Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceived empathy of teachers and students’ metacognitive strategies

The aim of this research was to establish correlation between perceived empathy of teachers and students’ metacognitive strategies. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of this correlation, the aim was expanded to prediction of students’ metacognitive strategies based on components of teachers’ empathy. Teachers’ empathy was examined through presence of six different components: suffering, positive sharing, crying, emotional attention, feeling for others and identification, which were assessed by attribution theory. Students were the ones who evaluated teachers’ empathy. The following metacognitive strategies were explored: awareness of one’s own cognitive functioning, planning one’s own cognitive functioning and monitoring one’s own cognitive functioning. The research was conducted in two primary schools in the area of East Sarajevo on the sample of seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students, which yielded a total of 665 students. The obtained results show that there is a correlation between all variables used to examine teachers’ empathy and all variables used to explore students’ metacognitive strategies. Teachers’ suffering, as one of the components of teachers’ empathy, figures as an important predictor of metacognitive strategies as criterion variables. When it comes to development of metacognitive strategies, students preferred a positive attitude of teachers towards them, based on cognitive and affective balance. Since empathy plays an important role in application of learning strategies and promoting positive behaviour such as interpersonal understanding, helping others and inhibition of anti-social behaviour, empathy skills training should become an integral part of teacher education programmes. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179020: Koncepcije i strategije obezbeđivanja kvaliteta bazicnog obrazovanja i vaspitanja]
Building Adaptive Universities: Emerging Organisational Forms Based on Experiences of European and US Universities

Universities are facing dynamic environments to which they have to respond by developing new organisational forms often to enhance adaptation. Thereby, governance,management and leadership structures are changing – aiming at increased flexibility,efficiency and effectiveness. This involves new procedures to manage the relationship with the environment, new authority structures within universities, and new ways of resource allocation. Hence, this paper will present empirical results from a cross-national study of adaptive university structures vis-a-vis a changing socioeconomic environment. Based upon that, new organisational forms are introduced which better support and enhance the current trend towards more entrepreneurial universities.
SRLB: The Power of Choices in Load Balancing with Segment Routing

Network load-balancers generally either do not take application state into account, or do so at the cost of a centralized monitoring system. This paper introduces a load-balancer running exclusively within the IP forwarding plane, i.e. in an application protocol agnostic fashion - yet which still provides application-awareness and makes real-time, decentralized decisions. To that end, IPv6 Segment Routing is used to direct data packets from a new flow through a chain of candidate servers, until one decides to accept the connection, based on its local state. This way, applications themselves naturally decide on how to share incoming connections, while incurring minimal network overhead, and no out-of-band signaling. Tests on different workloads - including realistic workloads such as replaying actual Wikipedia access traffic towards a set of replica Wikipedia instances - show significant performance benefits, in terms of shorter response times, when compared to a traditional random load-balancer.
And then there were more ? The effect of organizational sex composition on the hiring and promotion of managers

The authors study how organizational sex composition influences the intraorganizational mobility of male and female managers. They test hypotheses linking organizational sex composition to hiring and promotion using longitudinal data on all managers in the California savings and loan industry. They find that the impact of sex composition depends on hierarchical level : not only does it matter what relative proportions of men and women are working in organizations, but it also matters at what levels in the managerial hierarchies they are working. The findings demonstrate a catch-22 situation : women are more likely to be hired and promoted into a particular job level when a higher proportion of women are already there. The question remains, how can women gain entry into these positions ? we also find that women are more likely to be hired and promoted when there is a substantial minority of women above the focal job level, but not when women constitute the majority in those higher-level positions : hence women in high ranks can sometimes be a force for demographic change. Finally, they find evidence that women are more likely to be hired and promoted when higher proportions of women hold positions below the focal job level, indicating that gains made by women are not entirely dissipated by endogenous organizational processes
Detection of ammonium-oxidizing bacteria of the beta-subclass of the class Proteobacteria in aquatic samples with the PCR

The PCR was used as the basis for the development of a sensitive and specific assay for the detection of ammonium-oxidizing bacteria belonging to the beta-subclass of the class Proteobacteria. PCR primers were selected on the basis of nucleic acid sequence data available for seven species of nitrifiers in this subclass. The specificity of the ammonium oxidizer primers was evaluated by testing known strains of nitrifiers, several serotyped environmental nitrifier isolates, and other members of the Proteobacteria, including four very closely related, nonnitrifying species (as determined by rRNA sequence analysis). DNA extracts from 19 bacterio-plankton samples collected from Lake Bonney, Antarctica, and the Southern California Bight were assayed for the presence of ammonium oxidizers. By using a two-stage amplification procedure, ammonium oxidizers were detected in samples collected from both sites. Chemical data collected simultaneously support the occurrence of nitrification and the presence of nitrifiers. This is the first report describing PCR primers specific for ammonium-oxidizing bacteria and the successful amplification of nitrifier genes coding for rRNA from DNA extracts from natural samples. This application of PCR is of particular importance for the detection and study of microbes, such as autotrophic nitrifiers, which are difficult or impossible to isolate from indigenous microbial communities.
Testing and Affirmative Action: Reflections in a Time of Turmoil

Gender equity through electronic discourse. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 6(1), 23-36. Johnson, E. S. (1993). College women's performance in a math-science curriculum: A case study. College and University, 68(2), 74-78. Linn, M. C. (1994). The tyranny of the mean: Gender and expectations. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 41(7), 766-769. Linn, M. C. (1996). Key to the information highway. Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery, 39(4), 34-35. Linn, M. C. , & Kessel, C. (1996). Success in mathematics: Increasing talent and gender diversity among college majors. In J. Kaput, A. Schoenfeld, & E. Dubinsky (Eds.), Research in collegiate mathematics education (Vol. 2, pp. 101-144). Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN TEACHERS WHO DO AND WHO DO NOT SEEK PROMOTION

This research study compares women elementary school teachers who have and have not applied for promotion. The variables considered include degree of family responsibilities, and extent of commitment to the roles played both inside and outside the home. A picture of the women applicant for promotion emerges. While she is as likely as other women teachers to follow the traditional marriage with children pattern, she does take a markedly different approach to her home life and responsibilities there.
Blind MIMO-AR System Identification and Source Separation With Finite-Alphabet

In this paper, a new method for system identification and blind source separation in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is proposed. The MIMO channel is modeled by a multi-dimensional autoregressive (AR) system. The transmitted signals are assumed to take values from a finite alphabet, modeled by the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) with infinitesimal variances. The expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm for estimation of the MIMO-AR model parameters is derived. The performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of probability of error in signal detection and root mean squared error (RMSE) of the system parameters and system transfer function estimates is evaluated via simulations. It is shown that the obtained probability of error is very close to the probability of error of the optimal algorithm which assumes known channel state information.
IPS Support Employment: A 20-Year Update

Over the past 20 years, individual placement and support (IPS) supported employment has emerged as an effective approach for helping people with severe mental illness find and succeed in competitive jobs. The IPS model has been validated by 15 randomized controlled trials as well as numerous nonexperimental studies in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and Hong Kong (Bond, Drake, & Becker, in press). IPS incorporates client-centered choices and goals as well as eight evidence-based principles, and approximately two thirds of IPS participants have some success in competitive employment (Bond, 2004). Because of the optimism inspired by these outcomes, researchers in many countries are expanding the horizons of IPS, seeking to improve the model, reaching out to new populations, and tackling difficult policy issues. This special section can address only a few of the current research initiatives. In this brief update, we preview the six papers in this issue and also survey the field more broadly, identifying a number of promising research areas.
A Hybrid Algorithm for Effective Lossless Compression of Video Display Frames

We propose a simple and effective lossless compression algorithm for video display frames. It combines the dictionary coding, the Huffman coding, and three proposed innovative schemes to achieve a high compression ratio. We quantitatively analyze the characteristics of display frame data for designing the algorithm. We first propose a two-stage classification scheme to classify all pixels into three categories. Then we employ the dictionary coding and propose an adaptive prefix bit truncation scheme to generate codewords for video pixels in each category. We subsequently employ the Huffman coding scheme to assign bit values to the codewords. Finally, we propose a head code compression scheme to further reduce the size of the codeword bits. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves 22% more reduction than prior arts.
A Question of Attitudes: Integrating Children with Disabilities into Regular Classrooms?.

With a view to establishing if there might be a consensus in favour of mainstreaming (the integration of children with disabilities into regular classrooms), attitudinal data from six groups of educationists were summarised by the three authors. There appeared to be considerable variability both within and between these groups in terms of the extent to which such placements were considered appropriate. Also, attitudes differed markedly according to the nature of the presenting disability or difficulty. The data are discussed with reference to information obtained concurrently and other research. Emeritus Professor James Ward was foundation director of the Centre for Research into Special Education and Rehabilitation, Macquarie University, and is now adjunct professor of psychology at Bond University. Dr Yola Center is senior lecturer and Dr Sandra Bochner is associate professor, School of Education, Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia.
Lymphocytes and Pulsing Magnetic Fields

Several biological models have been used to investigate PEMF effects at the cellular level. Luben et al. (7) showed that PEMF exposure inhibited parathyroid hormone (PTH) action on cultured bone cells, but did not interfere with the action of vitamin D. It is interesting to observe that, while PTH binds to a receptor on the cell membrane, vitamin D acts directly within the cell in the cytoplasm. Dixey and Rein (8) observed that noradrenaline release by cultured nerve cells was significantly increased after 30 minutes of PEMF exposure. In an attempt to explain this result, they pointed out that cytoplasmic secretory phenomena are dependent on Ca influx, and they suggested that the observed phenomenon might be due to a PEMF effect on Ca influx across the cell membrane. Rodan et al. (9) found that cartilage cells exposed to 5 Hz electric fields exhibited increased DNA synthesis. They were able to inhibit the electric field effect by means of verapamil, a calcium antagonist.
Inherited Predisposition to Spontaneous Preterm Delivery

OBJECTIVE: To assess inherited predisposition to spontaneous preterm delivery. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, intergenerational data on deliveries in mother–daughter pairs were analyzed from the Aberdeen Maternity Neonatal Databank using multilevel logistic regression. The study included an exposed cohort of all women born spontaneously preterm or whose mothers had experienced at least one spontaneous preterm delivery (at 24–37 weeks of gestation). The unexposed cohort included women who were born at term (after 37 weeks of gestation) or those whose mothers had never experienced any spontaneous preterm deliveries (24–37 weeks of gestation). The primary outcome was spontaneous preterm delivery in the daughters' pregnancies. Results are shown as adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: We identified 22,343 pregnancies occurring in 13,845 daughters born to 11,576 mothers. Women who were born spontaneously preterm had significantly higher odds of delivering preterm babies (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.12–1.99). A stronger association was seen when the analysis was restricted to nulliparous women who had been born spontaneously preterm (OR 1.60, 95% CI 1.16–2.21). Other predictors of a woman having a spontaneous preterm delivery were age at delivery younger than 20 years (OR 1.67, 95% CI 1.43–1.94), lower socioeconomic status (OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.04–1.44), smoking more than 10 cigarettes per day (OR 1.47, 95% CI 1.27–1.71), body mass index 19 kg/m2 or less (OR 1.48, 95% CI 1.24–1.77), previous preterm delivery (OR 2.51, 95% CI 1.71–3.66). The risk of a woman delivering spontaneously preterm was increased even if her mother had a history of spontaneous preterm delivery in any other pregnancy (OR 1.35, 95% CI 1.12–1.63). The absolute risk of spontaneously delivering preterm in women who were born preterm was 9% as opposed to 6.2% in those who were born full-term. This gives an increase in risk of spontaneous preterm birth of 2.8% in women who were born spontaneously preterm. CONCLUSION: Women born spontaneously preterm or with siblings delivered in a similar manner have an increased risk of spontaneous preterm delivery in their own pregnancies. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Critical swim speed and fast-start response in the African cichlid Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor victoriae: convergent performance in divergent oxygen regimes

Dissolved oxygen (DO) can be a strong predictor of intraspecific variation in morphology and physiology in fishes. In the African cichlid Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor victoriae Seegers, 1990, fish reared under low DO develop larger gills, deeper bodies, and larger, wider heads than full siblings reared under high DO, which could influence swim perform- ance. In this study, we compared critical swim speed (Ucrit) and fast-start swimming in F1-generation fish from two field populations (one high and one low DO) of P. m. victoriae reared under high or low DO. There was no difference in Ucrit be- tween populations or rearing treatments. However, females exhibited a lower Ucrit than males. In fast-start trials, low-DO- reared fish reacted faster (lower response latency) and used double bends more often than high-DO-reared fish, but there was no difference in maximum velocity or acceleration. Low-DO-reared fish might compensate for morphological differen- ces by using double bends to achieve similar performance as high-DO siblings. These results suggest that divergent morpho- types of P. m. victoriae are capable of achieving the same level of performance under their home DO condition and highlights the importance of developmental plasticity in facilitating adaptive response to alternative environments.
Usages of an external duration model for HMM-based speech synthesis.

In this paper we analyze three different approaches to improving the quality of an HMM-based speech synthesizer by means of an external duration model. The first approach uses the external duration model in a standard way to define the phone duration during synthesis. The second is a novel approach that uses the phone duration to create additional context features for the decision trees clustering. The third is a combination of the previous two approaches. A subjective evaluation showed a quality improvement with respect to the baseline for all three approaches, although for differing reasons. The standard approach produces an improvement in the duration estimation. The second approach degrades the duration estimation but improves the logF0 and aperiodicity by better modeling of their dependencies with respect to the duration. Finally, the combined approach benefits from the improvements of the other two and yields the best result of ca. 16% higher preference than the baseline among native English speakers.
Predicting Stickiness Factors in the International Transfer of Knowledge Through Expatriates

Building on recent theoretical developments on the notion of expatriates as knowledge transferors, the objectives of this quantitative study were (1) to identify the types of knowledge being transferred and the corresponding levels of expatriate participation in these transfers, and (2) to apply the theoretical model of stickiness factors presented in this paper to identify those factors that have particular significance for expatriates. From a sample of Finnish expatriates, the results reveal that expatriates are involved in transfers of several different types of knowledge, often requiring them to work across functions. Furthermore, knowledge-related and, to a lesser extent, organizational-related stickiness factors dominated those related to the social and relational contexts in explaining the difficulty of knowledge transfers from the expatriates' perspective.
Simplifying Reading: Applying the Simplicity Principle to Reading

Debates concerning the types of representations that aid reading acquisition have often been influenced by the relationship between measures of early phonological awareness (the ability to process speech sounds) and later reading ability. Here, a complementary approach is explored, analyzing how the functional utility of different representational units, such as whole words, bodies (letters representing the vowel and final consonants of a syllable), and graphemes (letters representing a phoneme) may change as the number of words that can be read gradually increases. Utility is measured by applying a Simplicity Principle to the problem of mapping from print to sound; that is, assuming that the "best" representational units for reading are those which allow the mapping from print to sounds to be encoded as efficiently as possible. Results indicate that when only a small number of words are read whole-word representations are most useful, whereas when many words can be read graphemic representations have the highest utility.
On the Quantity and Quality of Girls: Fertility, Parental Investments, and Mortality

Access to prenatal sex-detection technology in India has led to a phenomenal increase in abortion of girls. We find that it has also narrowed the gender gap in under-5 mortality, consistent with surviving girls being more wanted than aborted girls. For every three aborted girls, one additional girl survived to age five. Mechanisms include moderation of son-biased fertility stopping and narrowing of gender gaps in parental investments. However, surviving girls are more likely to be born in lower status families. Our findings have implications not only for counts of missing girls but also for the later life outcomes of girls.
Clinical Relevance and Management of Drug‐Related QT Interval Prolongation

Much attention recently has focused on drugs that prolong the QT interval, potentially leading to fatal cardiac dysrhythmias (e.g., torsade de pointes). We provide a detailed review of the published evidence that supports or does not support an association between drugs and their risk of QT prolongation. The mechanism of drug‐induced QT prolongation is reviewed briefly, followed by an extensive evaluation of drugs associated with QT prolongation, torsade de pointes, or both. Drugs associated with QT prolongation are identified as having definite, probable, or proposed associations. The role of the clinician in the prevention and management of QT prolongation, drug‐drug interactions that may occur with agents known to affect the QT interval, and the impact of this adverse effect on the regulatory process are addressed.
Replicated batch means variance estimators in the presence of an initial transient

Independent replications (IR) and batch means (BM) are two of the most widely used variance-estimation methods for simulation output analysis. Alexopoulos and Goldsman conducted a thorough examination of IR and BM; and Andradóttir and Argon proposed the method of replicated batch means (RBM), which combines good characteristics of IR and BM. This article gives analy-tical results for the mean and variance of the RBM estimator for a class of processes having initial transients with an additive form. Along the way, we provide succinct complementary extensions of some of the results in the aforementioned papers. Our expressions explicitly show how the transient function affects estimator performance and suggest that in some cases, the RBM estimator is a good compromise choice with respect to bias and variance. However, care must be taken to avoid an excessive number of replications when the transient function is pervasive. An example involving a simple moving average process illustrates our findings.
Early childhood teachers: Roles and relationships∗

∗ This research was carried out under contract to the Ministry of Education Staff roles and relationships were studied through interviewing 12 teachers in four New Zealand kindergartens over a period of 8 months before, during and after a new teacher joined the staff. In 2 of the 4 kindergartens serious problems with staff relationships emerged culminating in staff members resigning, while in the other 2 kindergartens harmonious relationships developed. The major themes emerging from the interviews were the importance of goal consensus and power sharing. Successful kindergartens involved all staff fora considerable time in developing philosophical agreement and clarifying roles but there were serious differences of viewpoint between staff in the unsuccessful kindergartens, often involving conflict about teacher roles and activities between experienced and inexperienced teachers. The successful kindergartens worked through consensus and negotiation while the unsuccessful kindergartens worked through the au.