Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring turnover intentions among three professional groups of employees

Abstract Although considerable research effort has been devoted to understanding work attitudes, behaviours and outcomes regarding turnover intentions, little has been done to explore it across different professions. This study takes a step in this direction and examines the effect of affective commitment, job satisfaction and job performance on turnover intentions across three professions. To this end, we surveyed three professional groups of employees and managers: financial officers and social workers employed in the public sector and lawyers employed in the private sector. The results of these three studies show that turnover intentions vary across these professions. Social workers exhibit lower turnover intentions than financial officers and lawyers, who tend to exhibit high turnover intentions. In addition, we found that job satisfaction and affective commitment are negatively associated with turnover intentions, while no significant relationship was found to exist between job performance and turnover intentions. The implications of this study suggest that both researchers and practitioners should take into consideration not only the organizational context, but also the occupational context while exploring the process of voluntary turnover.
Quantitative Method for the Determination of Posaconazole in Mouse Tissues using Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

A fast and selective liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) method was developed for the quantification of posaconazole in different mouse organs including liver, heart, brain, kidney and lung. Organs were homogenized and diluted in isotonic NaCl solution. Protein was precipitated using acetonitrile containing internal standard and analyzed. The analysis was carried out using gradient condition with mobile phases consisting of aqueous formic acid and pure acetonitrile. Analysis was run at a flow-rate of 0.51 mL/min. The method was selective with a limit of quantification of 0.5 µg/mL in homogenate at a sample volume of 100 µL. The standard curve was linear over a concentration range of 0.5-10 µg/mL for all organs. The inter-day and intra-day coefficient of variation values were all less than 15%. Hence, the method is suitable for use in pharmacokinetic and bioavailability studies of posaconazole in tissues.
Reactions to Inspection: a study of three variants

Abstract Individual interviews were conducted with inspectors and teaching staff involved with three primary school inspections in three different LEAs. The interviews took place some time after the end of each inspection when the findings were generally known amongst the teaching staff. The inspections differed according to the degree of negotiation allowed to staff, the extent of inspection coverage, and degree of conformity to a full inspection model. Teacher reactions appeared to vary according to the extent and nature of any ‘surprises’ in the inspection reports and their findings. Some general issues emerged which were concerned with the contextualisation of judgements and the influence of time on the credibility of inspection methods. These issues and those relating to the resourcing of inspections are discussed in the light of the national arrangements for inspection inaugurated by the 1992 Education (Schools) Act and overseen by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED).
Synesthesia: Strong and Weak

In this review, we distinguish strong and weak forms of synesthesia. Strong synesthesia is characterized by a vivid image in one sensory modality in response to stimulation in another one. Weak synesthesia is characterized by cross-sensory correspondences expressed through language, perceptual similarity, and perceptual interactions during information processing. Despite important phenomenological dissimilarities between strong and weak synesthesia, we maintain that the two forms draw on similar underlying mechanisms. The study of strong and weak synesthetic phenomena provides an opportunity to enrich scientists' understanding of basic mechanisms involved in perceptual coding and cross-modal information processing.
Is blindsight an effect of scattered light, spared cortex, and near-threshold vision?

Abstract Blindsight is the term commonly used to describe visually guided behaviour elicited by a stimulus falling within the scotoma (blind area) caused by a lesion of the striate cortex. Such “vision” is normally held to be unconscious and to be mediated by subcortical pathways involving the superior colliculus. Blindsight is of considerable theoretical importance since it suggests that destriate man is more like destriate monkey than had been previously believed and also because it supports the classical notion of two visual systems. It is also of potential clinical importance, since it has been claimed recently that systematic practice in blindsight can lead to the recovery of normal visual function in patients with cortical lesions. From a review of the literature it is concluded that all of the phenomena of blindsight can be attributed either to light scatter into unimpaired parts of the visual field or to residual vision resulting from spared striate cortex. The possible contribution f other factors is also considered. It is concluded that blindsight studies have generally failed to control for such nonblindsight interpretations partly because of poor methodology and partly because of difficulties in defining the term “blindsight. ” Experiments were carried out to investigate the extent to which subjects can exhibit performance similar to blindsight when they are using scattered light as a cue. This was done both with hemianopic subjects (by manipulating the amount of scattered and direct light coming from a stimulus) and with normal subjects (by presenting targets within their blind spots). Good blindsight performance was observed when only scattered light was available as a cue to the subjects. It is therefore concluded that an adequate case for blindsight has not been made. It is probably impossible to demonstrate the existence of blindsight on purely behavioural grounds. What is required is the establishment of relationships between visual function and independent anatomical evidence.
Integrated care programmes for adults with chronic conditions: a meta-review

Objective To review systematic reviews and meta-analyses of integrated care programmes in chronically ill patients, with a focus on methodological quality, elements of integration assessed and effects reported. Design Meta-review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses identified in Medline (1946–March 2012), Embase (1980–March 2012), CINHAL (1981–March 2012) and the Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews (issue 1, 2012). Main Outcome Measures Methodological quality assessed by the 11-item Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) checklist; elements of integration assessed using a published list of 10 key principles of integration; effects on patient-centred outcomes, process quality, use of healthcare and costs. Results Twenty-seven systematic reviews were identified; conditions included chronic heart failure (CHF; 12 reviews), diabetes mellitus (DM; seven reviews), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; seven reviews) and asthma (five reviews). The median number of AMSTAR checklist items met was five: few reviewers searched for unpublished literature or described the primary studies and interventions in detail. Most reviews covered comprehensive services across the care continuum or standardization of care through inter-professional teams, but organizational culture, governance structure or financial management were rarely assessed. A majority of reviews found beneficial effects of integration, including reduced hospital admissions and re-admissions (in CHF and DM), improved adherence to treatment guidelines (DM, COPD and asthma) or quality of life (DM). Few reviews showed reductions in costs. Conclusions Systematic reviews of integrated care programmes were of mixed quality, assessed only some components of integration of care, and showed consistent benefits for some outcomes but not others.
Police Corruption

This article examines how mandated changes in the screening, selection, and hiring of Miami police officers in the early 1980s contributed to corruption of significant proportions. It is hypothesized that police corruption occurred as a result of both social structural (or community) changes, and departmental problems. These factors are documented, as is the extent of police corruption. Screening, selection, and hiring practices for this period are addressed, particularly those related to affirmative action and testing procedures. Recommendations are made regarding future police hiring and supervision practices.
On the Optimal Transmission Policy in Hybrid Energy Supply Wireless Communication Systems

This paper addresses the optimal transmission scheduling problem in hybrid energy supply systems with the save-then-transmit protocol, where the energy supply of the transmitter comes from both the primary battery and the energy harvester. We first consider minimizing the outage probability for a given amount of battery energy by optimizing the saving factor. It is demonstrated that harvesting external energy is unnecessary for a large spectral efficiency requirement. Then, we consider joint packet scheduling and saving factor optimization to the battery energy consumption minimization (BECM) problem in both single packet arrival and burst packet arrival scenarios. Both optimal and suboptimal offline policies with full information on the traffic profile, the harvesting power, and the channel state are developed. We also propose an optimal online policy in the case that only causal information is available. Numerical results are presented that validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
Leadership and Individual Principal-Teacher Relationships in Schools

Transformational approaches to leadership have increasingly been advocated for schools. Research evidence suggests that the effect of leadership on student learning outcomes is mediated by school conditions such as goals, structure, people, and school culture. Using the combined approach of multilevel analysis and structural modeling, this study investigated the relationships of leadership with school learning culture. Data were collected from a random sample of 373 teachers. The results suggested relationships between leadership and school learning culture did exist, and they highlight the importance of individual principal-teacher relationships in schools.
Polycystic ovaries, as defined by the 2003 Rotterdam consensus criteria, are found to be very common in young healthy women.

BACKGROUND The criteria for polycystic ovaries (PCO) as defined by the 2003 Rotterdam consensus are based on the follicle number and ovarian volume, which decrease with age. A study was performed to assess the influence of age on the PCO prevalence. In addition, the relation between follicle number and ovulation day was studied. METHODS Assessments were done in a spontaneous menstrual cycle in 171 healthy volunteers. The ovulation day and cycle duration were recorded. Transvaginal ultrasonography was performed between cycle day 6 and 9 to determine the follicle number and ovarian volume. RESULTS In the age groups between 18 and 22, 23 and 27, 28 and 32, 33 and 37, and 38 and 40 years, the prevalence of PCO was 83-84%, 66-84%, 42-79%, 19-33%, and 0-33%, respectively. Most PCO subjects had ovulatory cycles. The follicle number and ovarian volume decreased with age. There was a positive correlation between the follicle number and the ovulation day. CONCLUSIONS PCO were found to be very common in young women. The follicle number and ovarian volume decreased with age, and therefore also the PCO prevalence decreased with age. We believe the PCO criteria should be reconsidered and adapted to the woman's age. Ovulation occurred later with increasing follicle number.
Marburg Virus VP35 Can Both Fully Coat the Backbone and Cap the Ends of dsRNA for Interferon Antagonism

Filoviruses, including Marburg virus (MARV) and Ebola virus (EBOV), cause fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans and non-human primates. All filoviruses encode a unique multi-functional protein termed VP35. The C-terminal double-stranded (ds)RNA-binding domain (RBD) of VP35 has been implicated in interferon antagonism and immune evasion. Crystal structures of the VP35 RBD from two ebolaviruses have previously demonstrated that the viral protein caps the ends of dsRNA. However, it is not yet understood how the expanses of dsRNA backbone, between the ends, are masked from immune surveillance during filovirus infection. Here, we report the crystal structure of MARV VP35 RBD bound to dsRNA. In the crystal structure, molecules of dsRNA stack end-to-end to form a pseudo-continuous oligonucleotide. This oligonucleotide is continuously and completely coated along its sugar-phosphate backbone by the MARV VP35 RBD. Analysis of dsRNA binding by dot-blot and isothermal titration calorimetry reveals that multiple copies of MARV VP35 RBD can indeed bind the dsRNA sugar-phosphate backbone in a cooperative manner in solution. Further, MARV VP35 RBD can also cap the ends of the dsRNA in solution, although this arrangement was not captured in crystals. Together, these studies suggest that MARV VP35 can both coat the backbone and cap the ends, and that for MARV, coating of the dsRNA backbone may be an essential mechanism by which dsRNA is masked from backbone-sensing immune surveillance molecules.
Circadian rhythms in human memory

Two experiments are described that examined the influence of time of day of presentation on immediate and delayed retention, and the potential effects of time of day on retrieval from long-term memory. Time of presentation was found to influence both the immediate and delayed (28 day) retention of information presented in naturalistic contexts. However, while the trend in immediate memory over the normal waking day found in Expt 1 was exactly that predicted by a unidimensional arousal theory, the results of Expt 2 indicated that different circadian factors may be responsible for the time of presentation effects on immediate and delayed retention. Neither experiment yielded any evidence that time of day affects people's ability to retrieve information from long-term memory. The results are discussed within a circadian rhythm framework, and would appear to necessitate the adoption of a multifactor theory. It is suggested that further research is needed on (a) the effect of time of presentation on delayed retention, and (b) the nature of the changes in the encoding/storage processes responsible for such effects.
Charismatic leadership in organizations: Perceived behavioral attributes and their measurement

Recent interest in the charismatic leadership role of managers in organizations calls for the identification and measurement of perceived behavior characteristics of such leadership. This article reports on the development of a questionnaire measure of the perceived behavioral dimensions of charismatic leadership proposed by the Conger and Kanungo (1987, 1988) model. Data were collected from 488 managers belonging to four organizations located in the U.S.A. and Canada. Analysis of the results revealed sound psychometric properties of the measure with adequate reliability, convergent and discriminant validity coefficients, and a stable factor structure. Implications of the measure for future research and practice are discussed.
Porphyrin‐Cellulose Nanocrystals: A Photobactericidal Material that Exhibits Broad Spectrum Antimicrobial Activity †

Towards our overall objectives of developing potent antimicrobial materials to combat the escalating threat to human health posed by the transmission of surface‐adhering pathogenic bacteria, we have investigated the photobactericidal activity of cellulose nanocrystals that have been modified with a porphyrin‐derived photosensitizer (PS). The ability of these previously synthesized porphyrin‐cellulose‐nanocrystals (CNC‐Por (1)) to mediate bacterial photodynamic inactivation was investigated as a function of bacterial strain, incubation time and illumination time. Despite forming an insoluble suspension, CNC‐Por (1) showed excellent efficacy toward the photodynamic inactivation of Acinetobacter baumannii, multidrug‐resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDRAB) and methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), with the best results achieving 5–6 log units reduction in colony forming units (CFUs) upon illumination with visible light (400–700 nm; 118 J cm−2). CNC‐Por (1) mediated the inactivation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, although at reduced activity (2–3 log units reduction). Confocal laser scanning microscopy of CNC‐Por (1) after incubation with A. baumannii or S. aureus suggested a lack of internalization of the PS. Research into alternative materials such as CNC‐Por (1) may lead to their application in hospitals and healthcare‐related industries wherein novel materials with the capability of reducing the rates of transmission of a wide range of bacteria, particularly antibiotic resistant strains, are desired.
Adaptive internal model based formation control of a class of multi-agent systems

In this article we consider the problem of moving in a predefined formation along a reference trajectory in the presence of disturbances in a class of multi-agent systems. The reference trajectory is generated by a neutrally stable exosystem with unknown parameters. The problem is formulated as nonlinear servomechanism problem and an adaptive internal model based controller is used to solve this problem. The performance of the system is verified with simple numerical simulations.
Colour Constancy from Both Sides of the Shadow Edge

That image colours depend equally on the colour of surfaces and the colour of the prevailing light means that raw RGB pixel values are not correlates of object features and so, cannot be used directly in applications such as recognition and tracking. By estimating the colour of the light and then removing the colour bias due to illumination, image colours can be made to correlate with object reflectance. Yet, even the best algorithms can fail badly. The problem is made even harder in the many typical scenes where there are multiple lights, e.g. sun (yellow) and shadow (blue). We demonstrate that the second, harder case actually provides the basis of a novel solution strategy: an illumination edge in an image provides a powerful cue to determining the underlying material surface. This paper makes three important technical contributions. First, we take an existing analytic one-surface two-lights estimation algorithm (which assumes that lights lie on a line in chromaticity space) and re-engineer it as a voting algorithm which relaxes the prior assumption about where lights might lie. Second, we model illumination change using a 3 × 3 linear matrix as opposed to the more approximate diagonal model that is used in the prior art for this problem. Being able to more accurately account for illumination change provides a step change in the performance of our method. Lastly, we re-engineer a prior art shadow-edge generator to suit this problem.
Aspiration, reunification and gender transformation in Jat Sikh marriages from India to Canada

Abstract In this article I explore marriage as a strategy of family migration among a transnational community of middle-class Jat Sikhs. Family reunification and status aspirations are examined as central concerns of the transnational movement of Jat Sikhs from India to Canada. It is argued that Jat Sikh transnationalism and gender are mutually-constitutive: migration strategies can construct women, as well as men, as agents of marital citizenship, and in facilitating migration, transnational marriage may transform practices and notions of gender and status. The article is based on preliminary ethnographic research among Jat Sikh brides in Toronto and Vancouver, and forms part of a larger study of gender, modernity and identity in Indo-Canadian Jat Sikh marriages.
Current Perspectives on the Biological Study of Play: Signs of Progress

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the study of play behavior, marked by much empirical research and theoretical review. These efforts suggest that play may be of greater biological significance than most scientists realize. Here we present a brief synopsis of current play research covering issues of adaptive function, phylogeny, causal mechanisms, and development. Our goal is to selectively highlight contemporary areas of research in which the underlying processes and consequences of play should not be ignored. We elucidate some of the new and burgeoning areas of play research and interpret them from an integrative biological theoretical perspective that highlights areas in need of further experimental, comparative, and field research.
Are Charters Enough Choice? School Choice and the Future of Catholic Schools

This contribution to a Notre Dame Law Review symposium on “Law and Educational Innovation” critiques the oft-repeated assertion that private-school-choice programs, such as tuition vouchers or tax credits, are unnecessary because charter schools provide sufficient educational choices. Arguing that policy makers have failed to come to terms with the profound, unfortunate consequences of Catholic schools’ rapid disappearance from urban neighborhoods, the essay builds a case for a shift in education policy that embraces both charter schools and private-school-choice mechanisms.
Differential effects of fingolimod on B-cell populations in multiple sclerosis

Background: Fingolimod is an oral drug approved for multiple sclerosis (MS) with an ability to trap central memory T cells in secondary lymphoid tissues; however, its variable effectiveness in individual patients indicates the need to evaluate its effects on other lymphoid cells. Objective: To clarify the effects of fingolimod on B-cell populations in patients with MS. Methods: We analysed blood samples from 9 fingolimod-treated and 19 control patients with MS by flow cytometry, to determine the frequencies and activation states of naive B cells, memory B cells, and plasmablasts. Results: The frequencies of each B-cell population in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were greatly reduced 2 weeks after starting fingolimod treatment. Detailed analysis revealed a significant reduction in activated memory B cells (CD38int-high), particularly those expressing Ki-67, a marker of cell proliferation. Also, we noted an increased proportion of activated plasmablasts (CD138+) among whole plasmablasts, in the patients treated with fingolimod. Conclusions: The marked reduction of Ki-67+ memory B cells may be directly linked with the effectiveness of fingolimod in treating MS. In contrast, the relative resistance of CD138+ plasmablasts to fingolimod may be of relevance for understanding the differential effectiveness of fingolimod in individual patients.
Microwave Penetration and Attenuation in Desert Soil: A Field Experiment with the Shuttle Imaging Radar

Receivers buried in the Nevada desert were used with the Shuttle Imaging Radar to measure microwave attenuation as a function of soil moisture in situ. Results agree closely with laboratory measureements of attenuation and suggest that penetration of tens of centimeters in desert soils is common for L-band (1.2-GHz) radar.