Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the misuse of national culture dimensions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ongoing misapplication of the Hofstede and GLOBE national culture dimensions at the individual level of analysis in both research and teaching. It provides suggestions as to how these national level constructs might be used in analysis and the challenges such use presents to researchers.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used by Hofstede and GLOBE in their calculation of national culture dimensions is discussed together with the implications.Findings – The consequences of the national nature of the Hofstede and GLOBE national culture dimensions are that the dimensions do not exist at the individual level. The paper explains why, in spite of this, the dimensions continue to be misapplied to individuals.Practical implications – There are important implications for practitioners. The cultural assumptions often made about individuals in different countries based on the Hofstede and GLOBE dimension scores are invalid. Practitioners should not u.
Convergence for long-times of a semidiscrete Perona-Malik equation in one dimension

We rigorously prove that the semidiscrete schemes of a Perona–Malik type equation converge, in a long-time scale, to a suitable system of ordinary differential equations defined on piecewise constant functions. The proof is based on a formal asymptotic expansion argument, and on a careful construction of discrete comparison functions. Despite the equation having a region where it is backward parabolic, we prove a discrete comparison principle, which is the key tool for the convergence result.
Poles Reject Anti-missile Shield

Although joining NATO met with general approval in Poland, the stationing of a US missile defence system has been rejected by a majority of the population. The president and prime minister during this period, the twins Lech and Jaroslav Kaczyński, didn’t consider holding a referendum on this issue. For two years now the issue of a US anti-missile base on Polish soil has occupied public opinion. The majority of Poles are against. But that doesn’t bother the government. Having won a majority for the three-party coalition (the Law and Justice Party, Self Defence and the League of Polish Families) in the autumn of 2005, the Kaczyński brothers maintained the right to make that decision themselves. Parliament (the Sejm and the Senate) could ratify the decision at a later date. On 10 April 2007, the defence minister, Alexander Szczyglo, said that no one with any common sense would ask the population if they wanted more security. This right-wing government would not change its attitude. But a left or centre left government would probably take a similar position. The established left in Poland defended the invasion of Iraq with the same lies as did Tony Blair and George Bush. They did exactly as the US wanted them to then, and they wouldn’t behave any differently now on this issue. They all agree: The United States is our most important ally. This issue has been around for a while. Its pre-history goes right back to 1989/ 90. One shouldn’t forget the international context at the time. But the essentials can be got from a close reading of the memoirs of the dramatis personae (Mikhail Gorbachov; his foreign secretary, Eduard Schevardnadze; Russia’s then ambassador to West Germany, V. Falin; Helmut Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and others). There one will find interesting reading on the package deal being done on German unification and NATO expansion, as well as America’s long-term planning beyond these immediate deals. What was agreed in July 1990, after months of discussions in the Caucasus between US-backed Helmut Kohl and Gorbachev,
What Are We Looking for in Computer-Based Learning Interventions in Medical Education? A Systematic Review

Background Computer-based learning (CBL) has been widely used in medical education, and reports regarding its usage and effectiveness have ranged broadly. Most work has been done on the effectiveness of CBL approaches versus traditional methods, and little has been done on the comparative effects of CBL versus CBL methodologies. These findings urged other authors to recommend such studies in hopes of improving knowledge about which CBL methods work best in which settings. Objective In this systematic review, we aimed to characterize recent studies of the development of software platforms and interventions in medical education, search for common points among studies, and assess whether recommendations for CBL research are being taken into consideration. Methods We conducted a systematic review of the literature published from 2003 through 2013. We included studies written in English, specifically in medical education, regarding either the development of instructional software or interventions using instructional software, during training or practice, that reported learner attitudes, satisfaction, knowledge, skills, or software usage. We conducted 2 latent class analyses to group articles according to platform features and intervention characteristics. In addition, we analyzed references and citations for abstracted articles. Results We analyzed 251 articles. The number of publications rose over time, and they encompassed most medical disciplines, learning settings, and training levels, totaling 25 different platforms specifically for medical education. We uncovered 4 latent classes for educational software, characteristically making use of multimedia (115/251, 45.8%), text (64/251, 25.5%), Web conferencing (54/251, 21.5%), and instructional design principles (18/251, 7.2%). We found 3 classes for intervention outcomes: knowledge and attitudes (175/212, 82.6%), knowledge, attitudes, and skills (11.8%), and online activity (12/212, 5.7%). About a quarter of the articles (58/227, 25.6%) did not hold references or citations in common with other articles. The number of common references and citations increased in articles reporting instructional design principles (P=.03), articles measuring online activities (P=.01), and articles citing a review by Cook and colleagues on CBL (P=.04). There was an association between number of citations and studies comparing CBL versus CBL, independent of publication date (P=.02). Conclusions Studies in this field vary highly, and a high number of software systems are being developed. It seems that past recommendations regarding CBL interventions are being taken into consideration. A move into a more student-centered model, a focus on implementing reusable software platforms for specific learning contexts, and the analysis of online activity to track and predict outcomes are relevant areas for future research in this field.
Embodied semantic processing: The body-object interaction effect in a non-manual task

Abstract Body-object interaction (BOI) measures people's perceptions of the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word's referent. Facilitatory BOI effects, involving faster responses for high BOI words, have been reported in a number of visual word recognition tasks using button press responses. Since BOI effects have only been observed in button-press tasks, it is possible that the effects may be due to priming by high BOI words of the motor system, rather than activation of stored motor information in the lexical semantic system. If this hypothesis is correct, BOI effects should not be observed in tasks using verbal responses. We tested this hypothesis in three versions of a go/no-go semantic categorization task: one version required button press responses, whereas the other two versions required verbal responses. Contrary to the motor priming hypothesis, we observed facilitatory BOI effects in all three versions of the semantic categorization task. These results support the inference that stored motor information is indeed an important component of the lexical semantic system.
Feature selection for steganalysis based on modified Stochastic Diffusion Search using Fisher score

The steganalysis process comprises of two major components feature extraction and classification based on the extracted features. The high dimension of feature sets used for steganalysis makes classification a complex and time-consuming process. A novel feature selection algorithm (SDSFS) for steganalysis is proposed in this paper. SDSFS is a filter-type feature selection algorithm which selects reduced feature set based on Stochastic Diffusion Search. The Stochastic Diffusion Search, a generic population-based search method, has been modified and adopted successfully for steganalytic feature selection in this work. The algorithm uses separability of feature vectors as hypothesis and Fisher score is used as separability measure. To show the usefulness and effectiveness of SDSFS, experiments were conducted on two different feature sets used for steganalysis. The experimental results show that the proposed feature selection effectively reduces the dimensionality of the features and improves the detection accuracy of the steganalysis process.
The importance of workplace learning for trade unions: a study of the steel industry

This paper is concerned with the relationship between trade unions and learning in the workplace, particularly in relation to the enhancement of worker employability profiles. With the restructuring and modernising of the European steel industry as its context, this paper argues that the organisational and structural features of a sector have a profound influence on the way workplace learning is organised. Equally, trade union organisation and approaches also shape the learning agenda. In the steel industry, trade unions have failed to address the significance of workplace learning, partly because of the ways that they approach this topic. In the context of traditional sectors, with relatively vulnerable workforces, the weakened state of union bargaining positions means that they have limited capacity to address workforce employability or workplace participation. The outcome is that trade union involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is marginal.
Response to Intervention: A Research-Based Summary

Response to Intervention (RTI) is an instructional framework through which schools can provide early intervention for students experiencing academic and behavioral difficulties. It is also promoted as an alternative to the IQ-discrepancy model for identifying students with learning disabilities. Most states have developed, or are developing, models of RTI that can be used by school systems and the topic of RTI is frequently written about in educational journals and spoken about at professional conferences. The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with a summary of the research base related to the typical components of the RTI process, as well as the evidence base for RTI when implemented in its entirety.
Dene stop contrasts: Data from Délįnę Slavey

This paper presents the results of an acoustic study of stop contrasts in Slavey, a Dene (Athabaskan) language with a three-way laryngeal contrast. Stops in 8 speakers were measured. In addition to durational differences between the stops, burst intensity was found to be important for distinguishing aspirated stops from plain and ejective stops, and coarticulatory effects on the following vowel were found to be important for distinguishing ejective stops. Dél S avey has stop contrasts similar to those of a number of other Dene languages. The languages varied the most in their realization of ejective stops, but there were consistent patterns: ejectives were never longer than aspirated stops or shorter than plain stops and they were always, among the stops, followed by vowels with the most creaky voice and the slowest intensity rise.
Extended password key exchange protocols immune to dictionary attack

Strong password methods verify even small passwords over a network without additional stored keys or certificates with the user, and without fear of network dictionary attack. We describe a new extension to further limit exposure to theft of a stored password-verifier, and apply it to several protocols including the Simple Password Exponential Key Exchange (SPEKE). Alice proves knowledge of a password C to Bob, who has a stored verifier S, where S=g/sup C/ mod p. They perform a SPEKE exchange based on the shared secret S to derive ephemeral shared key K/sub 1/. Bob chooses a random X and sends g/sup X/ mod p. Alice computes K=g/sup XC/ mod p, and proves knowledge of {K/sub 1/,K/sub 2/}. Bob verifies this result to confirm that Alice knows C. Implementation issues are summarized, showing the potential for improved performance over Bellovin and Merritt's comparably strong Augmented-Encrypted Key Exchange. These methods make the password a strong independent factor in authentication, and are suitable for both Internet and intranet use.
Unique Sense: Smart Computing Prototype for Industry 4.0 Revolution with IOT and Bigdata Implementation Model

Today, The Computing architectures are one of the most complex constrained developing area in the research field. Which delivers solution for different domains computation problem from its stack above. The architectural integration constrains makes difficulties to customize and modify the system for dynamic industrial and business needs. This model is the initiation towards the solution for findings of Industry 4.0 and Bigdata needs. This “Unique sense” smart computing implementation model for Industry 4.0 holds the innovative Smart computing prototype is a part of “UNIQUE SENSE” computing architecture which can delivers alternate solution for today’s computing architecture to satisfy the future generation needs of diversified technologies and techniques, which brings extended support to the ubiquitous environment. Primitively the industrial 4.0 having a lots of chained interlinked process which also holds valuable information. So it is especially designed for fault tolerance data processing integrated system. This implementation model constructed in the way that smart control and self-accessible system for next generation cyber physical machine and automation controlling system. Also that focusing towards dynamic customization, reusability, eco friendliness for next generation controlling and computation power
Reconstructing spinal dura-like tissue using electrospun poly(lactide-co-glycolide) membranes and dermal fibroblasts to seamlessly repair spinal dural defects in goats

Many neuro- and spinal surgeries involving access to the underlying nervous tissue will cause defect of spinal dural mater, further resulting in cerebrospinal fluid leakage. The current work was thus aimed to develop a package which included two layers of novel electrospun membranes, dermal fibroblasts and mussel adhesive protein for repairing spinal dural defect. The inner layer is electrospun fibrous poly(lactide-co-glycolide) membrane with oriented microstructure (O-poly(lactide-co-glycolide)), which was used as a substrate to anchor dermal fibroblasts as seed cells to reconstitute dura-like tissue via tissue engineering technique. The outer layer is chitosan-coated electrospun nonwoven poly(lactide-co-glycolide) membrane (poly(lactide-co-glycolide)-chitosan). During surgery, the inner reconstituted tissue layer was first used to directly cover dura defects, while the outer layer was placed onwards with its marginal area tightly immobilized to the surrounding normal spinal dura aided by mussel adhesive protein. Efficacy of the current design was verified in goats with spinal dural defects (0.6 cm × 0.5 cm) in lumbar. It was shown that seamless and quick sealing of the defect area with the implants was realized by mussel adhesive protein. Guided tissue growth and regeneration in the defects of goats were observed when they were repaired by the current package. Effective cerebrospinal fluid containment and anti-adhesion of the regenerated tissue to the surrounding tissue could be achieved in the current animal model. Hence, it could be ascertained that the current package could be a favorite choice for surgeries involving spinal dural defects.
Empirical comparison of cell segmentation algorithms using an annotated dataset

Three popular algorithms (Viterbi active contour, watershed and a thresholding-based method) for segmenting cell nuclei are compared empirically. This is achieved via a large (20,000) image dataset that has been annotated by three independent nonexpert observers. The Hausdorff distance is used as an error metric and Chalana's modified Williams' index is used to compare each algorithm's output to the observers' data.
Temporal query substitution for ad search

Recently, information retrieval researchers have witnessed the increasing interest in query substitution for ad search. Most previous works substitute search queries via content based query similarities, and few of them take the temporal characteristics of queries into consideration. In this extended abstract, we propose a novel temporal similarity measurement for query substitution in ad search task. We firstly extract temporal features, such as burst and periodicity, from query frequency curves and then define the temporal query similarity by integrating these new features with the temporal query frequency distribution. Compared to the traditional temporal similarity measurements such as correlation coefficient, our proposed approach is more effective owing to the explicit extraction of high-level semantic query temporal features for similarity measure. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed similarity measure can make the ads more relevant to user search queries compared to ad search without temporal features.
Comparing prediction power and stability of broadband and hyperspectral vegetation indices for estimation of green leaf area index and canopy chlorophyll density

Hyperspectral reflectance data representing a wide range of canopies were simulated using the combined PROSPECT + SAIL model. The simulations were used to study the stability of recently proposed vegetation indices (VIs) derived from adjacent narrowband spectral reflectance data across the visible (VIS) and near infrared (NIR) region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The prediction power of these indices with respect to green leaf area index (LAI) and canopy chlorophyll density (CCD) was compared, and their sensitivity to canopy architecture, illumination geometry, soil background reflectance, and atmospheric conditions were analyzed. The second soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI2) proved to be the best overall choice as a greenness measure. However, it is also shown that the dynamics of the VIs are very different in terms of their sensitivity to the different external factors that affects the spectral reflectance signatures of the various modeled canopies. It is concluded that hyperspectral indices are not necessarily better at predicting LAI and CCD, but that selection of a VI should depend upon (1) which parameter that needs to be estimated (LAI or CCD), (2) the expected range of this parameter, and (3) a priori knowledge of the variation of external parameters affecting the spectral reflectance of the canopy. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Defining co-experience

In the context of design for experience this paper presents a review of existing models of user experience. In response to a prevalent view of experience as something individual, this paper suggests how these models should grow to include social use as well. Examples from a multimedia messaging study are discussed to this end and the concept of co-experience is introduced to take into account the social aspects of user experience and the experiences that users create for themselves with designed artefacts.
Reading is for girls!? The negative impact of preschool teachers' traditional gender role attitudes on boys' reading related motivation and skills

According to gender stereotypes, reading is for girls. In this study, we investigated the role of preschool teachers in transmitting such gendered expectations. We suggest that boys are less motivated to read in preschool, and less competent in reading 1 year later in primary school, if their preschool teacher holds a traditional gender role attitude than if the teacher has egalitarian beliefs. In 135 independent dyads of a female preschool teacher (N = 135) and one boy (n = 65) or one girl (n = 70) we measured teacher's gender role attitude, child's reading related motivation as well as precursors of reading skills in preschool, and child's reading skills at the end of first grade in primary school. As expected, the more traditional preschool teachers' gender role attitude was, the weaker was boys' motivation to (learn to) read while girls' motivation was unrelated to teachers' gender role attitude. In either gender, motivation in preschool predicted reading skills at the end of first grade.
Implicating logic functions with memristors

Conventional FPGAs with SRAM cells, in addition to low density, low speed and higher power consumption, are facing the problems in terms of low retention time due to increase in leakage current as MOS size shrinking continuously due to progress in technology. With the invention and fabrication of memristor as a suitable candidate of 1-bit non-volatile memory, hybrid CMOS-memristor based 3D FPGA architectures have been proposed in literature. In this paper, we propose implication-NOR logic gate based FPGA architecture for implementation of logic functions.
Modeling Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease with Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Immature Hepatocyte-Like Cells Reveals Activation of PLIN2 and Confirms Regulatory Functions of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Alpha

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD/steatosis) is a metabolic disease characterized by the incorporation of fat into hepatocytes. In this study, we developed an in vitro model for NAFLD based on hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs) differentiated from human pluripotent stem cells. We induced fat storage in these HLCs and detected major expression changes of metabolism-associated genes, as well as an overall reduction of liver-related microRNAs. We observed an upregulation of the lipid droplet coating protein Perilipin 2 (PLIN2), as well as of numerous genes of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) pathway, which constitutes a regulatory hub for metabolic processes. Interference with PLIN2 and PPARα resulted in major alterations in gene expression, especially affecting lipid, glucose, and purine metabolism. Our model recapitulates many metabolic changes that are characteristic for NAFLD. It permits the dissection of disease-promoting molecular pathways and allows us to investigate the influences of distinct genetic backgrounds on disease progression.
Power-Performance Tradeoff Analysis of CML-Based High-Speed Transmitter Designs Using Circuit-Level Optimization

This paper presents comprehensive analyses of power-performance tradeoffs in current-mode logic (CML)-based transmitters via equation-based optimization and provides practical design guidelines that can help achieving optimum power efficiency. An accurate equation-based optimization framework was developed for this purpose, and using this framework, key circuit-level design parameters were found with specific design specifications and process technologies. The proposed optimization framework can determine optimum clock edge-rate (i.e., ratio of rise/fall time to clock period) and inter-stage voltage swings that enable significant power savings without affecting performance. Various transmitter design tradeoffs were analyzed for 45-nm, 65-nm, and 90-nm technologies considering data rate, clock edge-rate, and inter-stage swing optimization. Based on the analysis results, we determined the most energy-efficient data rate that can be achieved with acceptable power overhead for each technology node. Also, we identified the optimal clock edge-rate and inter-stage voltage swings in CML gates that achieved minimum transmitter power dissipation. Our analysis results indicate that, when properly optimized, overall transmitter power consumption can be reduced by up to 43% with inter-stage swing optimization with all other design constraints held constant.