Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Motivational Systems and Emotions in a Virtual Task

The behavioural activation system (BAS) is considered to be an appetitive motivational system that typically induces 'approach' behaviours in response to positive stimuli, while the behavioural inhibition system (BIS) is considered to be an aversive system that induces behaviour to avoid or minimize the influence of negative stimuli. Given the increasingly important organizational form of virtual work, this exploratory study examined the role of BAS/BIS on state emotions and performance in a virtual task. BIS was found to have significant positive relationships with anger, anxiety, annoyance, nervousness, and distress. There were indications of emotional contagion between research confederates and participants. State emotions did not have a significant direct relationship with performance. In contrast, self-report programming knowledge and the skill role of the research confederate both had significant relationships with performance. Self-report skill knowledge was fully mediated by the skill role played by the research confederate.
Determination of Modulus of Elasticity and Shear Modulus by the Measurement of Relative Strains

Abstract This contribution is focused on determining the material properties (Young modulus and shear modulus) of the testing samples. The theoretical basis for determining material properties are the knowledge of linear elasticity and strength. The starting points are dependencies among the modulus of elasticity, shear modulus, normal stress and relative strain. The relative strains of the testing samples were obtained by measuring predefined load conditions using a strain-gauge bridge and the universal measurement system Quantum X MX 840. The integration of these tasks into the teaching process enhances practical and intellectual skills of students at secondary level technical universities.
Novel polymer-ceramic composites for protection against ballistic fragments

For the first time, internally reinforced aggregate polymer ceramic composites were evaluated against fragment simulating projectiles (FSPs) of various calibers to investigate their ballistic impact response. Samples were prepared by mechanically mixing B4C and cBN over a range of ratios and combinations with either thermosetting phenolic or epoxy resin and aramid pulp. Dry mixtures were then molded in a closed die using a heated platen press. The resulting tiles were then mounted as “strike faces” to an aramid backing material using an epoxy resin. Backed targets were tested in a fully instrumented firing range against 5.56 mm FSPs to test ballistic limit. A further series of tests using 7.62, 12.5, and 20 mm FSPs was conducted to examine round deformation across a range of fragments calibers. Round deformations were measured after impact and plotted against shot velocity. It was found that the polymer ceramic composite materials were effective round deformers and, like sintered ceramic strike faces, demonstrated improved ballistic performance at an equivalent areal density and impressive multihit capability. POLYM. COMPOS. , 2012. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers
A Teleost Polymeric Ig Receptor Exhibiting Two Ig-Like Domains Transports Tetrameric IgM into the Skin1

The skin mucus IgM is an important molecule in the mucosal immune system of teleost skin. However, the transport mechanism associated with this molecule has yet to be clarified. In this study, we isolated a gene encoding a polymeric Ig receptor (pIgR) from a species of teleost fish, Takifugu rubripes (fugu). This gene is known to be an Ig transporter in the intestine of mammals. Our studies further demonstrated that fugu pIgR was expressed in the skin and that a fragment of pIgR bound to tetrameric IgM in the skin mucus. These results indicate that the skin pIgR transports tetrameric IgM into the skin mucus. The fugu pIgR exhibits a unique structure containing only two Ig-like domains corresponding to domain 1 and domain 4/5 of mammalian pIgR. This structure was sufficient for successful binding to tetrameric IgM. Teleost skin thus adopts the same Ig transport system as mammalian intestine via a unique pIgR.
Screening of potential bacterial antagonists for control of sheath blight in rice and development of suitable bacterial formulations for effective application

Soil samples were taken from paddy rice fields in 14 provinces in the southern part of Thailand. Bacteria were isolated from these soils using the soil dilution plate method on King’s B medium and Thornton’s standardised medium. Isolation yielded 323 bacterial isolates which were subsequently tested for their effectiveness in inhibiting mycelial growth of Rhizoctonia solani, the causal agent of sheath blight of rice. Eight isolates were selected for their ability to create a clear zone in a dual culture test. Further tests evaluated the effect of selected bacteria on sclerotial germination and subsequent mycelial growth, and also on the development of sheath blight lesions on excised rice stems. Three bacterial isolates (16,26 and 29) provided the greatest inhibition of sclerotial germination and mycelial growth and maximum suppression of sheath blight lesions. Isolate 26 and subsequently isolate 29 were chosen for formulation studies. Granulated formulations of these bacterial isolates were developed using the wet granulation technique. The main components of these bacterial formulations were bacterial cells, hydrogenated vegetable oil, monohydrate lactose, polyvinyl pyrrolidone, and crosslinked sodium carboxymethyl cellulose. The efficacy of the formulation of isolate 29 in suppressing sheath blight symptoms was similar to that of fresh cells of isolate 29.
Fitting hearing aids to adults using prescriptive methods: an evidence-based review of effectiveness.

The use of a prescriptive fitting approach for hearing aid selection has been a common practice for the past 60-70 years. While there are prescriptive approaches that have been validated, in recent years it has become popular to deviate from these validated methods and use manufacturers' proprietary algorithms, which in many cases are significantly different. This research review was designed to examine if there was evidence supporting the use of specific gain requirements for hearing aid fitting. Specifically, the question that was asked was "Are there real-world outcome measures from adult patients that show a preference for the gain prescribed by a specific prescriptive fitting procedure? " Inclusion criteria were as follows: adult subjects, consistent technology (e.g., different prescriptive methods compared using same hearing aids), real-ear verification of gain, and real-world outcome measures. For this review, in addition to subjective responses, preferred use gain was considered a real-world outcome measure. The National Acoustic Laboratories' revised (NAL-R), revised for severe/profound (NAL-RP), and the National Acoustic Laboratories-Non-Linear 1 (NAL-NL1) prescriptive methods were used as a common reference, as they have been the most commonly studied methods with adults. Eleven studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria. Eight of the studies supported gain similar to that prescribed by the NAL-R or NAL-RP methods; three studies supported prescribed gain less than the NAL-R or NAL-RP. There was no evidence that gain greater than that prescribed by the NAL methods should be used. The level of evidence was moderate, as the supporting studies were either Level 2 or Level 4, and the statistical power of the studies was low.
Automated Construction of Structural Motifs for Predicting Functional Sites on Protein Structures

Structural genomics initiatives are beginning to rapidly generate vast numbers of protein structures. For many of the structures, functions are not yet determined and high-throughput methods for determining function are necessary. Although there has been extensive work in function prediction at the sequence level, predicting function at the structure level may provide better sensitivity and predictive value. We describe a method to predict functional sites by automatically creating three dimensional structural motifs from amino acid sequence motifs. These structural motifs perform comparably well with manually generated structural motifs and perform better than sequence motifs. Automatically generated structural motifs can be used for structural-genomic scale function prediction on protein structures.
The economic consequences of euro-area macro-modelling shortcuts

Should euro-area economies be modelled in an aggregate (area-wide) fashion or in a disaggregate (multi-country) one? This article tackles that question from both statistical and economic viewpoint. From a statistical viewpoint, aggregation bias criteria are found to signal that the degree of structural heterogeneity among euro-area economies is such that the loss of information entailed by an aggregate modelling approach may be far from trifling. From an economic viewpoint, we investigate the following issue. Are those statistically detectable heterogeneities of any practical relevance when it comes to supporting monetary policy decision-making? To provide an answer to this question, we compute simple optimal monetary policy reaction functions on the basis of either an aggregate model or a disaggregate one, and compare the associated welfare losses. The results suggest that the welfare under-performance of an area-wide-model-based rule is not only nonnegligible, but also robust with respect to a number of sensitivity analyses.
Gene Mention Tagging with CRFs and Parsing 1 Tackling the BioCreative 2 Gene Mention task with Conditional Random Fields and Syntactic Parsing

This paper presents an approach to Gene Mention tagging using Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) and syntactic parsing, by taking advantage of the flexibility of the former in order to add features from the output of the latter. We did not use any material or information other than the training data provided in order to maintain the domain independence of the system. Nevertheless, the resulting system achieved 82.84% F-score, which places it in the second performance quartile of the competition.
Tumor Necrosis Factor (cid:1) -dependent Up-regulation of Lrh-1 and Mrp3(Abcc3) Reduces Liver Injury in Obstructive Cholestasis*

Mrp3(Abcc3) is markedly induced following bile duct ligation (BDL) in the rat and in some human cholestatic liver diseases and is believed to ameliorate liver injury in this setting. Recently, the orphan nuclear receptor fetoprotein transcription factor/cholesterol-7 (cid:1) -hydroxy-lase promoter factor (CPF/FTF/Lrh-1) has been shown to activate Mrp3 expression. However, whether inflammatory cytokines or elevated bile acid levels increased Lrh-1/Mrp3 expression in obstructive cholestasis was not known. We hypothesized that induction of Mrp3 would be associated with Lrh-1 up-regulation and would re-quire intact cytokine signaling. Male tumor necrosis factor (Tnf) receptor I (Tnfr (cid:2) / (cid:2) ) mice and C57BLJ wild type (WT) controls were subjected to sham surgery or bile duct ligation. HepG2 cells were treated with bile acids or cytokines. Immunoblot assay and real time reverse transcriptase-PCR were used to determine expression of MRP3/Mrp3, CPF/Lrh-1, Mrp2, and Bsep. CPF/ Lrh-1 DNA binding to the MRP3/Mrp3 promoter was assessed using electrophoretic mobility shift assay, and promoter activity was determined by luciferase
Regulated functional alternative splicing in Drosophila

Alternative splicing expands the coding capacity of metazoan genes, and it was largely genetic studies in the fruit-fly Drosophila melanogaster that established the principle that regulated alternative splicing results in tissue- and stage-specific protein isoforms with different functions in development. Alternative splicing is particularly prominent in germ cells, muscle and the central nervous system where it modulates the expression of various proteins including cell-surface molecules and transcription factors. Studies in flies have given us numerous insights into alternative splicing in terms of upstream regulation, the exquisite diversity of their forms and the key differential cellular functions of alternatively spliced gene products. The current inundation of transcriptome sequencing data from Drosophila provides an unprecedented opportunity to gain a comprehensive view of alternative splicing.
RAIL: code instrumentation for .NET

Code instrumentation is a mechanism that allows modules of programs to be completely rewritten at runtime. With the advent of virtual machines, this type of functionality is becoming more and more interesting because it allows the introduction of new functionality after an application has been deployed, easy implementation of aspect-oriented programming, performing security verifications, dynamic software upgrading, among others. The Runtime Assembly Instrumentation Library (RAIL) is one of the first frameworks to implement code instrumentation in the.NET platform. It specifically addresses the limitations that exist between the reflection capabilities of.NET and its code emission functionalities. RAIL gives the programmer an object-oriented vision of the code of an application, allowing assemblies, modules, classes, references and even intermediate code to be easily manipulated. This paper addresses the design of an implementation of RAIL along with the difficulties and lessons learnt in building a framework for code instrumentation in.NET.
Population Volume Kinetics Predicts Retention of 0.9% Saline Infused in Awake and Isoflurane-anesthetized Volunteers

Background:In previous work, extravascular expansion was observed to be enhanced by isoflurane anesthesia in sheep when a crystalloid bolus was administered. The aim of the current study was to further elaborate these investigations to humans and to explore the use of population kinetics in the analysis of fluid shifts. Methods:Eleven healthy volunteers participated in two experiments each, either awake or isoflurane anesthetized, during which they received 25 ml/kg saline, 0.9%, intravenously over 20 min. Plasma dilution data were derived from repeated sampling of hemoglobin concentration, and population pharmacokinetic analysis was conducted using the WinNonMix 2.0. 1 software (Pharsight Corporation, Mountain View, CA). Plasma hormones were measured, and hemodynamic values were monitored. Results:Fluid infusion during isoflurane anesthesia was followed by a higher cardiac output, lower arterial pressure, and lower urinary excretion as compared with the awake protocol (P < 0.05). Albumin dilution was greater than hemoglobin concentration–derived plasma dilution, which indicates a transcapillary leak of albumin. A two-compartment model with an isoflurane-depressed, intercompartmental distribution parameter predicted that more than 50% of the infused volume was retained in the peripheral compartment at 180 min in both protocols. Isoflurane markedly increased the plasma levels of renin and aldosterone, whereas vasopressin was mostly unchanged. Conclusion:Fluid retention after rapid infusion of 0.9% saline was prominent in both awake and isoflurane-anesthetized subjects. Altered kinetics of infused 0.9% saline during isoflurane anesthesia was expressed as reduced clearance and a slower distribution, resulting in a small but significant increase in fluid accumulation in the body fluid compartments. These changes may be due to the associated decreasing of mean arterial pressure and increased release of renin and aldosterone.
Long-term evaluation of a social robot in real homes

As the employment of robots for long-term evaluations in home settings are just starting to be robust enough for research purposes, our study aims at contributing to humanrobot interaction research by adding longitudinal findings to a limited number of long-term social robotics home studies. We placed 70 commercially available robots within people’s homes for a period up to six months. In this paper, we report on the collected questionnaire data from 102 people living in these houses. The participants evaluated the robot and their user experiences at six points in time. We observed a mere-exposure effect which causes people to evaluate a novel stimuli more positively when they gain experience and get familiar with it. The participants evaluated several aspects of the robot. We found user experience initially dropped before rising again when the robot was used over a longer period of time.
Characteristics that Enhance Training Effectiveness in Implementing Technological Change in Sales Strategy: A Field-Based Exploratory Study

Organizations are increasingly emphasizing online sales channels over traditional offline sales channels. This research examines how training influences a salesperson’s ability to manage such a technological change in the firm’s sales strategy. Findings suggest that formality of training has a positive effect and voluntariness has a negative effect on the perceived effectiveness of training in a change implementation context. Older salespeople and those likely to be favorably affected by the change respond more positively to timely training and a less formal training format. Training effectiveness in turn has a positive influence on the salesperson’s perceived ability to manage the change, with learning orientation of the salesperson weakening the effect. Implications for the design of sales force automation and change implementation training programs are discussed.
Expression and roles of connective tissue growth factor in Meckel's cartilage development

Meckel's cartilage is a prominent feature of the developing mandible, but its formation and roles remain unclear. Because connective tissue growth factor (CTGF, CCN2) regulates formation of other cartilages, we asked whether it is expressed and what roles it may have in developing mouse Meckel's cartilage. Indeed, CTGF was strongly expressed in anterior, central, and posterior regions of embryonic day (E) 12 condensing Meckel's mesenchyme. Expression decreased in E15 newly differentiated chondrocytes but surged again in E18 hypertrophic chondrocytes located in anterior region and most‐rostral half of central region. These cells were part of growth plate‐like structures with zones of maturation resembling those in a developing long bone and expressed such characteristic genes as Indian hedgehog (Ihh), collagen X, MMP‐9, and vascular endothelial growth factor. At each stage examined perichondrial tissues also expressed CTGF. To analyze CTGF roles, mesenchymal cells isolated from E10 first branchial arches were tested for interaction and responses to recombinant CTGF (rCTGF). The cells readily formed aggregates in suspension culture and interacted with substrate‐bound rCTGF, but neither event occurred in the presence of CTGF neutralizing antibodies. In good agreement, rCTGF treatment of micromass cultures stimulated both expression of condensation‐associated macromolecules (fibronectin and tenascin‐C) and chondrocyte differentiation. Expression of these molecules and CTGF itself was markedly up‐regulated by treatment with transforming growth factor‐β1, a chondrogenic factor. In conclusion, CTGF is expressed in highly dynamic manners in developing Meckel's cartilage where it may influence multiple events, including chondrogenic cell differentiation and chondrocyte maturation. CTGF may aid chondrogenesis by acting down‐stream of transforming growth factor‐β and stimulating cell–cell interactions and expression of condensation‐associated genes. Developmental Dynamics 231:136–147, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Procaine Induces Epigenetic Changes in HCT116 Colon Cancer Cells

Colon cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the world, and it is the major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. The present study aimed at treating colon cancer cell line (HCT116) with different chemotherapeutic drug/drug combinations (procaine, vorinostat “SAHA,” sodium phenylbutyrate, erlotinib, and carboplatin). Two different final concentrations were applied: 3 μM and 5 μM. Trypan blue test was performed to assess the viability of the cell before and after being treated with the drugs. The data obtained showed that there was a significant decrease in the viability of cells after applying the chemotherapeutic drugs/drug combinations. Also, DNA fragmentation assay was carried out to study the effect of these drugs on the activation of apoptosis-mediated DNA degradation process. The results indicated that all the drugs/drug combinations had a severe effect on inducing DNA fragmentation. Global DNA methylation quantification was performed to identify the role of these drugs individually or in combination in hypo- or hypermethylating the CpG dinucleotide all over the genome of the HCT116 colon cancer cell line. Data obtained indicated that different combinations had different effects in reducing or increasing the level of methylation, which might indicate the effectiveness of combining drugs in treating colon cancer cells.
Chromosomal gains and losses detected by comparative genomic hybridization and proliferation activity in renal cell carcinomaDo they give any prognostic information in clinical practice?

Objective: The number of DNA losses found using comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and the proliferation index MIB‐1 have been shown to be prognostic factors in renal cell carcinoma (RCC). We evaluated the associations of these two factors with each other and with histopathology and clinical outcome. Material and Methods: In this prospective study, specimens from 20 primary RCCs were investigated using CGH and MIB‐1 assay. The associations of the commonest chromosomal aberrations with histopathology, stage and the clinical outcome of the disease were evaluated. Results: CGH detected genetic aberrations in all tumours. Losses of genetic material (85%) were more common than gains (65%). Most common was loss in the short arm of chromosome 3, which was found in 70% of the tumours. Other frequent changes (20%) were losses of 4q, 13q, 18 and Xp, as well as gains of 5q, 7p, 7q (25%) and chromosome 12. The number of deleted chromosomal areas varied from none to six. The MIB‐1 index varied from 0 to 39 (median 4.0). The total number of chromosomal aberrations or deletions showed no association with MIB‐1 index or nuclear grade. Most grade 1 and 2 tumours showed a low MIB‐1 index. All nuclear grade 4 tumours progressed and were associated with short survival. Conclusion: CGH gives an overview of DNA changes in RCC and helps to locate targets for more precise genetic evaluation. CGH findings are also helpful for classifying tumours. In this study, genetic aberrations in primary RCCs were not associated with histopathology, proliferation or clinical outcome, which suggests that CGH does not necessarily give any additional information on the prognosis of the disease. MIB‐1 index and TNM stage were associated with survival.