentation process where it determines the number of packets. JPEG image performs better with using chaotic interleaving.
The Impact of Assimilation on the Family Structure of Jews in Amsterdam, 1880–1940

Since the process of assimilation of Jews coincided with a fertility transition, this study examines the relation between changes in the household structure of families of Jewish origin and the process of assimilation. Data were gathered from the Amsterdam registry for 717 Jewish descendants born in Amsterdam between 1883 and 1922. Our research shows a decrease in average number of siblings at birth among successive birth cohorts. Moreover, especially those persons born outside the Jewish district had a significantly smaller number of siblings at birth. This result might indicate that the fertility transition among Jews started with families who had left the Jewish district. This study also shows that subjects who had a higher number of siblings produced more children themselves, whereas those who married a gentile had fewer children.
New perspectives in offshore wind energy

The design of offshore wind turbines is one of the most fascinating challenges in renewable energy. Meeting the objective of increasing power production with reduced installation and maintenance costs requires a multi-disciplinary approach, bringing together expertise in different fields of engineering. The purpose of this theme issue is to offer a broad perspective on some crucial aspects of offshore wind turbines design, discussing the state of the art and presenting recent theoretical and experimental studies.
Evolution of the turtle bauplan: the topological relationship of the scapula relative to the ribcage

The turtle shell and the relationship of the shoulder girdle inside or ‘deep’ to the ribcage have puzzled neontologists and developmental biologists for more than a century. Recent developmental and fossil data indicate that the shoulder girdle indeed lies inside the shell, but anterior to the ribcage. Developmental biologists compare this orientation to that found in the model organisms mice and chickens, whose scapula lies laterally on top of the ribcage. We analyse the topological relationship of the shoulder girdle relative to the ribcage within a broader phylogenetic context and determine that the condition found in turtles is also found in amphibians, monotreme mammals and lepidosaurs. A vertical scapula anterior to the thoracic ribcage is therefore inferred to be the basal amniote condition and indicates that the condition found in therian mammals and archosaurs (which includes both developmental model organisms: chickens and mice) is derived and not appropriate for studying the developmental origin of the turtle shell. Instead, among amniotes, either monotreme mammals or lepidosaurs should be used.
Distinct Visual Processing of Real Objects and Pictures of Those Objects in 7- to 9-month-old Infants

The present study examined 7- and 9-month-old infants’ visual habituation to real objects and pictures of the same objects and their preferences between real and pictorial versions of the same objects following habituation. Different hypotheses would predict that infants may habituate faster to pictures than real objects (based on proposed theoretical links between behavioral habituation in infants and neuroimaging adaptation in adults) or to real objects vs. pictures (based on past infant electrophysiology data). Sixty-one 7-month-old infants and fifty-nine 9-month-old infants were habituated to either a real object or a picture of the same object and afterward preference tested with the habituation object paired with either the novel real object or its picture counterpart. Infants of both age groups showed basic information-processing advantages for real objects. Specifically, during the initial presentations, 9-month-old infants looked longer at stimuli in both formats than the 7-month olds but more importantly both age groups looked longer at real objects than pictures, though with repeated presentations, they habituated faster for real objects such that at the end of habituation, they looked equally at both types of stimuli. Surprisingly, even after habituation, infants preferred to look at the real objects, regardless of whether they had habituated to photos or real objects. Our findings suggest that from as early as 7-months of age, infants show strong preferences for real objects, perhaps because real objects are visually richer and/or enable the potential for genuine interactions.
Integrin-dependence of Lymphocyte Entry into the Splenic White Pulp

The steps involved in lymphocyte homing to the white pulp cords of the spleen are poorly understood. We demonstrate here that the integrins lymphocyte function associated (LFA)-1 and α4β1 make essential and mostly overlapping contributions necessary for B cell migration into white pulp cords. T cell entry to the white pulp is also reduced by blockade of LFA-1 and α4β1. The LFA-1 ligand, intercellular adhesion molecule 1 is critical for lymphocyte entry and both hematopoietic cells and radiation-resistant cells contribute to this requirement. Vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 contributes to the α4β1 ligand requirement and a second ligand, possibly fibronectin, also plays a role. By contrast with the entry requirements, antigen-induced movement of B cells from follicles to the outer T zone is not prevented by integrin blocking antibodies. Comparison of the distribution of integrin-blocked B cells and B cells treated with the Gαi inhibitor, pertussis toxin, early after transfer reveals in both cases reduced accumulation in the inner marginal zone. These observations suggest that chemokine receptor signaling and the integrins LFA-1 and α4β1 function together to promote lymphocyte transit from the marginal zone into white pulp cords.
A New Type of Integration Error and its Influence on Integration Testing Techniques

Testing is an activity that is required both in the development and maintenance of the software development life cycle in which Integration Testing is an important activity. Integration testing is based on the specification and functionality of the software and thus could be called black-box testing technique. The purpose of integration testing is testing integration between software components. In function or system testing, the concern is with overall behavior and whether the software meets its functional specifications or performance characteristics or how well the software and hardware work together. This explains the importance and necessity of IT for which the emphasis is on interactions between modules and their interfaces. Software errors should be discovered early during IT to reduce the costs of correction. This paper introduces a new type of integration error, presenting an overview of Integration Testing techniques with comparison of each technique and also identifying which technique detects what type of error.
A New Image Blood Pressure Sensor Based on PPG, RRT, BPTT, and Harmonic Balancing

A new blood pressure (BP) sensor, also named sphygmomanometer, is developed in this paper for estimating BPs accurately from fingertips. The hardware of the sensor is a low-cost optical CMOS imaging device for detecting photoplethysmography (PPG) signals at fingertips. Therefore, the sensor neither needs to contact human skin nor pressurize it for accurate BP predictions. To calculate BPs based on captured PPG signals, the modified radial resonance theory is applied to develop a new BP transport theory (BPTT), and then composes a computation algorithm for implementing BPTT in a typical smart phone with limited computation load required. The algorithm is successfully implemented in a typical smart phone with minimum computation load and equipped with an efficient calibration process. An experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of the designed BP-sensing techniques. The resulted data clearly show that the difference between the systolic BPs (SBPs) sensed by the propose sensor and a validated cumbersome instrument is 1.37 mmHg, while for diastolic BPs (DBPs) is -1.40 mmHg. The afore-reported accuracy is well below those required by the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, which are ±5 and 8 mmHg, respectively, for SBPs and DBPs.
Role of Mitral Annular Systolic Velocity in The Evaluation of Left Atrial Appendage Function in Mitral Stenosis

Background : Mitral stenosis (MS) is the most common valvular heart disease. Thromboembolism is one of the most important complications of MS, especially when it is associated with atrial fibrillation (AF). Patients with sinus rhythm (SR) are also sussceptible to this complication when it is associated with left atrial appendage (LAA) dysfunction . LAA dysfunction is an independent predictor of thromboembolism in mitral stenosis. Objectives: To investigate whether there is a relation between mitral annular velocities obtained by Doppler tissue imaging (DTI) and LAA function determined by transoesophageal echocardiography (TEE) and to determine if the annular velocities can predict the presence of the inactive LAA in MS. Methods : Sixty MS patients were evaluated by transthoracic echocardiography and all patients underwent transesophageal echocardiography. The annular systolic (S-wave) and diastolic (Emand Am-waves) velocities were recorded. Inactive LAA was defined as LAA emptying velocity <25 cm/sec. Patients were divided into three groups; group AI (n = 18): sinus rhythm (SR) and LAA emptying velocity e”25 cm/sec, group AII (n =22): SR and LAA emptying velocity <25cm/sec and group B (n = 20): atrial fibrillation. Results : Thrombus was detected in 14 patients and spontaneous echo contrast (SEC) was detected in 48 patients. Both S-wave and peak LAA emptying velocities were decreasing, while SEC frequency and density were increasing from group A to group B. There was a positive correlation between LAA emptying vs. S-wave and LAA emptying vs. Am velocities (p < 0.001, r = 0.708 and p< 0.001, r=0.495). Multivariate regression analysis showed that only S-wave is the independent predictor of inactive LAA (p = 0.001, odds ratio = 0.133, 95% CI = 0.032–0.556). In patients with SR, the cutoff value of S-wave was 14 cm/sec for the prediction of the presence of inactive LAA (sensitivity: 92.3%, specificity: 95.3%). Conclusions : S-wave is an independent predictor of inactive LAA and a useful parameter in estimating inactive LAA in MS with SR. Key words : Mitral stenosis, Left atrial appendage function, Annular systolic velocity DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.3329/cardio.v1i1. 8201 Cardiovasc. j. 2008; 1(1) : 26-33
The importance of culturally meaningful activity for health benefits among older Korean immigrant living in the United States

Research indicates that participation in culturally meaningful activity is beneficial for immigrants’ health and well-being, yet older Korean immigrants struggle with accepting new cultural perspectives, which can negatively affect their health and well-being. Using in-depth interviews, this study was designed to capture the value of culturally meaningful activities for health among older Korean immigrants. Three themes were identified: (a) improved psychological well-being, (b) enhanced positive emotions and feelings, and (c) social connections developed with others. The findings suggest that by engaging in various culturally meaningful activities, older Korean immigrants gain a sense of social, cultural, and psychological significance in life. This study also provided evidence that older Korean immigrants maintain and develop their cultural identity through culturally meaningful activities.
When Five Words Are Not Enough: A Conceptual and Terminological Discussion of English as a Lingua Franca

The goal of this article is to (re)define key terminology in the study of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Although the diverse perspectives and ideological standpoints represented in competing definitions of terms is appreciated, a critical conversation on definition and interpretation of ELF and other related concepts is crucial in providing a more solid base for further inquiry in this area. Specifically, this study argues that ELF is a term that describes a function that English performs in multilingual contexts and posits that English as an international language refers to specialized cases of ELF found in international contexts. Furthermore, this study differentiates these terms from other related concepts, such as English as a second language and English as a foreign language, and discusses why conceptualizing ELF as a function, rather than a linguistic variety, is necessary in capturing the complexity and diversity found in English today.
Impaired tactile learning is related to social role in honeybees

SUMMARY Aging is commonly accompanied by a decline in cognitive functions such as learning and memory. In social insects, aging is tightly linked to social role. The honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) offers the unique opportunity to separate chronological age from social role. In the present paper, we tested whether chronological age, social role and the duration of performing this role affect tactile learning in honeybees. We compared acquisition, retention and discrimination between foragers with short and long foraging durations and age-matched nurse bees. Our data show that chronological age is of minor importance for tactile learning, retention and discrimination whereas social role has a decisive impact. Tactile acquisition is severely impaired in bees that have foraged for more than two weeks but not in nurse bees of the same chronological age. Interestingly, neither discrimination nor retention appear to be impaired by long foraging duration. The complex associations between acquisition, discrimination and retention in bees of different social roles open up rich possibilities for future studies on the neuronal correlates of behavioural performance and underline that the honeybee has great potential as a model system in the biology of aging.
Efficient test solutions for core-based designs

A test solution for a complex system requires the design of a test access mechanism (TAM), which is used for the test data transportation, and a test schedule of the test data transportation on the designed TAM. An extensive TAM will lead to lower test-application time at the expense of higher routing costs, compared to a simple TAM with low routing cost but long testing time. It is also possible to reduce the testing time of a testable unit by loading the test vectors in parallel, thus increasing the parallelization of a test. However, such a test-time reduction often leads to higher power consumption, which must be kept under control since exceeding the power budget could damage the system under test. Furthermore, the execution of a test requires resources and concurrent execution of tests may not be possible due to resource or other conflicts. In this paper, we propose an integrated technique for test scheduling, test parallelization, and TAM design, where the test application time and the TAM routing are minimized, while considering test conflicts and power constraints. The main features of our technique are the efficiency in terms of computation time and the flexibility to model the system's test behavior, as well as the support for the testing of interconnections, unwrapped cores and user-defined logic. We have implemented our approach and made several experiments on benchmarks as well as industrial designs in order to demonstrate that our approach produces high-quality solution at low computational cost.
Cognitive Impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on Parkinson's Disease Patients

Subthalamic nucleus (STN) or globus pallidus interna (GPi) deep brain stimulation (DBS) is considered a robust therapeutic tool in the treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, although it has been reported to potentially cause cognitive decline in some cases. We here provide an in-depth and critical review of the current literature regarding cognition after DBS in PD, summarizing the available data on the impact of STN and GPi DBS as monotherapies and also comparative data across these two therapies on 7 cognitive domains. We provide evidence that, in appropriately screened PD patients, worsening of one or more cognitive functions is rare and subtle after DBS, without negative impact on quality of life, and that there is very little data supporting that STN DBS has a worse cognitive outcome than GPi DBS.
Abstract acceleration of general linear loops

We present abstract acceleration techniques for computing loop invariants for numerical programs with linear assignments and conditionals. Whereas abstract interpretation techniques typically over-approximate the set of reachable states iteratively, abstract acceleration captures the effect of the loop with a single, non-iterative transfer function applied to the initial states at the loop head. In contrast to previous acceleration techniques, our approach applies to any linear loop without restrictions. Its novelty lies in the use of the Jordan normal form decomposition of the loop body to derive symbolic expressions for the entries of the matrix modeling the effect of η ≥ Ο iterations of the loop. The entries of such a matrix depend on η through complex polynomial, exponential and trigonometric functions. Therefore, we introduces an abstract domain for matrices that captures the linear inequality relations between these complex expressions. This results in an abstract matrix for describing the fixpoint semantics of the loop. Our approach integrates smoothly into standard abstract interpreters and can handle programs with nested loops and loops containing conditional branches. We evaluate it over small but complex loops that are commonly found in control software, comparing it with other tools for computing linear loop invariants. The loops in our benchmarks typically exhibit polynomial, exponential and oscillatory behaviors that present challenges to existing approaches. Our approach finds non-trivial invariants to prove useful bounds on the values of variables for such loops, clearly outperforming the existing approaches in terms of precision while exhibiting good performance.
Quality and Generic (Professional) Skills

Feedback from employers of graduates indicates a need to include a focus on generic skills to complement disciplinary expertise. Educational research shows that such skills are most effectively taught in the disciplinary context. Therefore, in order to better meet the requirements of employers for graduates who are more 'fit for purpose', universities may need to change the curriculum and how it is taught. Such changes involve significant investment in staff development and monitoring of the change process. Measures of effectiveness of changes must be developed and used to improve graduate quality. This paper describes how a business school has identified a set of generic skills to be taught to all undergraduate students and begun implementing a project to teach and assess the skills in the context of each discipline. The measures of effectiveness that were developed are outlined and lessons learned to date in efforts to improve educational quality are discussed.
Treating type 2 diabetes: incretin mimetics and enhancers

As a consequence of excess abdominal adiposity and genetic predisposition, type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease, often diagnosed after metabolic dysfunction has taken hold of multiple organ systems. Insulin deficiency, insulin resistance and impaired glucose homeostasis resulting from beta-cell dysfunction characterize the disease. Current treatment goals are often unmet due to insufficient treatment modalities. Even when combined, these treatment modalities are frequently limited by safety, tolerability, weight gain, edema and gastrointestinal intolerance. Recently, new therapeutic classes have become available for treatment. This review will examine the new therapeutic classes of incretin mimetics and enhancers in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.