Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Success Factors for Using Case Method in Teaching and Learning Software Engineering

The Case Method (CM) has long been used effectively in Social Science education. Its potential use in Applied Science such as Software Engineering (SE) however has yet to be further explored. SE is an engineering discipline that concerns the principles, methods and tools used throughout the software development lifecycle. In CM, subjects are presented to students by means of real cases whereby students themselves either individually or in group discussions work through the problems and issues presented in the cases. The CM approach is deemed necessary for SE education in order to expose students to real scenarios that challenge them to develop the appropriate skills to deal with practical problems. As a largely theoretical subject, SE students could understand more about the practical application of SE concepts and ideas via such active learning activities. This paper presents a survey conducted on two sets of students who were exposed to CM in learning SE. Besides confirming the acceptance of CM among SE students, the surveys aimed to discover the contributing factors and elements that influence the efficacy of the method. The participants consisted of 64 undergraduates that comprised local full-time and executive students. The survey was performed in two semesters through group interviews. Data from the survey were analysed qualitatively using content analysis. The results showed that there are four factors that are important to teaching SE using CM, namely Environment, Case, Instructor, and Student. Each of these factors has certain criteria and characteristics that suggest how CM can be successfully used in teaching and learning SE. These findings can be used by SE educators to more effectively plan the use of CM as one possible teaching method in SE.
Impact of Self-Regulatory Influences on Writing Course Attainment

The role of self-efficacy beliefs concerning the academic attainment and regulation of writing, academic goals, and self-standards on writing course achievement was studied with college freshman using path analysis. These self-regulatory variables were measured at the beginning of a writing course and related to final course grades. Students’ verbal scholastic aptitude and level of instruction were also included in the analysis. Perceptions of self-efficacy for writing influenced both perceived academic self-efficacy and personal standards for the quality of writing considered self-satisfying. High personal standards and perceived academic self-efficacy, in turn, fostered adoption of goals for mastering writing skills. Neither level of writing instruction nor verbal aptitude had any direct link to course grades. Verbal aptitude affected writing course outcomes only indirectly by its influence on personal standards. Perceived academic self-efficacy influenced writing grade attainments both directly and through its impact on personal goal setting. These paths of influence were interpreted in terms of a social cognitive theory of academic self-regulation.
A Causal Model Explaining the Perception and Acceptance of Gene Technology1

This study examined factors affecting perceived risks and acceptance of gene technology. Based on the reviewed literature, a causal model was proposed. The plausibility of the postulated model was tested using structural equation modeling procedures. Participants were randomly selected students from a Swiss university (N= 837). Results indicated that trust in companies and scientists performing gene manipulations have a strong effect on the benefits and risks perceived. When trust was controlled for the inverse relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit vanished. Furthermore, world views, perceived benefit, and perceived risk each are found to contribute independently to the prediction of acceptance of gene technology. World views and trust appear to play an important role in perceptions of gene technology.
Using glyco-engineering to produce therapeutic proteins

Introduction: Glycans are increasingly important in the development of new biopharmaceuticals with optimized efficacy, half-life, and antigenicity. Current expression platforms for recombinant glycoprotein therapeutics typically do not produce homogeneous glycans and frequently display non-human glycans which may cause unwanted side effects. To circumvent these issues, glyco-engineering has been applied to different expression systems including mammalian cells, insect cells, yeast, and plants. Areas covered: This review summarizes recent developments in glyco-engineering focusing mainly on in vivo expression systems for recombinant proteins. The highlighted strategies aim at producing glycoproteins with homogeneous N- and O-linked glycans of defined composition. Expert opinion: Glyco-engineering of expression platforms is increasingly recognized as an important strategy to improve biopharmaceuticals. A better understanding and control of the factors leading to glycan heterogeneity will allow simplified production of recombinant glycoprotein therapeutics with less variation in terms of glycosylation. Further technological advances will have a major impact on manufacturing processes and may provide a completely new class of glycoprotein therapeutics with customized functions.
Motivating Effects of Task and Outcome Interdependence in Work Teams

Motivation and performance theories in organizational psychology tend to have a predominantly individualistic scope, relating characteristics of individual tasks to personal work outcomes of individuals (e.g., the Job Characteristics Model [JCM]). The present study goes beyond the realm of individual job characteristics by examining the effects of two interpersonal characteristics: task and outcome interdependence of team members. Subscales for the measurement of these social job dimensions were developed. The results support the hypothesis that, in addition to the JCM variables, the interdependence dimensions influence the employees' sense of responsibility and personal work outcomes. More specifically, the interdependence dimensions influence experienced responsibility for the others' work and thus account for a separate part of the variance in team members' personal work outcomes.
Spectral active clustering of remote sensing images

Mining useful information from remote sensing images is a longstanding and challenging problem in earth observation, among which images clustering is used to discover meaningful scene information, by grouping similar image pixels into clusters. The main difficulty of image clustering, however, lies in the fact that imperfect similarity measure between images usually leads to bad clustering results. Supervised classification with labeled training samples can partially solve this problem, but the collection of such labeled data is usually time-consuming and sometimes impossible in many real problems. This paper presents an active remote sensing image clustering algorithm by integrating simple human queries into the clustering process. More precisely, we propose a spectral active clustering method that can actively query the oracle (such as human) to improve the image clustering performance. We first construct a k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) graph of the remote sensing images. We then iteratively select the most informative pairwise constraints and purify the k-NN graph, by removing the edges between images from different classes. The final clustering on the purified k-NN graph leads to more accurate result. The proposed method has been evaluated on three high-resolution remote sensing image datasets. It achieves the state-of-the-art performance and demonstrates high potentials in practical remote sensing applications.
MALTHUS’S WAR ON POVERTY AS MORAL REFORM

The paper aims at finding a way out of deadlocks in Malthus scholarship concerning his relationship to utilitarianism. The main claim is that Malthus viewed his own population theory and political economy as Hifsdisziplinen to moral and political philosophy, that is, empirical enquiries required in order to be able to pronounce justified value judgments on such matters as the Poor Laws. On the other hand, Malthus’s population theory and political economy were no value-free science and his policy advice - far from being ‘utilitarian’ - resulted from his overall system of ideas and was explicitly based on a set of traditional moral assumptions. These in turn were justified by a peculiar meta-ethical theory, which has been named in a somewhat improper way ‘theological utilitarianism’ and which I propose to name instead ‘consequentialist voluntarism’. The theoretical item that has misled interpreters is mention of the ‘test of Utility’ as a way of discovering whether a principle is a moral law or a ‘law of nature’. The point is that for Malthus, the test of utility is just a way for discovering the will of the Creator, and accordingly the laws of nature that he has ‘imposed’ to his creatures. The test is not, unlike Bentham and his followers, a standard for establishing what is right and wrong in itself. The issue of poverty and its remedies is the one where Malthus’s peculiar approach, once applied to a real-world issue, displays it potentialities, yielding a kind of policy-advice that is softer and more flexible than the one that may be drawn from Benthamite utilitarianism. The reconstruction shows how, through subsequent approximations and under pressure of critics, Malthus yields finally a kind of institutional approach to policies concerning poverty, making room for generalised basic education, free markets for labour and (from a certain date on) for corn, colonies, and allowing for a subsidiary role for private beneficence. The goal to be aimed at by such a mix of policies is bringing about “circumstances which tend to elevate the character of the lower classes of society”, so that they will no more accept to deprive “themselves and their children of the means of being respectable, virtuous and happy”.
Predictors of CD4:CD8 Ratio Normalization and Its Effect on Health Outcomes in the Era of Combination Antiretroviral Therapy

Background HIV leads to CD4:CD8 ratio inversion as immune dysregulation progresses. We examined the predictors of CD4:CD8 normalization after combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) and determined whether normalization is associated with reduced progression to AIDS-defining illnesses (ADI) and death. Methods A Canadian cohort of HIV-positive adults with CD4:CD8<1.2 prior to starting cART from 2000–2010 were analyzed. Predictors of (1) reaching a CD4:CD8 ≥1.2 on two separate follow-up visits >30 days apart, and (2) ADI and death from all causes were assessed using adjusted proportional hazards models. Results 4206 patients were studied for a median of 2.77 years and 306 (7.2%) normalized their CD4:CD8 ratio. Factors associated with achieving a normal CD4:CD8 ratio were: baseline CD4+ T-cells >350 cells/mm3, baseline CD8+ T-cells <500 cells/mm3, time-updated HIV RNA suppression, and not reporting sex with other men as a risk factor. There were 213 ADIs and 214 deaths in 13476 person-years of follow-up. Achieving a normal CD4:CD8 ratio was not associated with time to ADI/death. Conclusions In our study, few individuals normalized their CD4:CD8 ratios within the first few years of initiating modern cART. This large study showed no additional short-term predictive value of the CD4:CD8 ratio for clinical outcomes after accounting for other risk factors including age and HIV RNA.
On the impact of government policy on programme design in New Zealand post‐compulsory education

The impact of national education policies on programme design practice in post‐compulsory education tends to be marginalised in scholarly literature. This paper reviews and analyses the literature to explore how neo‐liberalist discourses introduced in tertiary education and qualifications policies in New Zealand since 1989 continue to influence programme design in polytechnics. Tensions are identified in five areas: autonomy and accountability; the programme design process; student‐centred learning; concepts of knowledge; and, cultural diversity. For each area current trends are described, based on the author's analysis of very recent policies. It will be concluded that the opportunities for educators and educational institutions to exercise autonomy in programme design continue to be limited by national policy pressures to meet economic and skills needs. Courage and willingness are required if educators are ever to turn the tide and re‐focus education on the development of society beyond the needs of the economy.
Effects of fermented cottonseed meal on the growth performance, gastrointestinal microflora population and small intestinal morphology in broiler chickens

ABSTRACT 1. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of replacing dietary cottonseed meal (CSM) or fermented cottonseed meal (FCSM) for soya bean meal (SBM) on growth performance, carcass characteristics, gastrointestinal microbial populations, and intestinal morphology of broiler chickens. 2. CSM was fermented with Bacillus subtilis, Aspergillus niger and A. oryzae for 7 d. A total of 300 one-d-old male Ross 308 broiler chickens were used in a 42-d experiment in which the birds were randomly allotted to one of 5 dietary treatments (containing 0%, 10% and 20% CSM or FCSM) in a completely randomised design. Birds were reared on litter floor and had free access to feed and water during the experiment. 3. Results indicated that the fermentation process significantly reduced crude fibre and free gossypol, while it increased crude protein content and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) count in CSM. 4. The use of FCSM instead of CSM significantly improved growth performance of broilers. The abdominal fat yield in treatments containing FCSM was significantly lower than in the other treatments. The increase in the population of LAB in the crop and decrease in the population of coliforms in the ileum of birds fed on diets containing FCSM were more significant than in other birds. Villi in the duodenum and jejunum of the birds fed on diets containing FCSM were significantly higher than for the other experimental groups. 5. The positive effects of diets containing FCSM on growth performance and intestinal health of broiler chickens showed that this processed source of protein can serve as an appropriate alternative for SBM in diets for broiler chickens.
The Rule Responder Distributed Reputation Management System for the Semantic Web

Online Reputation management systems compute, manage, and provide reputation about entities which act on the Web. An important research question is how such a reputation management system can be build for the Semantic Web. In this paper we contribute with a reputation management system based on distributed rule agents, which uses Semantic Web rules for implementing the reputation management functionalities as rule agents and which uses Semantic Web ontologies for representing simple or complex multi-dimensional reputations. We demonstrate a Semantic Web reputation management system by means of an e-Commerce and a Social Semantic Web 3.0 use case, which is using an ontology based reputation object model and a rule-based inference service agent middleware, called Rule Responder. As contribution our solution ensures efficient automation, semantic interpretability and interaction, openness in ownership, fine-grained privacy and security protection and easy management of semantic reputation data on the Web.
Neural Development and Sensorimotor Control

What is the relationship between development of the nervous system and the emergence of voluntary motor behavior? This is the central question of the nature-nurture discussion that has intrigued child psychologists and pediatric neurologists for decades. This paper attempts to revisit this issue. Recent empirical evidence on how infants acquire multi-joint coordination and how children learn to adapt to novel force environments will be discussed with reference to the underlying development of the nervous system. The claim will be made that the developing human nervous system by no means constitutes an ideal controller. However, its redundancy, its ability to integrate multi-modal sensory information and motor commands and its facility of time-critical neural plasticity are features that may prove to be useful for the design of adaptive robots.
Lesbian women of color: therapeutic issues and challenges

Lesbian women of color may seek professional help to find their way through the challenges of being a triple minority. The authors discuss specific issues faced by African American, Asian American, Latina American, and Native American lesbian women, offering guidelines for affirmative practice when working with these women in a counseling context. Mujeres lesbianas de color pueden buscar ayuda profesional para poder navegar los desafios de estar en una triple minoria. Los autores describen problemas especificos que enfrentan mujeres afro-americanas, asiatico-americanas, latinoamericanas, e indigenas lesbianas, y ofrecen gufas para practicas afirmativas cuando se trabaja con estas mujeres en un contexto de consejeria.
TinySIP: Providing Seamless Access to Sensor-based Services

In this paper, we propose TinySIP as a communication abstraction for accessing sensor-based services. TinySIP is based on the session initiation protocol (SIP), which is a standard application-level signaling mechanism. Users on traditional networks remotely interact with a sensor network service by sending SIP messages. A gateway maps the SIP abstractions to the corresponding TinySIP abstractions and propagates the messages to the sensor nodes. We are currently planning on deploying the SIP-based solution that we propose on a research testbed to enable users on a wireless mesh to access the in-network storage and event correlation services offered by a sensor network consisting of 20 MicaZ sensor nodes
Reexamination of validity and reliability of the CSA monitor in walking and running.

PURPOSE To evaluate the reliability and validity of the CSA (model 7164) accelerometer (MTI) in a wide walking-running speed range in laboratory and field. METHOD Twelve male subjects performed three treadmill walking/running sessions and one field trial with the same continuous protocol involving progressively increasing velocities at 5 min per interval from 3 to 6 km x h(-1) (walking) and 8 to 20 km x h(-1) (running). In the field trial, this protocol was terminated after 35 min (14 km.h(-1)), but the trial then extended with 5-km running at a freely chosen velocity. In both scenarios, two CSAs were mounted on each hip and the step frequency measured at each velocity. Oxygen uptake VO(2) x kg(-1) was measured on the last two treadmill sessions. Correlation analyses were performed for mean CSA output relationship with speed, VO(2) per kilogram, and step frequency. RESULTS In all trials, CSA output rose linearly (R2 = 0.92, P < 0.001) with increasing speed until 9 km.h-1 but remained at approximately 10000 counts.min-1 during running, thus underestimating VO(2) per kilogram at speeds > 9 km x h(-1). Estimation errors increased with speed from 11% (P < 0.01) at 10 km x h(-1) to 48% (P < 0.001) at 16 km x h(-1), when assuming a linear relationship. Freely chosen velocities in the field trial ranged from 10.9 to 16.3 km.h-1. No difference in the CSA-speed relationship was observed between the two scenarios. Differences in CSA output between subjects could partially be attributed to differences in step frequency (R = -0.34 (P = 0.02) for walking and R = -0.63 (P < 0.001) for running). CONCLUSION CSA output increases linearly with speed in the walking range but not in running, presumably due to relatively constant vertical acceleration in running. Between-subject reliability was related to step frequency because CSA data are filtered most at higher movement frequencies. Epidemiological CSA data should thus be interpreted with these limitations in mind.
Multisectorial Afghan Perspectives on Girl Child Marriage

The objective of this study was to identify Afghan perspectives on the causes of and potential solutions to child and forced marriage in the country. Open-ended interviews (N = 102 interviews) were conducted with religious leaders, police, teachers, and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and government officials in Kabul, Jalalabad, and Mazar. Informants reported recognition of the poor social and health consequences of these practices for mothers and infants, citing poverty, tradition, conflict-related insecurity, low status of women, and ignorance of religious and civil laws as causes of these practices. Recommended solutions centered on child marriage prevention; most informants felt little can be done for married girls.
Understanding differences in web usage: The role of need for cognition and the five factor model of personality.

In relation to the Five-Factor Model of Personality and need for cognition, the authors investigated the relationship between personality and Internet usage. Of the five factors, openness to experience and neuroticism showed the greatest association to Internet usage. Openness to experience was positively related to using the Internet for entertainment and product information, while neuroticism was negatively related to Internet usage. Need for cognition was significantly and positively correlated with all Internet activities involving cognitive thought.
Influences on quality of life: a qualitative investigation of ethnic differences among older people in england

The starting point of this research was the concern that the circumstances, let alone quality of life, of those who migrated to England during the postwar period and who are now progressing into early old age and retirement, have only recently become an issue for research and policy. The study treats quality of life as a phenomenon (comprising the domains control, autonomy, pleasure, and self‐realisation) distinct from its potential influences. Qualitative interviews with respondents from four ethnically homogeneous groups (Jamaican Caribbean, Gujarati Indian Hindu, Punjabi Pakistani, and white English) identified six factors that influenced their quality of life: having a role, support networks, income and wealth, health, having time, and independence. Findings suggest that while both the influences on quality of life and the domains of quality of life were consistent across the ethnic groups, it was the ways in which they played out in people's lives that revealed ethnic variations.
An Amperometric Biosensor for Uric Acid Determination Prepared From Uricase Immobilized in Polyaniline-Polypyrrole Film

A new amperometric uric acid biosensor was developed by immobilizing uricase by a glutaraldehyde crosslinking procedure on polyaniline-polypyrrole (pani-ppy) composite film on the surface of a platinum electrode. Determination of uric acid was performed by the oxidation of enzymatically generated H2O2 at 0.4 V vs. Ag/AgCl. The linear working range of the biosensor was 2.5×10-6 × 8.5×10-5 M and the response time was about 70 s. The effects of pH, temperature were investigated and optimum parameters were found to be 9.0, 55 °C, respectively. The stability and reproducibility of the enzyme electrode have been also studied.