Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Socially Contextualized Model of African American Identity: Possible Selves and School Persistence

Schooling, critical to the transition to adulthood, is particularly problematic for urban and minority youths. To explore predictors of school persistence the authors propose a socially contextualized model of the self. Strategies to attain achievement-related possible selves were differentially predicted for White and Black university students (Study I, n = 105). For Whites, individualism, the Protestant work ethic, and balance in possible selves predicted generation of more achievement-related strategies. For Blacks, collectivism, ethnic identity, and low endorsement of individualism tended to predict strategy generation. In middle school, performance was predicted by gendered African American identity schema, particularly for females (Study 2, n = 146), and the effects of social context appeared gendered (Study 3, n = 55). Balance in achievement-related possible selves predicted school achievement, especially for African American males ( Study 4, n = 55).
High-efficiency rectenna design for satellite solar power station

In this work, a simple and inexpensive microstrip rectenna is designed and tested in a simulation environment. The rectenna circuit consists of 2×2 microstrip patch antenna array and Rectifier Schottky diodes. Patch antenna resonates at 2.45 GHz. A rectifier is designed and tested for impedance matching and rectification efficiency. Dickson charge pump voltage multiplier is employed in the circuit to increase output voltage considering low input power. The charge pump methodology with different stages is tested and analyzed performance wise.
Cost-Effectiveness of the Freeze-All Policy.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of freeze-all cycles when compared to fresh embryo transfer. METHODS This was an observational study with a cost-effectiveness analysis. The analysis consisted of 530 intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles in a private center in Brazil between January 2012 and December 2013. A total of 530 intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles - 351 fresh embryo transfers and 179 freeze-all cycles - with a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist protocol and day 3 embryo transfers. RESULTS The pregnancy rate was 31.1% in the fresh group and 39.7% in the freeze-all group. We performed two scenario analyses for costs. In scenario 1, we included those costs associated with the ICSI cycle (monitoring during controlled ovarian stimulation [COS], oocyte retrieval, embryo transfer, IVF laboratory, and medical costs), embryo cryopreservation of supernumerary embryos, hormone measurements during COS and endometrial priming, medication use (during COS, endometrial priming, and luteal phase support), ultrasound scan for frozen- thawed embryo transfer (FET), obstetric ultrasounds, and miscarriage. The total cost (in USD) per pregnancy was statistically lower in the freeze-all cycles (19,156.73 ± 1,732.99) when compared to the fresh cycles (23,059.72 ± 2,347.02). Even in Scenario 2, when charging all of the patients in the freeze-all group for cryopreservation (regardless of supernumerary embryos) and for FET, the fresh cycles had a statistically significant increase in treatment costs per ongoing pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS The results presented in this study suggest that the freeze-all policy is a cost-effective strategy when compared to fresh embryo transfer.
Impact of clock slope on energy/delay of pulsed flip-flops and optimum clock domain design

In this paper, the influence of the clock slope (i.e., rise/fall time) on the performance and the energy dissipation of Pulsed flip-flop (FF) topologies is investigated. Results show that the adoption of a greater clock slope leads to a slight flip-flop energy increase, as well as to a negligible speed penalty. This insensitivity of Pulsed FF performance on the clock slope is shown to be a significant advantage that permits to relax (i.e., increase) the clock slope requirement at a given FF performance. In turn, this allows for downsizing the buffers of the local clock network, thereby reducing the overall energy dissipation within a clock domain. Detailed analysis shows that an optimum clock slope exists that minimizes the energy associated with the clock network within a clock domain. This optimization is shown to bring significant energy savings, which can be close to 50 % for a FF speed degradation of only a few percentage points. Extensive post-layout simulations are performed on a 65-nm CMOS technology to validate the theoretical results.
Causal attributions and strategy use in relation to memory performance differences in younger and older adults

A metacognitive hypothesis to explain age differences in adult memory is explored here–that younger and older adults differ in beliefs about memory and strategic processing. The motivational beliefs that adults make for their own memory performances were examined across tests of recall, recognition, face–name learning, and appointment-keeping. Forty-eight older and 48 younger community-living adults were required to report the factors they believed influenced their performance and the memory strategies used for each task. A final questionnaire required subjects to rank order the importance of a list of causal factors. There were significantly more younger adults as compared to older adults who attributed performance to controllable factors (i.e. strategy use), although age differences in beliefs on a more familiar memory task were smaller than on other tasks. Moreover, within age groups, attributions to controllable factors were associated with increased memory performance compared to when memory was attributed to uncontrollable factors (i.e. ability, age). Believing that memory is uncontrollable may undermine the efficient use of effort in cognition, consistent with current metacognitive theory.
A Petri Net Based Safety Analysis of Workflow Authorization Models

Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) are being widely used today by organizations to coordinate the execution of various applications representing their day-to-day tasks. To ensure that these tasks are executed by authorized users or processes (subjects), and to make sure that authorized subjects gain access on the required objects only during the execution of the specific task, granting and revoking of privileges need to be synchronized with the progression of the workflow through proper authorization mechanisms. Recently, Atluri and Huang have proposed a workflow authorization model (WAM) that provides such synchronization. This paper, first extends WAM to support roles and authorization constraints such as separation of duties. Second, it develops methodologies to analyze the safety of workflow authorization model when authorization constraints are imposed. The analysis is carried out by modeling WAM as a suitable Petri net (PN) and by utilizing the well-established analysis techniques of PNs.
Psychological and Traditional Determinants of Structure.

The authors would like to thank Jean-Marie Toulouse and Jeannine Robichaud for their help with the data gathering and sample design, Richard Germain for his advice and analytical contributions to the LISREL analysis, Morty Yalovsky, Peter H. Friesen, Donald C. Hambrick, Alex Whitmore, and Richard P. Bagozzi for their suggestions, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Government of Quebec FCAC program, respectively, for grants #494-84-0012 and #EQ1 867. A study was undertaken to examine the relationships of chief executive need for achievement and the traditional contingencies of size, technology, and environmental uncertaintywith organizational structure. A number of models relating the structural constructs of formalization, centralization, and integration with their hypothesized determinants were examined using LISREL and multipleregression analyses. CEO need for achievement and size were found to have the strongest relationships to most structural constructs; technology and uncertainty had very little impact on structure. The relationships between need for achievement and structure were usually highest in samples of small and young firms, suggesting that CEO personality might be influencing structure, rather than the reverse.
Should I Stay or Should I Go? Student Descriptions of the Doctoral Attrition Process

Little is known about the process of doctoral student attrition. Relying on theories of socialization and integration, this paper examines the cases of three students who left their doctoral programs. Their experiences show that academic integration pla ys a greater role in attrition than social integration. Furthermore, the academic integration process can be ruptured, particularly when a student-advisor relationship ends. The paper also questions the idea that degree completion equals success and tha t attrition equals failure.
Confounded : Causal Inference and the Requirement of Independence

One of the most important requirements for accurate causal inference is that there be no confounds; the cause being evaluated must occur independently of all other causes. When this requirement is not met, causal inferences are likely to be incorrect. The current study asks participants to judge how informative various situations are with respect to drawing causal inferences. Contrary to normative principles, participants appear to believe that many confounded situations are just as informative as unconfounded situations.
Word Recognition and Word Recall

153 college students, given a 20-word spelling test, followed by a recall and then a recognition test of the words, did significantly better on the recognition test than on recall—even though the interval between learning and recognition was greater than the interval between learning and recall. 93 females scored somewhat higher on the recall test than did 60 males. No sex differences were apparent on the recognition test. Recall scores were positively and significantly correlated with recognition scores. Such correlational results argue against models in which recall and recognition are characterized as qualitatively distinct processes.
Integrating Partial Order Reduction and Symmetry Elimination for Cost-Optimal Classical Planning

Pruning techniques based on partial order reduction and symmetry elimination have recently found increasing attention for optimal planning. Although these techniques appear to be rather different, they base their pruning decisions on similar ideas from a high level perspective. In this paper, we propose safe integrations of partial order reduction and symmetry elimination for cost-optimal classical planning. We show that previously proposed symmetry-based search algorithms can safely be applied with strong stubborn sets. In addition, we derive the notion of symmetrical strong stubborn sets as a more tightly integrated concept. Our experiments show the potential of our approaches.
Stem cell therapy for central nerve system injuries: glial cells hold the key

Mammalian adult central nerve system (CNS) injuries are devastating because of the intrinsic difficulties for effective neuronal regeneration. The greatest problem to be overcome for CNS recovery is the poor regeneration of neurons and myelin-forming cells, oligodendrocytes. Endogenous neural progenitors and transplanted exogenous neuronal stem cells can be the source for neuronal regeneration. However, because of the harsh local microenvironment, they usually have very low efficacy for functional neural regeneration which cannot compensate for the loss of neurons and oligodendrocytes. Glial cells (including astrocytes, microglia, oligodendrocytes and NG2 glia) are the majority of cells in CNS that provide support and protection for neurons. Inside the local microenvironment, glial cells largely influence local and transplanted neural stem cells survival and fates. This review critically analyzes current finding of the roles of glial cells in CNS regeneration, and highlights strategies for regulating glial cells’ behavior to create a permissive microenvironment for neuronal stem cells.
Global Model and Local Applications: Peer Support in the Clubhouse Model and Its Practices in Sweden and in Japan

Clubhouses are supposed to follow the International Clubhouse Standards, but they also need to make adaptations according to national and local contexts. This article compares the implementation of peer support elements in the clubhouse model in two different social contexts: the Swedish and the Japanese welfare systems. Participatory observations and interviews with members and staff at a Swedish and a Japanese clubhouse were conducted in order to explore how the idea of peer support was carried out in everyday life. Peer support seemed to be a core element in both organizations, but it was organized in slightly different ways. The Swedish clubhouse employed an experience-based way of working and involved members in almost all decision-making processes. The Japanese clubhouse employed a manual-based work method and members' involvement in decision making was relatively limited. The different approaches were due to dissimilar organizational structures, regulatory requirements, and societal expectations that were related to two different welfare systems. (Less)
The Meme as a Design Pattern for Social Learning in Agent-Based Models

Agent-based models have become popular within complex systems science for their ability to model a system of many components with simple interactions. In particular, their ability to demonstrate surprise and emergent properties have lead to their use in many varied situations involving social simulation. Little work so far has been focussed on leveraging the collective wisdom for approaches to building better agentbased models at the architectural level. This paper proposes a useful design pattern for capturing social learning within agent-based models. Moreover, this paper indirectly asserts that this provides some value, functionality and usefulness to the concept of ‘meme’ which has been lacking since the conception of the field of memetics.
Central Bank Transparency

Central bank transparency has become one of the key features of monetary policy recently. This survey article provides a structured review of the theoretical literature on the consequences of transparency of monetary policy, proposing a distinction between uncertainty and incentive effects of transparency. The theoretical insights are compared to the various ways in which central banks have become transparent in practice. In addition, there is an assessment of the empirical evidence concerning the transparency of monetary policy.
On-Center/Inhibitory-Surround Decorrelation via Intraglomerular Inhibition in the Olfactory Bulb Glomerular Layer

Classical lateral inhibition, which relies on spatially ordered neural representations of physical stimuli, cannot decorrelate sensory representations in which stimulus properties are represented non-topographically. Recent theoretical and experimental studies indicate that such a non-topographical representation of olfactory stimuli predominates in olfactory bulb, thereby refuting the classical view that olfactory decorrelation is mediated by lateral inhibition comparable to that in the retina. Questions persist, however, regarding how well non-topographical decorrelation models can replicate the inhibitory “surround” that has been observed experimentally (with respect to odor feature-similarity) in olfactory bulb principal neurons, analogous to the spatial inhibitory surround generated by lateral inhibition in retina. Using two contrasting scenarios of stimulus representation – one “retinotopically” organized and one in which receptive fields are unpredictably distributed as they are in olfactory bulb – we here show that intracolumnar inhibitory interactions between local interneurons and principal neurons successfully decorrelate similar sensory representations irrespective of the scenario of representation. In contrast, lateral inhibitory interactions between these same neurons in neighboring columns are only able to effectively decorrelate topographically organized representations. While anatomical substrates superficially consistent with both types of inhibition exist in olfactory bulb, of the two only local intraglomerular inhibition suffices to mediate olfactory decorrelation.
An Evaluation of the Utility of Expectancy Theory in Studying the Turnover of Nurses

Although expectancy theory has been widely used in organizational behaviour research to study the motivation of individuals, its application in the field of turnover research has been limited. The aim of the present study was to assess the usefulness of the approach in the study of turnover behaviour of hospital nurses. In terms of the propositions of the theory, desirability of outcomes (valence) and expectancies about the achievement of these outcomes in the nursing work role as well as alternative work roles were assessed. The univariate results of the study showed that while nurses who left their jobs and those who remained did not differ significantly with regard to their nursing work roles, there were significant differences between the groups in their evaluations of alternative work roles. This finding underlined the importance of examining employees' perceptions of other work roles in employee turnover research. The results of the bivariate analysis revealed that the expectancy theory measures were not particularly good predictors of turnover. However, correlations with nurses' job satisfaction and organizational commitment were comparatively high and significant. It was concluded from the correlational analysis that respondents' ratings of expectancies of achieving outcomes were better predictors of the dependent variables than the traditional approach to operationalizing expectancy theory measures, namely, expectancies weighted by desirabilities.
Natural killer cells are a source of interferon gamma that drives differentiation of CD4+ T cell subsets and induces early resistance to Leishmania major in mice

Infection of mice with the protozoan Leishmania major provides an excellent model to define the factors involved in T helper (Th) subset development, since Th1 cells confer protection in resistant strains of mice, whereas Th2 cells are associated with the fatal outcome of susceptible mice. We previously found that interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) was required for Th1 cell development after infection of mice with L. major. In this report, we evaluate the contribution of natural killer (NK) cells to IFN-gamma levels early in L. major infection. NK cell activity was higher in resistant C3H/HeN mice than in susceptible BALB/c mice during the first week of infection, and removal of NK cells significantly decreased IFN-gamma levels and promoted interleukin 4 (IL- 4) production in both the draining lymph nodes and spleen. IFN-gamma production by NK cells required the presence of CD4+ T cells or IL-2, but not CD8+ T cells. Enhanced disease, as measured by parasite numbers and lesion development, was observed in NK cell-depleted mice. Furthermore, a comparison of the NK cell response and the subsequent parasite burden in several inbred strains of mice demonstrated that NK cells mediate early resistance to L. major. Together, these data indicate that the stimulation of NK cells, through the production of IFN-gamma, plays an important role in initiating Th1 cell differentiation in leishmaniasis and in controlling early resistance to L. major.
Citizen Candidates and Voting Over Incentive-Compatible Nonlinear Income Tax Schedules

Majority voting over the nonlinear tax schedules proposed by a continuum of citizen candidates is considered. The analysis extends the finite-individual model of Roell (unpublished manuscript, 2012). Each candidate proposes the tax schedule that is utility maximal for him subject to budget and incentive constraints. Each of these schedules is a combination of the maxi-min and maxi-max schedules along with a region of bunching in a neighborhood of the proposer's type. Techniques introduced by Vincent and Mason (1967, NASA Contractor Report CR-744) are used to identify the bunching region. As in Roell's model, it is shown that individual preferences over these schedules are single-peaked, so the median voter theorem applies. In the majority rule equilibrium, marginal tax rates are negative for low-skilled individuals and positive for high-skilled individuals except at the endpoints of the skill distribution where they are typically zero.
Some extremal Markov chains

Using a Markov chain model for the motion of a particle through a V-node network, we consider the quantities nij, which are the average number of steps taken by the particle in traveling from an originating node, i, to a destination node, j. A figure-of-merit, N, for the entire network is introduced by averaging nij over i and j. We investigate which networks minimize or maximize N, either when no restriction is placed on the Markov chain, or when we restrict it so that it corresponds to random routing. By the latter we mean that at each node the particle “selects at random” lines from an undirected network graph. We show that for random routing, the complete graph has N = (V − 1) and is the minimizing graph. The maximizing graph is unknown, but we establish that the worst behavior of N increases at least with the cube of the number of vertices, but no worse than the 3.5 power. Properties of the class of graphs known as barbells are useful here. The minimizing unrestricted chain corresponds to placing the nodes on a circle and proceeding unidirectionally from one node to the next. Here, N = V/2.
A New Method to Distinguish Non-voice and Voice in Speech Recognition Li Changchun Centre for Signal Processing Nanyang Technological University Singapore 639798

— we addressed the problem of remove the non-voice disturbance in s peech recognition. It is always a big problem that the system will wrongly recognize our natural sound, like cough, breath, or sound of lip, nose as speech input and give " recognized " words output, when we use a speech recognition system. As we know, such non-voice speech is unavoidable for natural speaking, and if we don't supply effective control, the performance often drops to unacceptable level [1]. This paper puts forward a new method to detect fundamental frequency, and use it to distinguish real speech input and non-voice sound, like breath, lip, or noise by people walking by. Applying this method into our command recognition system, we get good results and make the system very robust and could be used in real life.
Deploying and configuring wireless mesh network in coexistence of highly interfering wireless LANs

In wireless mesh network, environmental conditions and location of “nodes” on the network are largely unpredictable and in a constant state of change. Heterogeneous signal propagation patterns in addition to interference from existing infrastructure pose significant challenges for a wireless mesh network design. In this paper, we explore, by experiments, link performance results produced at Qatar University (QU) wireless mesh test-bed in the coexistence of high interfering wireless transmission. We first perform signal strength measurements for path loss, shadowing, and fading at 2.4/5 GHz frequencies. Then, we investigate the effect of unique cell structure, and heavy lab machinery of the engineering building on the link performance. Furthermore, we study different wireless mesh node configurations and equipments’ effect on performance and network connectivity. The causes behind link instability and performance shortcoming of the QU wireless mesh network (QUMESH) are identified. Our analysis reveals that the link performance degradation is caused by high interference with wireless LANs, and special QU College of engineering structure. Our work provides insights to network designers to realize high-performance wireless networks by considering the adequate configuration, equipments, and addressing the adaptive transmission