Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
University students perspective in nanotechnology learning: Assessing the relationship between concept mapping and metacognition

Nanotechnology has emerged in the engineering education of universities, and increased the students' difficulties in understanding and learning it. Concept mapping as a metacognitive tool may be appropriate for students to learn nanotechnology because previous research has confirmed that this tool helps students learn disciplines like chemistry, physics, biology and materials science. The current study used both quantitative and qualitative survey data to examine whether concept mapping as a metacognitive tool helps students learn nanotechnology, and to investigate the correlation between the students' perceptions of concept mapping and their metacognition abilities. The quantitative data consisted of 42 five-point Likert scale questions measuring students' perceptions of concept mapping and metacognition abilities with high reliability of the measurement. The qualitative data involved in-depth and semi-structured interviews to explore more detailed students' experience and perceptions in terms of how and why. The findings show that there is a significant positive relationship between students' positive evaluation of concept mapping and their metacognition. Students agreed that concept mapping was helpful in generating and clarifying the key concepts of nanotechnology, beneficial to guide the topic concept, and forming a more systematic knowledge structure through integrating prior knowledge and new knowledge. During the learning process of concept mapping, learners adopted a great quantity of metacognition behavior to examine and reflect the self-developed knowledge structure. The study concluded that concept mapping as a metacognitive tool was able to facilitate students to achieve high-level performance in the learning of nanometer knowledge. Future studies should further explore the interrelationships among concept mapping, metacognitive and knowledge transfer.
Replacement incomes and taxes: a distributional analysis for the EU-15 countries

In this paper we analyse how income taxation interferes with the logic and aims of the social security system. We investigate the distributional effects of the tax treatment of social benefits, and more specifically of old age pensions and unemployment benefits. We present a brief overview of the different ways of levying taxes on replacement incomes. We measure the distributional effects of these different tax treatments by comparing gross and net replacement incomes over income deciles. By calculating Gini and Kakwani indices, we also estimate the inequality reduction and the progressivity characteristics of taxes on replacement incomes. Having summarised the link between taxes and replacement incomes, as well as their distributional effects, we then try to distinguish if there is a link between the tax treatment of replacement incomes and the type of welfare state. JEL-classification: C81; D31; H23; H24; H55
Current Account and Budget Deficits in an Intertemporal Model of Consumption and Taxation Smoothing. a Solution to the "Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle"?

This paper presents an infinite horizon model of consumption and taxation " smoothing" that implies a simple relation between current accounts, budget deficits, investment rates and transitory output shocks. It is argued that such a model could explain the "Feldstein-Horioka puzzle" of the apparent lack of international capital mobility. Traditional regressions of the savings rate on the investment rate, as performed in the literature, are shown to be incorrect tests of the hypothesis of capital mobility because they do not control for the independent role of budget deficits and temporary output shocks in the current account and savings equations. Empirical tests of the model for a sample of 18 OECD countries present good evidence that international capital markets are widely integrated and that the "Feldstein-Horioka puzzle" might be explained by the important role of fiscal deficits in the determination of the current account and the saving behavior.
Mean square analysis of a fast filtered-x affine projection algorithm

This paper provides an analysis of the steady-state behavior of the filtered-x affine projection algorithm (FXAP). This efficient affine projection (AP) algorithm for active noise control (ANC) applications is based on the filtered-x scheme, unlike most AP algorithms based on the more computationally demanding modified filtered-x scheme. This study depends on energy conservation arguments and does not require an specific signal distribution. The theoretical expressions derived for the mean square error (MSE) allowed to accurately predict the steady-state performance of the FXAP for meaningful practical cases. Simulation results of a single-channel ANC system validate the analysis and the theoretical expressions derived.
Text format based relational database watermarking for non-numeric data

The digital information revolution and increasing of outsourced data in many organizations caused significant changes in the global society where digital data are available everywhere with free of cost. Proving ownership rights of outsourced relational databases is a crucial issue in today internet-based application environments and in many content distribution applications. In the past few years, a large number of techniques have been proposed for right protection of numeric data. In this paper, a new relational database watermarking method for non-numeric multi words data is proposed. A mark is embedded by horizontally shifting the location of a word within selected attribute of selected tuples; a word is displaced right or left unmoved depending on watermark bit. The location where the mark to be inserted is determined by the Levenshtein Distance between two successive words within an attribute. Our method is effective as it is robust against different forms of malicious attacks and it is blind as it does not require the original database in order to extract the embedded watermark.
EDUCATING AGRICULTURAL RESEARCHERS: A REVIEW OF THE ROLE OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES

The number of higher-education institutions and the students enrolled in them has grown rapidly throughout Africa since the early 1960s. The number of universities increased from less than 20 in 1960 to nearly 160 by 1996; student numbers grew from 119,000 to almost two million over the same period, yet enrollment ratios in Africa continue to lag well behind developed and other-developing country norms. Funding for higher-education in Africa kept pace with the expanding institutional base during the 1960s and 1970s, but has fallen well behind the growth in student numbers since 1980. The pattern of the development of the agricultural sciences has matched the general pattern of development of the higher-education sector. Three quarters of the countries in Africa currently offer some tertiary training in the agricultural sciences. Only one half of the African faculties of agricultural sciences offer postgraduate degrees, and most of these programs were established in the past decade. Nonetheless, much of the rapid growth in the number of national scientists working in national agricultural research institutes continues to rely on scientists trained to the postgraduate (and also BSc) level outside the region.
User Expectations and Rankings of Quality Factors in Different Web Site Domains

In the emerging electronic environment, knowing how to create customercentered Web sites is of great importance. This paper reports two studies on user perceptions of Web sites. First, Kano's model of quality was used in an exploratory investigation of customer quality expectations for a specific type of site (CNN.com). The quality model was then extended by treating broader site types/domains. The results showed that (1) customers' quality expectations change over time, and thus no single quality checklist will be good for very long, (2) the Kano model can be used as a framework or method for identifying quality expectations and the time transition of quality factors, (3) customers in a Web domain do not regard all quality factors as equally important, and (4) the rankings of important quality factors differ from one Web domain to another, but certain factors were regarded as highly important across all the domains studied.
A fully-integrated Ka-band stacked power amplifier in 45nm CMOS SOI technology

A fully-integrated Ka-band power amplifier (PA) designed with 2 stacked Cascode cells is implemented in 45nm CMOS SOI technology. The stack configuration overcomes the low breakdown voltages of scaled transistors and provides an output impedance close to 50 Ω. At 37 GHz, and when biased at 3.6 V, the PA delivers a saturated output power (PSAT) and a -1dB compressed output power (P1dB) of 20.2 dBm and 14.5 dBm, respectively, with a peak PAE of 11.2%. With a higher supply voltage of 4.4 V (1.1 V across each transistor), the PSAT and P1dB increase to 21.4 dBm (140 mW) and 17.5 dBm, respectively. The stack configuration allows the PA to deliver high output power at mm-wave frequencies despite the fact that each transistor is biased under a low drain-source voltage.
Almost optimal accessing of nonstochastic channels in cognitive radio networks

We propose joint channel sensing, probing, and accessing schemes for secondary users in cognitive radio networks. Our method has time and space complexity O(N·k) for a network with N channels and k secondary users, while applying classic methods requires exponential time complexity. We prove that, even when channel states are selected by adversary (thus non-stochastic), it results in a total regret uniformly upper bounded by Θ(√TN log N), w.h. p, for communication lasts for T timeslots. Our protocol can be implemented in a distributed manner due to the nonstochastic channel assumption. Our experiments show that our schemes achieve almost optimal throughput compared with an optimal static strategy, and perform significantly better than previous methods in many settings.
Beyond positivism: giving a voice to low income renters in research about housing assistance and paid work

Abstract Does housing assistance encourage or discourage participation in paid work? This question is generated by a public policy paradigm of moving low income households from reliance on ‘welfare benefits’ and into paid work. Much of the consequent research in Australia and internationally has investigated the structural financial disincentives faced by such households in considering paid work and the statistical correlations between receipt of ‘welfare benefits’, including housing assistance, and engagement in paid work. Other than a handful of qualitative studies which investigate ‘behavioural responses’ to structural financial disincentives, we know very little about the attitudes, preferences and decision making of the people in receipt of housing assistance. In this paper, we report on research that took a more sociological approach to the issue, connecting with research outside of ‘housing studies’ which considers the practices of everyday life and the ways in which these interact with cultural attitudes and values. The research involved in-depth qualitative interviews with 105 low income households living in social housing or getting Rent Assistance, two-thirds of them women. It found that those interviewed had experienced considerable instability in family life, paid work, housing circumstances and other life experiences. As a result, their daily lives were shaped by the need to (re)establish some stability, particularly in terms of managing their mental and physical health and caring for children and other relatives. Giving a voice to low income renters in this way shows the complex range of factors which underpin decision making about housing and paid work, and the interrelationship between housing and other important aspects of individual and family wellbeing.
Extracellular Domain N-Glycosylation Controls Human Thrombopoietin Receptor Cell Surface Levels

The thrombopoietin receptor (TpoR) is a type I transmembrane protein that mediates the signaling functions of thrombopoietin (Tpo) in regulating megakaryocyte differentiation, platelet formation, and hematopoietic stem cell renewal. We probed the role of each of the four extracellular domain putative N-glycosylation sites for cell surface localization and function of the receptor. Single N-glycosylation mutants at any of the four sites were able to acquire the mature N-glycosylated pattern, but exhibited a decreased Tpo-dependent JAK2–STAT response in stably transduced Ba/F3 or Ba/F3-JAK2 cell lines. The ability of JAK2 to promote cell surface localization and stability of TpoR required the first N-glycosylation site (Asn117). In contrast, the third N-glycosylation site (Asn298) decreased receptor maturation and stability. TpoR mutants lacking three N-glycosylation sites were defective in maturation, but N-glycosylation on the single remaining site could be detected by sensitivity to PNGaseF. The TpoR mutant defective in all four N-glycosylation sites was severely impaired in plasma membrane localization and was degraded by the proteasome. N-glycosylation receptor mutants are not misfolded as, once localized on the cell surface in overexpression conditions, they can bind and respond to Tpo. Our data indicate that extracellular domain N-glycosylation sites regulate in a combinatorial manner cell surface localization of TpoR. We discuss how mutations around TpoR N-glycosylation sites might contribute to inefficient receptor traffic and disease.
Health Care Charges Associated With Physical Inactivity, Overweight, and Obesity

Introduction Physical inactivity, overweight, and obesity are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The objective of this study was to estimate the proportion of total health care charges associated with physical inactivity, overweight, and obesity among U.S. populations aged 40 years and older. Methods A predictive model of health care charges was developed using data from a cohort of 8000 health plan members aged 40 and older. Model cells were defined by physical activity status, body mass index, age, sex, smoking status, and selected chronic diseases. Total health care charges were estimated by multiplying the percentage of the population in each cell by the predicted charges per cell. Counterfactual estimates were computed by reclassifying all individuals as physically active and of normal weight while leaving other characteristics unchanged. Charges associated with physical inactivity, overweight, and obesity were computed as the difference between current risk profile total charges and counterfactual total charges. National population percentage estimates were derived from the National Health Interview Survey; those estimates were multiplied by the predicted charges per cell from the health plan analysis. Results Physical inactivity, overweight, and obesity were associated with 23% (95% confidence interval [CI], 10%–34%) of health plan health care charges and 27% (95% CI, 10%–37%) of national health care charges. Although charges associated with these risk factors were highest for the oldest group (aged 65 years and older) and for individuals with chronic conditions, nearly half of aggregate charges were generated from the group aged 40 to 64 years without chronic disease. Conclusion Charges associated with physical inactivity, overweight, and obesity constitute a significant portion of total medical expenditures. The results underscore the importance of addressing these risk factors in all segments of the population.
Acoustic sense & avoid for UAV's

Based on successful results obtained from a laboratory prototype and real-world experiments, this paper discusses an innovative technique for providing small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with 360 degree field of view sense and avoid capability. The proposed approach allows an aircraft equipped with appropriate acoustic sensors and processing to detect and accurately track other aircraft, manned or unmanned, in their proximity, determine whether or not they pose a threat, and, if necessary, take appropriate autonomous, quick-reaction measures to avoid them. The prototype is based on reliable, low-cost hardware that is platform independent, omni-directional, passive and draws little power. The technology is equally effective in day and night time conditions and also offers the prospect of retrofit to manned aircraft to provide them with a similar capacity to detect and avoid UAVs.
Temporary placement of a paclitaxel or rapamycin-eluting stent is effective to reduce stenting induced inflammatory reaction and scaring in benign cardia stricture models.

BACKGROUND/AIMS To investigate whether temporary placement of a paclitaxel or rapamycin eluting stent is more effective to reduce stenting induced inflammatory reaction and scaring than a bared stent in benign cardia stricture models. MATERIALS AND METHODS Eighty dog models of stricture were randomly divided into a control group (CG, n=20, no stent insertion), a bare stent group (BSG, n=20), a paclitaxel eluting (Pacl-ESG, n=20) and a rapamycin eluting stent group (Rapa-ESG, n=20), with one-week stent retention. Lower-oesophageal-sphincter pressure (LOSP), 5-minute barium height (5-mBH) and cardia diameter were assessed before, immediately after the procedure, and regularly for 6 months. Five dogs in each group were euthanized for histological examination at each follow-up assessment. RESULTS Stent insertion was well tolerated, with similar migration rates in three groups. At 6 months, LOSP and 5-mBH improved in Pacl-ESG and Rapa-ESG compared to BSG (p<0.05), with no difference between Pacl-ESG and Rapa-ESG (p>0.05). Cardia kept more patency in the Pacl-ESG and Rapa-ESG than in BSG (p<0.05). Reduced peak inflammatory reactions and scarring occurred in the Pacl-ESG and Rapa-ESG compared to BSG (p<0.05), with a similar outcome in the Pacl-ESG and Rapa-ESG (p>0.05). CONCLUSION Paclitaxel or rapamycin-eluting stents insertion led to better outcomes than bare stents in benign cardia stricture models.
Asking men about domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in a GP setting: Recruitment and participation.

This previous research suggests that general practice may be an appropriate setting in which to identify potential male victims and perpetrators of DVA. Yet we know little about the nature, impact, or extent of male patients’ experiences and perpetration of abuse. The current study aims to address this knowledge gap. April 2014 BRIEFING PAPER 1 The first in a series of briefing papers outlining research from the PROVIDE research programme.
Heme prosthetic group required for acetylation of prostaglandin H synthase by aspirin

The ability of aspirin to acetylate PGH synthase was determined by reacting [3H‐acetyl]‐aspirin with purified enzyme followed by high pressure liquid chromatography analysis of the protein components of the reaction mixture. Heme‐reconstituted enzyme incorporated approximately one acetyl group per 70‐kDa subunit, whereas apoprotein incorporated 0.1 acetyl group per subunit. The ability of the heme prosthetic group to enhance acetylation of the protein was correlated with its ability to protect the Arg253‐Gly254 peptide bond from cleavage by trypsin. Thus, heme‐induced alteration of protein conformation may contribute to the enhanced labeling of Ser506 by aspirin. The present results indicate that irreversible inactivation of prostaglandin H synthase by aspirin occurs only when the heme prosthetic group is bound to the protein. Considering its short in vivo half‐life, it is likely that aspirin inactivates only the steady‐state fraction of PGH synthase in a cell that is active but not newly synthesized apoprotein. This may contribute to the differential kinetics of inactivation and recovery of PGH synthase activity in platelets and vascular endothelial cells after administration of low dose aspirin as a prophylactic agent against cardiovascular disease. —Chen, Y. ‐N. P.; Marnett, L.J. Heme prosthetic group required for acetylation of prostaglandin H synthase by aspirin. FASEB J. 3: 2294‐2297; 1989.
A Comparison between Item-Based and Tag-Based Recommendation on a Knowledge Management System: A Preliminary Investigation

—Knowledge is one of the most important critical factor for the success of organizations. As huge collections of knowledge are stored in a knowledge management system, hence the development of an automated knowledge dissemination mechanism becomes a challenging task. To improve performance of such a system, a " knowledge recommendation service " should be embedded. This paper compared the effectiveness of two recommendation techniques namely, an item-based recommendation (a collaborative filtering technique) and a tag-based recommendation (a content-based filtering technique). In order to evaluate the performance of the two proposed recommendations, a group of knowledge management system users were ask to be participants in this research study. The percentage of accuracy in knowledge items recommendations was used as an evaluation metric. The result of the experiment revealed that the tag-based recommendation had an accuracy of 86.67%, which is higher than that of item-based recommendation. Thus, the tag-based recommendation showed a promising approach to the task of automated knowledge dissemination in a knowledge management system. Knowledge is an asset and one of the most important critical factors for the success of a modern organization. A knowledge management system has become a critical part of modern business management in both profit and non-profit organizations. While business organizations exploits the usage of various information systems to gain competitive advantages, the knowledge management system helps members of the organization store, retrieve and disseminate their knowledge and also helps the business organization maintain its core knowledge. Thus, it becomes a center of learning about organization core knowledge for all staffs in the organization. One of the main services embedded in any knowledge management systems is a knowledge retrieval service. The more effective this service provides, the more competent a business organization staff becomes. However, users of knowledge management system may spend a lot of time for finding their desired knowledge. As huge collections of knowledge are stored in the knowledge management system, a development of an automatic knowledge dissemination mechanism becomes a challenging task. II. RELATED WORK With a huge amount of information available, recommendation system (also known as recommender systems) are now play an important role for selecting and recommending pieces of information that people may be interested in. Instead of asking for recommendations from friends, relatives and colleagues about things to buy, movies to watch, music to listen and so forth, the recommendation systems provide suggestions on any items to be of interest …
Practices to enhance peer program implementation integrity to safeguard peer leaders and learners

The powerful influence of peers on fellow students’ learning engagement and their ability to foster self-efficacy is well recognised. A positive learner mindset can be fostered through establishment of guided meaningful relationships formed between peers. Recognising the value of peer connections in shaping the student learning experience, peer programs have been widely adopted by universities as a mechanism to facilitate these connections. While potentially beneficial, a lack of knowledge and inexperience by program implementers can lead to program outcomes being compromised. To mitigate this risk, QUT has established university wide systems and benchmarks for enacting peer programs. These measures aim to promote program implementation integrity by supporting and developing the knowledge and capabilities of peer leaders and program coordinators. This paper describes a range of measures that have been instigated to optimise the quality of programs and ensure outcomes are mutually constructive and beneficial for all stakeholders.