Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validity and Reliability Issues of Two Learning Style Inventories in a Greek Sample: Kolb's Learning Style Inventory and Felder & Soloman's Index of Learning Styles

This study aimed at investigating the psychometric properties of two inventories for the measurement of learning style preferences in a Greek sample: Kolb’s (1985) Learning Style Inventory (LSI) and the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) by Felder & Soloman (1999). The inventories were administered in a total of 340 Greek university undergraduate students of different disciplines (education, psychology, and polytechnics) and primary school teachers. Regarding the LSI, our sample was found to strongly prefer the accommodative and the divergent learning style. Results indicated that in the Greek sample the LSI had a satisfactory reliability but its construct validity was weakly supported. No significant differences were found in relation to discipline, a finding that calls the discriminant validity of the inventory into question. Regarding the ILS, our sample showed a preference for the visual and the sensing learning style; its reliability was barely acceptable but the construct and the discriminant validity were well-supported. In conclusion, this study revealed psychometric weaknesses in both inventories suggesting that they could be used as a tool to encourage self-development of an individual within a discipline group, but not as a tool for grouping them according to given learning styles. This paper is concerned with two learning style models: (a) Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning theory, which is one of the most influential and commonly used models in higher education, and (b) Felder & Silverman’s (1988) learning style model, which originally was designed to capture learning differences among engineering students. Both models have developed inventories for measuring learning style preferences. Kolb designed and later refined (Kolb, 1985) the self-report Learning Style Inventory (LSI) to assess learning styles. In the Felder & Silverman (1988) model, learning style preferences are assessed by the Index of Learning Styles (ILS), which was developed by Felder & Soloman (1999). The present study aimed at checking the psychometric properties of the above instruments in a sample of Greek university
Automatic glaucoma diagnosis through medical imaging informatics.

BACKGROUND Computer-aided diagnosis for screening utilizes computer-based analytical methodologies to process patient information. Glaucoma is the leading irreversible cause of blindness. Due to the lack of an effective and standard screening practice, more than 50% of the cases are undiagnosed, which prevents the early treatment of the disease. OBJECTIVE To design an automatic glaucoma diagnosis architecture automatic glaucoma diagnosis through medical imaging informatics (AGLAIA-MII) that combines patient personal data, medical retinal fundus image, and patient's genome information for screening. MATERIALS AND METHODS 2258 cases from a population study were used to evaluate the screening software. These cases were attributed with patient personal data, retinal images and quality controlled genome data. Utilizing the multiple kernel learning-based classifier, AGLAIA-MII, combined patient personal data, major image features, and important genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) features. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Receiver operating characteristic curves were plotted to compare AGLAIA-MII's performance with classifiers using patient personal data, images, and genome SNP separately. AGLAIA-MII was able to achieve an area under curve value of 0.866, better than 0.551, 0.722 and 0.810 by the individual personal data, image and genome information components, respectively. AGLAIA-MII also demonstrated a substantial improvement over the current glaucoma screening approach based on intraocular pressure. CONCLUSIONS AGLAIA-MII demonstrates for the first time the capability of integrating patients' personal data, medical retinal image and genome information for automatic glaucoma diagnosis and screening in a large dataset from a population study. It paves the way for a holistic approach for automatic objective glaucoma diagnosis and screening.
How can we promote behaviour that serves all of us in the future

The health and vitality of relationships, groups, and society at large is strongly challenged by social dilemmas or conflicts between short-term self-interest and long-term collective interest. Pollution, depletion of natural resources, and intergroup conflict can be characterized as examples of urgent social dilemmas. This article advances a conceptual framework in which we analyze social dilemmas in terms of social and temporal concerns relevant to the social (individual vs. collective) and temporal (short-term vs. long-term) conflicts underlying social dilemmas. We discuss the plasticity of social orientations (altruism, cooperation, egalitarianism, individualism, competition, aggression) and temporal orientations (short-term orientation, future orientation), and illustrate their " logical effects" and " paradoxical effects" on behavior that supports collectively desired outcomes. This analysis enables us to suggest a set of novel recommendations for policy and intervention to help solve various social dilemmas in contemporary society. © 2008 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Use 
of Ethics-Related Terms in 10-K Reports

We examine the occurrence of ethics- related terms in 10-K annual reports over 1994–2006 and offer empirical observations on the conceptual framework of Erhard et al. (Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics, and Legality (Harvard Business School, Harvard) 2007). We use a pre-Sarbanes-Oxley sample subset to compare the occurrence of ethics-related terms in our 10-K data with samples from other studies that consider virtue-related phenomena. We find that firms using ethics-related terms are more likely to be “sin” stocks, are more likely to be the object of class action lawsuits, and are more likely to score poorly on measures of corporate governance. The consistency of our results across these alternative measures of ethical behavior suggests that managers who portray their firm as “ethical” in 10-K reports are more likely to be systematically misleading the public. These results are consistent with the integrity-performance paradox.
Psychological Functioning and Coping Among Mothers of Children With Autism: A Population-Based Study

OBJECTIVES. Studies suggest that having a child with autism has a negative impact on maternal psychological functioning, but no large-scale, population-based studies are available. The objectives of this study were to (1) describe the psychological functioning, physical and mental health, family communication, and parenting support of mothers of a child with autism compared with other mothers on a population basis and (2) assess the independent relationship between having a child with autism and these outcomes, controlling for the child's social skills and demographic background. METHODS. Mothers of 61772 children who were 4 to 17 years of age were surveyed by the National Survey of Children's Health, 2003. Autism was measured from an affirmative maternal response to the question, “Has a doctor or health professional ever told you your child has autism? ” There were 364 children with autism in the sample. RESULTS. Mothers of a child with autism were highly stressed and more likely to report poor or fair mental health than mothers in the general population, even after adjustment for the child's social skills and demographic background. However, mothers of a child with autism were more likely to report a close relationship and better coping with parenting tasks and less likely to report being angry with their child after adjustment for the child's social skills and demographic background. Having a child with autism was not associated with lower social support for parenting, an altered manner in which serious disagreements were discussed in the household, or increased violence in the household. CONCLUSION. Mothers of children with autism showed remarkable strengths in the parent–child relationship, social support, and stability of the household in the context of high stress and poorer mental health.
A Data-Driven Evolutionary Algorithm for Mapping Multibasin Protein Energy Landscapes

Evidence is emerging that many proteins involved in proteinopathies are dynamic molecules switching between stable and semistable structures to modulate their function. A detailed understanding of the relationship between structure and function in such molecules demands a comprehensive characterization of their conformation space. Currently, only stochastic optimization methods are capable of exploring conformation spaces to obtain sample-based representations of associated energy surfaces. These methods have to address the fundamental but challenging issue of balancing computational resources between exploration (obtaining a broad view of the space) and exploitation (going deep in the energy surface). We propose a novel algorithm that strikes an effective balance by employing concepts from evolutionary computation. The algorithm leverages deposited crystal structures of wildtype and variant sequences of a protein to define a reduced, low-dimensional search space from where to rapidly draw samples. A multiscale technique maps samples to local minima of the all-atom energy surface of a protein under investigation. Several novel algorithmic strategies are employed to avoid premature convergence to particular minima and obtain a broad view of a possibly multibasin energy surface. Analysis of applications on different proteins demonstrates the broad utility of the algorithm to map multibasin energy landscapes and advance modeling of multibasin proteins. In particular, applications on wildtype and variant sequences of proteins involved in proteinopathies demonstrate that the algorithm makes an important first step toward understanding the impact of sequence mutations on misfunction by providing the energy landscape as the intermediate explanatory link between protein sequence and function.
Radii and Effective Temperatures for G, K, and M Giants and Supergiants

Interferometrically determined angular diameters obtained at the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI) for 69 giant and supergiant stars are presented. Spectral types of the 59 giant stars generally lie between G6 and M6, although a B7 giant is included; the nine bright giants and supergiants have spectral types between F5 and M5. Comparison of the results to those from the IR Optical Telescope Array interferometer indicate no statistically significant difference between the two data sets. The use of Hipparcos parallaxes allows us to measure linear sizes directly for these stars, which range in size from 10 to 260 solar radii. In conjunction with previous results as reported by Dyck et al., the total of 113 giant stars provides empirically determined dependencies of effective temperature and linear radius upon spectral type and V-K color.
Improving Logistic Regression Classification of Credit Approval with Features Constructed by Kaizen Programming

In this contribution, we employ the recently proposed Kaizen Programming (KP) approach to find high-quality nonlinear combinations of the original features in a dataset. KP constructs many complementary features at the same time, which are selected by their importance, not by model quality. We investigated our approach in a well-known real-world credit scoring dataset. When compared to related approaches, KP reaches similar or better results, but evaluates fewer models.
Multi-radio Resource Alloc for Heterogeneous Wirel

In this paper we present algorithms for dynamic channel allocation with QoS support. In particular, we focus on the integration of networks with different Radio Access Technologies (RATs), as is currently subject of investigation within the novel concept of Ambient Networks. On this matter, we investigate the introduction of collaborative channel assignment, which exploits service elasticity and the tunability offered by QoS management. To this end, the comparison between non cooperative and cooperative resource allocation is briefly discussed and simulations are performed to demonstrate how collaborative strategies are able to improve system performance.
4 Group Theory 4.1 Groups

Last lecture, we learned about a combinatorial method for characterizing spaces: using simplicial complexes as triangulations of the spaces. We also showed how the connectivity of compact 2-manifolds is fully characterized by an invariant, the Euler characteristic, that may be computed using any triangulation of the space. In this lecture, we study group theory. This theory is part of the beautiful machinery of abstract algebra, which is based on abstracting from algebra its core properties, and studying algebra in terms of those properties. Because of this abstraction, group theory is fundamental and applicable to questions in many theoretical fields such as quantum physics and crystallography, as well as questions in practical fields, such as establishing bar codes for products, serial numbers on currency, or solving Rubik’s Magic cube. For us, the theory provides powerful tools to define equivalence relations using homomorphisms andfactor groups. These equivalence relations will enable us to partition the space of manifolds into coarser classifications that are computable. We begin with an introduction to groups, their subgroups, and associated cosets. We then look at how wefactor a group much like the way we divide a composite integer. We end by developing techniques for characterizing a specific type of groups: finitely generated abelian groups.
Towards a Parallel Search for Solutions of Non-deterministic Computations

In this paper we explore the possibilities to perform the search for results of non-deterministic computations in parallel. We present three different approaches to this problem: Dividing the search space statically, using a Bag of Tasks approach and using semi-explicit parallelism. Then we discuss their advantages and limitations. Finally, we discuss benchmarks using a monadic SAT solver as an example of a nontrivial application of a non-deterministic program.
Neutrons from Piezonuclear Reactions

We report the results obtained by cavitating water solutions of iron salts (iron chloride and iron nitrate) with different concentrations at different ultrasound powers. In all cases we detected a neutron radiation well higher than the background level. The neutron production is perfectly reproducible and can at some extent be controlled. These evidences for neutron emission generated by cavitation support some preliminary clues for the possibility of piezonuclear reactions (namely nuclear reactions induced by pressure and shock waves) obtained in the last ten years. We have been able for the first time to state some basic features of such a neutron emission induced by cavitation, namely: 1) a marked threshold behavior in power, energy and time; 2) its occurring without a concomitant production of gamma radiation.
The Fine LINE: Methylation Drawing the Cancer Landscape

LINE-1 (L1) is the most abundant mammalian transposable element that comprises nearly 20% of the genome, and nearly half of the mammalian genome has stemmed from L1-mediated mobilization. Expression and retrotransposition of L1 are suppressed by complex mechanisms, where the key role belongs to DNA methylation. Alterations in L1 methylation may lead to aberrant expression of L1 and have been described in numerous diseases. Accumulating evidence clearly indicates that loss of global DNA methylation observed in cancer development and progression is tightly associated with hypomethylation of L1 elements. Significant progress achieved in the last several years suggests that such parameters as L1 methylation status can be potentially utilized as clinical biomarkers for determination of the disease stage and in predicting the disease-free survival in cancer patients. In this paper, we summarize the current knowledge on L1 methylation, with specific emphasis given to success and challenges on the way of introduction of L1 into clinical practice.
Meiotic telomere clustering requires actin for its formation and cohesin for its resolution

In diploid organisms, meiosis reduces the chromosome number by half during the formation of haploid gametes. During meiotic prophase, telomeres transiently cluster at a limited sector of the nuclear envelope (bouquet stage) near the spindle pole body (SPB). Cohesin is a multisubunit complex that contributes to chromosome segregation in meiosis I and II divisions. In yeast meiosis, deficiency for Rec8 cohesin subunit induces telomere clustering to persist, whereas telomere cluster–SPB colocalization is defective. These defects are rescued by expressing the mitotic cohesin Scc1 in rec8Δ meiosis, whereas bouquet-stage exit is independent of Cdc5 pololike kinase. An analysis of living Saccharomyces cerevisiae meiocytes revealed highly mobile telomeres from leptotene up to pachytene, with telomeres experiencing an actin- but not microtubule-dependent constraint of mobility during the bouquet stage. Our results suggest that cohesin is required for exit from actin polymerization–dependent telomere clustering and for linking the SPB to the telomere cluster in synaptic meiosis.
Achieving semi-supervised incremental learning with Learn++ and simple recycled selection

In many real-world tasks a lot of unlabeled data are collected over time and, although they may be useful to improve the quality of classification models, they are usually ignored. Semi-supervised learning techniques combine unlabeled and labeled data to capture more useful information about a particular task. On the other hand, an incremental learning technique can incorporate new information to an existing model, so that it can dynamically adapt its structure to follow the environment changes. In order to unify the characteristics of both approaches, in this paper is proposed an incremental semi-supervised learning method called SSLearn++, which is based on the techniques Simple Recycled Selection (SRS) (semi-supervised learning), and Learn++ (incremental learning). To treat multi-class problems, SRS was combined with Sequential Forward Selection (SFS) to generate cascades of binary classifiers. Experiments were conducted using publicly available benchmark data sets. Results show the proposed method is promising.
Analysis of ISB watermarking model: block based methods vs embedding repetition methods

Digital watermarking technique based on intermediate significant bit (ISB) has been discussed by this study. This technique can survive against different types of attacks and at the same time keep the quality of the image. In this study, two improvement stages were applied, repeating the embedding and watermark embedding based on the average of pixels values. The results showed that the value of the Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC) was increased by increasing the embedding number of all the attacks. The results of the NCC for all the attacks became very close to 1 after nine repetitions. The results indicate that the method, based on the average of pixels values, is better for all the attacks as compared to based on repetition, except for rotation and scaling which improved extensively using the same method.
Comprehension of object-oriented software cohesion: the empirical quagmire

Chidamber and Kemerer (1991) proposed an object-oriented (OO) metric suite which included the Lack of Cohesion Of Methods (LCOM) metric. Despite considerable effort both theoretically and empirically since then, the software engineering community is still no nearer finding a generally accepted definition or measure of OO cohesion. Yet, achieving highly cohesive software is a cornerstone of software comprehension and hence, maintainability. In this paper, we suggest a number of suppositions as to why a definition has eluded (and we feel will continue to elude) us. We support these suppositions with empirical evidence from three large C++ systems and a cohesion metric based on the parameters of the class methods; we also draw from other related work. Two major conclusions emerge from the study. Firstly, any sensible cohesion metric does at least provide insight into the features of the systems being analysed. Secondly however, and less reassuringly, the deeper the investigative search for a definitive measure of cohesion, the more problematic its understanding becomes; this casts serious doubt on the use of cohesion as a meaningful feature of object-orientation and its viability as a tool for software comprehension.
Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway

1. States, Movements, and Democracy 2. Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Four Countries 3. Cooptive or Effective Inclusion? Movement Aims and State Imperatives 4. The Perils of Political Inclusion: Moderation and Bureaucratization 5. The Dynamics of Democratization 6. Evaluating Movement Effectiveness and Strategy 7. Ecological Modernization, Risk Society, and the Green State Conclusion
Financing the Budget Deficit in the Philippines

For the last 25 years, the government has been incurring heavy budgetary deficits. Yet, data on recent Philippine experience reveal that no well-established guidelines on how to finance a budget deficit have been formulated. This paper investigates the means and measures to finance a deficit, considers a theory that chooses an optimal mix of policy instruments and studies the experience of less developed country like the Philippines as a case in point.
Intra-gastric string test: an effective tool for diagnosing tuberculosis in adults unable to produce sputum.

SETTING Tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis is challenging in patients who are unable to produce sputum. The string test, a method for retrieving enteropathogens, is a potential alternative diagnostic tool. OBJECTIVES To compare the TB detection yield and tolerability of the string test and that of sputum induction in adults with presumed TB in Uganda. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. String test and sputum induction were performed consecutively in patients unable to produce sputum. The string was removed after a 2-h intra-gastric downtime. Sputum induction used nebulised 5% saline for 20 min. Light-emitting diode fluorescence microscopy, Löwenstein-Jensen and MGIT culture were performed on all specimens, and the Xpert(®) MTB/RIF assay on a subset. Tolerability questionnaires were administered. RESULTS Of 210 patients included in the study, 59% were human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive and 50 (23.8%) were diagnosed with TB. Of these, 48 (96.0%) were detected with the string test and 46 (92.0%) with sputum induction. In patients with specimens collected using both methods for paired analysis, the yield of microscopy detection with the string test was 13.8% (26/188) vs. 13.3% (25/188) with sputum induction (P = 1.0). The yield increased to 22.9% (42/183) using culture for string test vs. 24.6% (45/183) for sputum induction (P = 0.37). Xpert detected TB in 15/96 (15.6%) patients with the string test vs. 17/96 (17.7%) with sputum induction (P = 0.62). Tolerability was comparable. CONCLUSION The string test was well tolerated and provided similar yields to sputum induction, offering a viable alternative in resource-limited settings with minimal risk of transmission.