Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RFID integrated systems in libraries: extending TAM model for empirically examining the use

Purpose – The available literature suggest that the research on radio frequency identification (RFID)-related issues is largely concentrated on technical, organizational and implementation aspects, and comparatively lesser attention has been invested in understanding the use aspect of such library management systems. The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding into the factors that influence the use of RFID systems in the library context by empirically testing the relevant constructs from the extended technology acceptance model (TAM). Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire-based survey approach was employed for collecting the relevant data from 197 respondents. The respondents were the active users of a RFID-based library system. Findings – Findings from this study suggested that perceived usefulness and system quality positively influence the user attitude, and user attitude and system quality significantly influence the use of the RFID services. The paper concludes with outlining the s.
Alternative low doses and routes of administering a prostaglandin F2α analogue to induce luteolysis in Nelore cows

The present study was conducted in order to verify the efficacy of lower doses and alternative routes of a prostaglandin F2α analogue, luprostiol (PGF), for the induction of luteolysis and the precipitation of estrus in nonlactating Nelore cows (Bos taurus indicus). A conventional dose (15 mg) of PGF was compared to doses lower than the conventional dose, which ranges from 10 to 50%, that were administered intramuscularly (IM), intravulvosubmucosally (IVSM), or in the Bai-hui acupuncture site located within the lumbosacral area. The cows were administered PGF 8 day after estrus in the presence of a corpus luteum, and randomly assigned to the following groups: G1 (positive control), 15 mg, IM (n = 23); G2, 7.5 mg, IM (n = 23); G3, 3.75 mg, IM (n = 24); G4, 7.5 mg, IVSM (n = 25); G5, 3.75 mg, Bai-hui acupoint (n = 24); and G6, 1.5 mg, Bai-hui acupoint (n = 25). The results indicated that 50% of a conventional dose of PGF (7.5 mg) resulted in a complete luteal regression (plasma progesterone <1 ng/ml) at Hour 48, and hastened estrus, regardless of whether or not PGF was administered IM or IVSM. Comparatively, 10 or 25% of the conventional dose, even when administered to the Bai-hui acupoint, resulted in an initial reduction in the concentration of progesterone at Hour 24, followed by an increase observed at Hour 48. In conclusion, 25% of a conventional PGF dose administered via the Bai-hui acupoint proved inadequate to induce a complete luteal regression, whereas 50% of a conventional dose administered IM or IVSM was found to be the minimal dose required to induce effectively a complete luteal regression, and to precipitate the onset of estrus in nonlactating Nelore cows.
Industry Window Dressing

We explore a new mechanism by which investors take correlated shortcuts, and present evidence that managers undertake actions – in the form of sales management – to take advantage of these shortcuts. Specifically, we exploit a regulatory provision wherein a firm’s primary industry is determined by the highest sales segment. Exploiting this regulation, we provide evidence that investors classify operationally nearly identical firms vastly differently depending on their placement around this sales cut-off. Moreover, managers appear to exploit this by manipulating sales to be just over the cutoff in favorable industries. Further evidence suggests that managers then engage in activities to realize large, tangible benefits from this opportunistic action.
Bcl-2 oncoprotein expression in acute myeloid leukemia.

BACKGROUND In lymphoproliferative diseases the expression of Bcl-2, a mitochondrial oncoprotein capable of blocking apoptosis, is well-documented, while little research has been carried out on its distribution in myeloproliferative conditions. METHODS Using immunocytochemical methods, 63 cases of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at onset and 10 relapses were studied to investigate Bcl-2 expression and any possible correlations with subtypes of the FAB classification, sex, age or white cell peripheral blood count at onset. RESULTS Bcl-2 is present in 87.3% of AML cases at onset and in 100% of relapses. In 68.3% of cases at onset and in 90% of relapses the protein is present in more than 20% of the blasts. Relapses always show higher percentages of positive expression than those seen at onset. Our results demonstrate no statistical correlations between the expression of the oncoprotein Bcl-2 and FAB subtypes, sex, age, or white cell peripheral blood count. CONCLUSIONS The majority of blasts from AML patients express the oncoprotein Bcl-2, which is able to protect leukemic cells from apoptosis. Since numerous chemotherapies are cytotoxic in that they induce apoptosis, we feel that in vitro studies of cells from AML patients are necessary in order to broaden our knowledge about the effects of the most common therapeutic drugs and of those substances which, alone or in association, can modulate Bcl-2 expression.
Motivational antecedent beliefs of endurance, strength, and flexibility activities

Abstract Research into the correlates of physical activity has focused almost exclusively on physical activity as an omnibus construct. Health Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine, however, advocate physical activity in terms of performing regular endurance, strength, and flexibility activities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the absolute and relative contributions of behavioral, normative, and control beliefs associated with endurance, strength, and flexibility activities within a theory of planned behavior (TPB) structure. Participants were 185 undergraduates who completed measures of the TPB and a 2-week follow-up of endurance, strength, and flexibility behavior. Results using structural equation modeling and Hotelling's t-tests for dependent correlations identified different motivational antecedents for each type of physical activity (p < .05). Endurance behavior was influenced exclusively by behavioral beliefs, flexibility behavior was influenced by normative and control beliefs, and strength behavior was influenced by key behavioral, normative, and control beliefs. The different motivational profiles for each physical activity allude to the importance of tailoring interventions by physical activity type.
Adapting Collaborative Chat for Massive Open Online Courses: Lessons Learned

In this paper we explore how to import intelligent support for group learning that has been demonstrated as effective in classroom instruction into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) context. The Bazaar agent architecture paired with an innovative Lobby tool to enable coordination for synchronous reflection exercises provides a technical foundation for our work. We describe lessons learned, directions for future work, and offer pointers to resources for other researchers interested in computer supported collaborative learning in MOOCs.
Two-Phase Computational Fluid Dynamics Assessment of Bubble Plume in Air-Diffuser Destratification

Hydrodynamic flow patterns and behavior induced by bubble plumes in a linearly stratified fluid are studied. To optimize an air-diffuser destratification system, we used computational fluid dynamics software to develop a two-phase (air-water) destratification model. The model enables us to simulate complicated stratification conditions with different densities and source strengths. We conducted laboratory experiments to verify the model in thermally stratified fresh water. The computational fluid dynamics model performs well when the plume number ranges from 30 to 600. We successfully explain various phenomena, including the hydrodynamic behavior of bubble plumes and turbulent three dimension flow patterns. Our approach provides a level of detail not possible with other one-dimensional plume models. Contrary to the findings of other researchers, our experiments and computational fluid dynamics simulation indicate that the energy conversion efficiency increases as plume number increases; moreover, the three flow types do not occur in the same plume number regimes defined in other research. The difference is apparently due to the effect of the bubble size.
Gene Expression of the Na+–Ca2+ Exchanger, SERCA2a and Calsequestrin after Myocardial Ischemia in the Neonatal Rabbit Heart

Background: Neonatal hearts are less susceptible to developing myocardial dysfunction after hypoxia and/or ischemia than adult hearts. Differences in intracellular calcium homeostasis may be responsible for reduced calcium overload of the immature myocardium leading to the observed protection against ischemia. Objective: To assess differences in baseline and post-ischemic gene expression of calcium handling proteins after ischemia in neonatal and adult rabbit hearts. Methods: We used isolated antegrade perfused rabbit hearts (age 2 days, 28 days, n = 32), which were exposed to ischemia and hypothermia simulating myocardial stunning comparable to neonatal asphyxia. Gene and protein expression of the sodium–calcium exchanger (NCX), the sarco-endoplasmatic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase 2a (SERCA) and calsequestrin (CSQ) were measured using quantitative real-time PCR and Western blotting. Results: After ischemia and reperfusion in neonatal and adult hearts, a significant decrease in myocardial performance was recorded. At the mRNA level, significant differences in the baseline expression of NCX, SERCA and CSQ between neonatal and adult hearts were observed. In neonatal post-ischemic hearts, NCX and CSQ expression were significantly higher at the mRNA level than in controls. In contrast, SERCA expression remained unchanged in neonatal hearts and decreased in adult hearts compared to the non-ischemic controls. Conclusion: These findings suggest that changes in gene expression of calcium handling proteins may be involved in the different susceptibility of neonatal compared to adult hearts to developing myocardial dysfunction after ischemia.
Fast solving method of fuzzy relational equation and its application to lossy image compression/reconstruction

A fast solving method of the solution for max continuous t-norm composite fuzzy relational equation of the type G(i, j)=(R/sup T//spl square/A/sub i/)/sup T//spl square/B/sub j/, i=1, 2, . , I, j=1, 2, . , J, where A/sub i//spl isin/F(X)X={x/sub 1/, x/sub 2/, . , x/sub M/}, Bj/spl isin/F(Y) Y={y/sub 1/, y/sub 2/, . , y/sub N/}, R/spl isin/F(X/spl times/Y), and /spl square/: max continuous t-norm composition, is proposed. It decreases the computation time IJMN(L+T+P) to JM(I+N)(L+P), where L, T, and P denote the computation time of min, t-norm, and relative pseudocomplement operations, respectively, by simplifying the conventional reconstruction equation based on the properties of t-norm and relative pseudocomplement. The method is applied to a lossy image compression and reconstruction problem, where it is confirmed that the computation time of the reconstructed image is decreased to 1/335.6 the compression rate being 0.0351, and it achieves almost equivalent performance for the conventional lossy image compression methods based on discrete cosine transform and vector quantization.
PCA-based noise reduction in ambulatory ECGs

PCA can be used for cleaning noisy ECGs. With this aim, ECG with artificial motion artifacts were generated by combining clean 8-channel ECG with noise signals. 8-channel PCA was applied and then inverted after selecting a subset of principal components (PC). Input and output of PCA filtering was compared by calculating the correlation coefficient and estimating the SNR. Above 0dB, the PC corresponding to highest variance gave best performance, below 0dB the best PC was the second highest or lower variance. When SNR decreased, PCA performed better when retaining more number of PCs (3 PCs for a SNR=10dB down to 6 out of 8 PC for SNR=−10dB). Reducing the number of input ECG channels did not yield to a significant difference when it was reduced from eight down to two. A method for identifying the optimal subset of PC as a function of input SNR and number of channels was proposed. This method achieved an SNR improvement of 0.95dB–1.92dB.
Really? Well. Apparently Bootstrapping Improves the Performance of Sarcasm and Nastiness Classifiers for Online Dialogue

More and more of the information on the web is dialogic, from Facebook newsfeeds, to forum conversations, to comment threads on news articles. In contrast to traditional, monologic Natural Language Processing resources such as news, highly social dialogue is frequent in social media, making it a challenging context for NLP. This paper tests a bootstrapping method, originally proposed in a monologic domain, to train classifiers to identify two different types of subjective language in dialogue: sarcasm and nastiness. We explore two methods of developing linguistic indicators to be used in a first level classifier aimed at maximizing precision at the expense of recall. The best performing classifier for the first phase achieves 54% precision and 38% recall for sarcastic utterances. We then use general syntactic patterns from previous work to create more general sarcasm indicators, improving precision to 62% and recall to 52%. To further test the generality of the method, we then apply it to bootstrapping a classifier for nastiness dialogic acts. Our first phase, using crowdsourced nasty indicators, achieves 58% precision and 49% recall, which increases to 75% precision and 62% recall when we bootstrap over the first level with generalized syntactic patterns.
Passive corrosion of steel in concrete in context of nuclear waste disposal

A large experimental campaign has been developed in order to study the passivity of steel embedded in mortar. Mortar samples, containing steel pill (initially polished or precorroded), have been placed in various conditions [relative humidities of 80, 90 and 95%; solution simulating the clay rock underground water of the French candidate site of Bure at two temperatures (25 and 50°C) and in aerated and anoxic conditions]. The passive corrosion behaviour of steel has been assessed after 6 months and after 1 year for each experiment. Gravimetric measurements (average corrosion rate evaluation), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy characterisations (identification of the passive film and corrosion product nature) as well as optical and electronic microscopy analyses (corrosion layer thickness and steel/mortar interface elementary analysis) have been performed. Such analyses have been also carried out after 15 days and 1 and 3 months in order to consider the first stages of passivity in mortars. The results show that average corrosion rates determinate for polished steels are typical of passive conditions (<1 μm/year) and vary from 0·4 to 5 μm/year for the precorroded pills. Moreover, iron is detected within the cementitious material, up to 5-50 μm from the metal, indicating the transport of iron species.
Biomarker-calibrated protein intake and bone health in the Women's Health Initiative clinical trials and observational study.

BACKGROUND The effects of dietary protein on bone health are controversial. OBJECTIVE We examined the relation between protein intake with fracture and bone mineral density (BMD) within the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). DESIGN This prospective analysis included 144,580 women aged 50-79 y at baseline in the WHI clinical trials (CTs) and observational study (OS) that recruited participants in 1993-1998 with follow-up through 2011. Self-reported clinical fractures were collected semiannually through the original end of the trials (WHI CTs) and annually (WHI OS) by questionnaires. Hip fracture was adjudicated by a central review of radiology reports. BMDs for total body, hip, and spine were measured at baseline and 3 and 6 y in 9062 women at 3 WHI clinics by using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Protein intake was assessed via food-frequency questionnaire and calibrated by using biomarkers of energy and protein intakes. Associations between protein intake and fracture were estimated by using Cox proportional hazards regression, and the relation between protein intake and BMD was estimated by using linear regression. RESULTS Median biomarker-calibrated protein intake was 15% of energy intake. Per 20% increase in calibrated protein intake (percentage of energy), there was no significant association with total fracture (HR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.97, 1.02) or hip fracture (HR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.84, 1.00), but there was an inverse association with forearm fracture (HR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.88, 0.98). Each 20% increase in calibrated protein intake was associated with a significantly higher BMD for total body (mean 3-y change: 0.003 g/cm²; 95% CI: 0.001, 0.005 g/cm²) and hip (mean 3-y change: 0.002 g/cm²; 95% CI: 0.001, 0.004 g/cm²). CONCLUSIONS Higher biomarker-calibrated protein intake within the range of usual intake was inversely associated with forearm fracture and was associated with better maintenance of total and hip BMDs. These data suggest higher protein intake is not detrimental to bone health in postmenopausal women.
RiboDiff: detecting changes of mRNA translation efficiency from ribosome footprints

Motivation Deep sequencing based ribosome footprint profiling can provide novel insights into the regulatory mechanisms of protein translation. However, the observed ribosome profile is fundamentally confounded by transcriptional activity. In order to decipher principles of translation regulation, tools that can reliably detect changes in translation efficiency in case-control studies are needed. Results We present a statistical framework and analysis tool, RiboDiff, to detect genes with changes in translation efficiency across experimental treatments. RiboDiff uses generalized linear models to estimate the over-dispersion of RNA-Seq and ribosome profiling measurements separately, and performs a statistical test for differential translation efficiency using both mRNA abundance and ribosome occupancy. Availability RiboDiff webpage http://bioweb.me/ribodiff. Source code including scripts for preprocessing the FASTQ data are available at http://github.com/ratschlab/ribodiff. Contact zhongy@cbio.mskcc. org and Gunnar.Ratsch@ratschlab.org.
Government Purchases Reloaded: Informational Insufficiency and Heterogeneity in Fiscal VARs

Using a large Bayesian VAR, we approximate the flow of information received by economic agents to investigate the effects of changes to government purchases. We document robust evidence that informational insufficiency in conventional models explains inconsistent results across samples and commonly employed identifications in recursive Structural VARs and Expectational VARs. Furthermore, we report heterogeneous effects of components of government purchases. While aggregate government purchases do not appear to produce strong stimulative effects with output multiplier around 0.7, government investment components have multipliers well above unity. State and local consumption, which captures investment in education and health, elicits a strong response.
The Relationship Between Academic Procrastination and Parenting Styles Among Jordanian Undergraduate University Students

This study aims to identify the level of academic procrastination among a group of students and its correlation with parenting styles. A sample of 685 male and female undergraduate students was chosen from many different faculties at the Hashemite University. Two questionnaires; academic procrastination and parenting styles, were administrated to members of the sample during the academic year 2013/2014. Results indicated that few students (7%) showed a high level of academic procrastination, over half of the students (67%) showed a medium level and approximately a quarter of students (26%) showed a low level of academic procrastination, there was no significant differences between male and female in academic procrastination scores. Final results indicated a significant positive correlation between academic procrastination and parenting styles.
Response to Comment on “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science”

Gilbert et al. conclude that evidence from the Open Science Collaboration’s Reproducibility Project: Psychology indicates high reproducibility, given the study methodology. Their very optimistic assessment is limited by statistical misconceptions and by causal inferences from selectively interpreted, correlational data. Using the Reproducibility Project: Psychology data, both optimistic and pessimistic conclusions about reproducibility are possible, and neither are yet warranted.
Cell differentiation

The molecular mechanisms by which differentiated cells combat cell death and injury have remained unclear. In the current issue, it has been shown in neurons that cell differentiation is accompanied by a decrease in Apaf-1 and the activity of the apoptosome with an increased ability of the inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs) to sustain survival (Wright et al., 2004). These results, together with earlier ones, deepen our understanding of how cell death and the apoptosome are regulated during differentiation and in tumor cells.
Cephalometric deviations present in children and adolescents with temporomandibular joint disorders

INTRODUCTION: Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) have proved to be a risk factor for developing hyperdivergent facial growth patterns. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were: (1) Assess differences between the cephalometric measurements in children with articular TMD and a control group, before and after mandibular growth peak according to cervical vertebral maturation; and (2) Identify a predictive model capable of differentiating patients with TMD and control group patients based on early cephalometric characteristics. METHOD: The study included children and adolescents with maximum age of 17 years, divided into experimental group (n=30) diagnosed with articular TMD-according to the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (RDC/TMD) for children and adolescents-subdivided according to growth stage, called pre-peak (n=17) and post-peak (n=13) and control group (n = 30), matched by gender, skeletal maturity stage of the cervical vertebrae and classification of malocclusion. Lateral cephalometric and craniofacial structures were traced and their relations divided into: Cranial base, maxilla, mandible, intermaxillary relations, vertical skeletal relations and dental relations. Differences between the means for each variable were evaluated by applying the statistical Student t test for independent samples. RESULTS: The means of the variables analyzed in the pre-peak showed no statistically significant differences. However, analysis of post-peak showed that the experimental group displayed decreased SNA and SNB and increased SN.Gn and 1.NB (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: It was possible to identify a predictive model able to differentiate patients with TMD and asymptomatic controls from early cephalometric characteristics.