Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of systems development project risks: an integrative framework

Information systems development projects are a significant expenditure of time, effort and money for many enterprises. Historically it has been estimated that 50-80% of projects fail to achieve their objectives for a variety of reasons. Researchers have identified numerous factors associated with system development failure. In this paper, we first synthesize the vast research regarding systems development risk factors and provide a framework that illustrates interactions between risk factors. The framework was used to develop an open-ended questionnaire that was answered by an inter-industry group of experienced systems development engineers and project managers. Analysis of their reports indicates that experienced professionals perceive that all risk factors (technical, resource, etc.) ultimately derive from organizationally-oriented factors, to be solved with organizational responses. This holistic viewpoint of risk assessment is counter to that of systems professionals more involved in day-to-day development decision making. For these developers, risks are more likely to be characterized as fitting into traditional discrete categories. This apparent dichotomy of risk importance was further investigated through an intra-organizational study which directly assessed how professionals recognize and treat risks in the development process. Results illustrate that a successful project environment may be characterised as one in which all systems professionals maintain a holistic view of organizational risk and that organizational culture, as opposed to experience, may predicate such an environment. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
Primary religious socialization agents and young adults’ understanding of religion: connections and disconnections

ABSTRACT A recurrent critique towards socialization theory is its emphasis on stability and disregard for change. Some case studies in the YARG project, particularly that of Ghana, do indeed point to the central role and influence that young adults ascribe to their primary socialization agents. In these contexts, personal religiosity is described as being in accordance with the values of parents and family, making religious transmission from one generation to another appear like a seamless affair. However, data from these contexts also point to how secondary socialization agents, such as peers, media and secular education, play a central role for how young adults maintain their personal religiosity. The aim of this paper is to analyze how young adults in Ghana, India and Poland describe the role of primary socialization agents on their religiosity, but also, to critically discern this influence as against that of secondary socialization agents. This article builds on both survey and interview data.
Lifestyle-Related Factors and Atopy in Seven Danish Population-Based Studies from Different Time Periods

Background The prevalence of allergic respiratory disease tends to increase in populations that adopt the so-called Westernized lifestyle. We investigated the association between atopy and several possible lifestyle-related factors in seven Danish population-based studies. Methods A total of 20048 persons participated in the seven studies. We used logistic regression to analyse the associations between possible determinants and atopy defined as serum specific IgE or skin prick test positivity against inhalant allergens. Associations were expressed as odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). In addition, individual participant data meta-analyses were performed. Results Atopy was significantly associated with younger age (OR per 1 year increase in age: 0.97; 95% CI: 0.97, 0.98); male sex (OR for males versus females: 1.34; 95% CI: 1.24, 1.45), heavy drinking (OR for heavy drinkers versus light drinkers: 1.15; 95% CI: 1.04, 1.27), never smoking (OR for current versus never smokers: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.67, 0.80), and higher educational level (OR for educated versus uneducated: 1.27; 95% CI: 1.15, 1.41). Atopy was not associated with blood pressure, serum total cholesterol, physical activity or body mass except in women only, where we found a positive association (OR for obese vs. normal weight: 1.18; 95% CI: 1.00, 1.39) with ptrend = 0.032. Conclusions Of interest for preventive purposes, we found that atopy was associated with some of the reversible lifestyle-related factors that characterize a Westernized lifestyle.
A model for the infrared dust emission from forming galaxies

Dust plays various important roles in galaxy formation and evolution. In the early epoch of galaxy evolution, dust is only supplied by supernovae (SNe). With the aid of a new physical model of dust production by SNe developed by Nozawa et al. (N03), we constructed a model of dust emission from forming galaxies on the basis of the theoretical framework of Takeuchi et al. (T03). N03 showed that the produced dust species depends strongly on the mixing within SNe. We treated both unmixed and mixed cases and calculated the infrared (IR) spectral energy distribution (SED) of forming galaxies for both cases. Our model SED is less luminous than the SED of T03 model by a factor of 2‐3. The difference is due to our improved treatment of the ultraviolet (UV) photon absorption cross-section, as well as the different grain size and species newly adopted in this work. The SED for the unmixed case is found to have an enhanced near to mid-IR (N‐MIR) continuum radiation in its early phase of the evolution (age 10 7.25 yr) compared with that for the mixed case. The strong N‐MIR continuum is due to the emission from silicon grains, which only exist in the species of the unmixed dust production. We also calculated the IR extinction curves for forming galaxies. N03 dust was found to yield a smaller extinction than that of T03 model. For the unmixed case, near-IR (NIR) extinction is dominated by large grains of silicon and amorphous carbon, and silicate features are less prominent compared to the curve given by T03. To the contrary, the extinction curve of the mixed case has a similar shape to that of T03. Then we calculated the SED of a local starbursting dwarf galaxy SBS 0335−052. Our present model SED naturally reproduced the strong N‐MIR continuum and the lack of cold far-IR emission of SBS 0335−052. We found that only the SED of unmixed case can reproduce the NIR continuum of this galaxy. We then made a prediction for the SED of another typical star-forming dwarf, I Zw 18. The MIR continuum of I Zw 18 is expected to be much weaker than that of T03 SED. We also presented the evolution of the SED of Lyman-break galaxies. Finally, we discussed the possibility of observing forming galaxies at z 5.
Flavonoid-membrane Interactions: A Protective Role of Flavonoids at the Membrane Surface?

Flavonoids can exert beneficial health effects through multiple mechanisms. In this paper, we address the important, although not fully understood, capacity of flavonoids to interact with cell membranes. The interactions of polyphenols with bilayers include: (a) the partition of the more non-polar compounds in the hydrophobic interior of the membrane, and (b) the formation of hydrogen bonds between the polar head groups of lipids and the more hydrophilic flavonoids at the membrane interface. The consequences of these interactions are discussed. The induction of changes in membrane physical properties can affect the rates of membrane lipid and protein oxidation. The partition of certain flavonoids in the hydrophobic core can result in a chain breaking antioxidant activity. We suggest that interactions of polyphenols at the surface of bilayers through hydrogen bonding, can act to reduce the access of deleterious molecules (i.e. oxidants), thus protecting the structure and function of membranes.
Predominant hematopoietic origin of cell-free DNA in plasma and serum after sex-mismatched bone marrow transplantation.

BACKGROUND Despite current interest in the biology and diagnostic applications of cell-free DNA in plasma and serum, the cellular origin of this DNA is poorly understood. We used a sex-mismatched bone marrow transplantation model to study the relative contribution of hematopoietic and nonhematopoietic cells to circulating DNA. METHODS We studied 22 sex-mismatched bone marrow transplantation patients. Paired buffy coat and plasma samples were obtained from all 22 patients. Matching serum samples were also obtained from seven of them. Plasma DNA, serum DNA, and buffy coat were quantified by real-time PCR of the SRY and beta-globin gene DNA. To investigate the effects of blood drawing and other preanalytical variables on plasma DNA concentrations, blood samples were also collected from 14 individuals who had not received transplants. The effects of blood sampling by syringe and needle, centrifugation, and time delay in blood processing were studied. RESULTS The median percentage of Y-chromosome DNA in the plasma in female patients receiving bone marrow from male donors (59.5%) differed significantly (P <0.001) from that in the male patients receiving bone marrow from female donors (6.9%). This indicated that plasma DNA in the bone marrow transplantation recipients was predominantly of donor origin. Compared with paired plasma samples, serum samples had a median 14-fold higher DNA concentration, with the additional DNA being of donor origin. Control experiments indicated that none of the three tested preanalytical variables contributed to a significant change in cell-free DNA concentration. CONCLUSIONS After bone marrow transplantation, the DNA in plasma and serum is predominantly hematopoietic in origin. Apart from the biological implications of this observation, this finding suggests that plasma and serum can be used as alternative materials for the study of postbone marrow transplantation chimerism.
Turnover of IT professionals: a quantitative analysis of the literature

IT scholars have long been interested in the turnover of IT professionals. In their many studies, IT scholars have considered a wide range of predictors of IT turnover including personal characteristics, role constructs, job characteristics, and organizational characteristics. In this paper, we conduct a meta-analysis to summarize this body of research. The objective of this paper is, therefore, to examine the bivariate relationships of predictors with IT turnover. The meta-analytic results on the relationships with turnover are consistent with theory and prior empirical research.
Mechanisms Underlying Cytotoxicity Induced by Engineered Nanomaterials: A Review of In Vitro Studies

Engineered nanomaterials are emerging functional materials with technologically interesting properties and a wide range of promising applications, such as drug delivery devices, medical imaging and diagnostics, and various other industrial products. However, concerns have been expressed about the risks of such materials and whether they can cause adverse effects. Studies of the potential hazards of nanomaterials have been widely performed using cell models and a range of in vitro approaches. In the present review, we provide a comprehensive and critical literature overview on current in vitro toxicity test methods that have been applied to determine the mechanisms underlying the cytotoxic effects induced by the nanostructures. The small size, surface charge, hydrophobicity and high adsorption capacity of nanomaterial allow for specific interactions within cell membrane and subcellular organelles, which in turn could lead to cytotoxicity through a range of different mechanisms. Finally, aggregating the given information on the relationships of nanomaterial cytotoxic responses with an understanding of its structure and physicochemical properties may promote the design of biologically safe nanostructures.
Monetary neutrality in one specific class of DGE model with staggered prices

In this paper I show that monetary neutrality proposition holds for one specific parameterization of a dynamic general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition even if nominal rigidity in a form of staggered price setting or partial adjustment price-setting mechanism is present in a model. This parameterization is a result of a zero profit condition for intermediate goods producers and it requires that degree of increasing returns in intermediate goods production is equal to price- marginal costs markup.
Experimental Evidence for Differences in the Prosocial Effects of Binge-Watched Versus Appointment-Viewed Television Programs

This study investigated the influence of television consumption patterns on changes in attitudes toward depicted social out-groups. Participants were randomly assigned to view six episodes of Amazon’s Transparent, a comedy-drama program about a family whose father comes out as a transgender woman, in either one 3-hr (“binge-watching”) session or six weekly half-hour (“appointment-viewing”) sessions. Across both groups, we found exposure to the narrative reduced anti-transgender prejudice. Counter to the predictions of the extended elaboration likelihood model and the entertainment overcoming resistance model, however, improvement in prejudice toward transgender people was not predicted by narrative or character involvement. Rather, reduction in prejudice was an outcome of viewing condition, such that those who viewed the program on a schedule of one episode per week exhibited lower levels of postexposure prejudice than those who binge-watched, and their attitudinal changes were more persistent 3 weeks later. Results are discussed in the context of the original elaboration likelihood model, proposing mechanisms for further testing.
Notch signaling drives multiple myeloma induced osteoclastogenesis

Multiple myeloma (MM) is closely associated with bone destruction. Once migrated to the bone marrow, MM cells unbalance bone formation and resorption via the recruitment and maturation of osteoclast precursors. The Notch pathway plays a key role in different types of cancer and drives several biological processes relevant in MM, including cell localization within the bone marrow, proliferation, survival and pharmacological resistance. Here we present evidences that MM can efficiently drive osteoclastogenesis by contemporaneously activating Notch signaling on tumor cells and osteoclasts through the aberrant expression of Notch ligands belonging to the Jagged family. Active Notch signaling in MM cells induces the secretion of the key osteoclastogenic factor, RANKL, which can be boosted in the presence of stromal cells. In turn, MM cells-derived RANKL causes the upregulation of its receptor, RANK, and Notch2 in pre-osteoclasts. Notch2 stimulates osteoclast differentiation by promoting autocrine RANKL signaling. Finally, MM cells through Jagged ligands expression can also activate Notch signaling in pre-osteoclast by direct contact. Such synergism between tumor cells and pre-osteoclasts in MM-induced osteoclastogenesis can be disrupted by silencing tumor-derived Jagged1 and 2. These results make the Jagged ligands new promising therapeutic targets in MM to contrast bone disease and the associated co-morbidities.
Women in Parliament: Making a Difference

Book synopsis: The original edition of Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers, published in 1998, was produced as part of International IDEA’s work on women and political participation. Since its release, the picture regarding women’s political participation has slowly changed. Overall, the past decade has seen gradual progress with regard to women’s presence in national parliaments. In 2002 International IDEA published expanded translations of the Handbook in French and Spanish, featuring case studies of women's experiences in Francophone Africa and Latin America, respectively. In 2002 a further edition was published in Bahasa Indonesia, with case studies from the Asia-Pacific region. English versions of these region-specific case studies are available below. Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers, A Revised Edition, published in 2005, incorporates relevant global changes, and presents new and updated case studies.
Bayesian stock assessment using a state-space implementation of the delay difference model

This paper presents a Bayesian approach to fisheries stock assessment using the delay difference model to describe nonlinear population dynamics. Given a time series of annual catch and effort data, models in the Deriso-Schnute family predict exploitable biomass in the following year from biomass in the current and previous year and from past spawning stock. A state-space model is used, as it allows incorporation of random errors in both the biomass dynamics equations and the observations. Because the biomass dynamics are nonlinear, the common Kalman filter is generally not applicable for parameter estimation. However, it is demonstrated that the Bayesian approach can handle any form of nonlinear relationship in the state and observation equations as well as realistic distributional assumptions. Difficulties with posterior calculations are overcome by the Gibbs sampler in conjunction with the adaptive rejection Metropolis sampling algorithm.
Fostering Fluency in an EFL University Classroom: Processes that Lead to it

This Action Research investigation describes a two-part intervention aimed at fostering spoken fluency in a chosen teaching setting. They relied on theoretical-practical and authentic material and made use of formfocused instruction and peer reviews. The success rate of the intervention was measured by using qualitative and quantitative data to assess the teaching setting as well as the quality of the materials and methods to be used in both interventions. Quantitative data were analysed to find a correlation between fluency and features of connected speech and to measure improvement in participants’ performance. These data were triangulated with native speakers’ perception of said performance. The intervention proved effective as participants achieved higher proficiency by accessing features of connected speech. Results from the correlation of both data proved unable to relate features of connected speech and fluency, as shown by native speakers’ perception, thus revealing the need for further research in the area.
Exploiting shared information for multi-intent natural language sentence classification

Multi-intent natural language sentence classification aims at identifying multiple user goals in a single natural language sentence (e.g., “find Beyonce’s movie and music” ! find movie, find music). The main motivation of this work is to exploit the shared intents across different intent combinations rather than treating the combination as an atomic label. We propose to achieve this by (1) adding class features, and (2) adding hidden variables to identify segments belonging to each intent. Experimental results demonstrate significant gains in classification accuracy over the baseline methods across a number of training conditions (3%-8% absolute on multi-intent sentences, 2%-3% absolute on single intent sentences).
Perceived Audiovisual Quality of Low-Bitrate Multimedia Content

This paper studies the quality of multimedia content at very low bitrates. We carried out subjective experiments for assessing audiovisual, audio-only, and video-only quality. We selected content and encoding parameters that are typical of mobile applications. Our focus were the MPEG-4 AVC (a.k.a. H.264) and AAC coding standards. Based on these data, we first analyze the influence of video and audio coding parameters on quality. We investigate the optimal trade-off between bits allocated to audio and to video under global bitrate constraints. Finally, we explore models for the interactions between audio and video in terms of perceived audiovisual quality
Sparse dynamic programming I: linear cost functions

Dynamic programming solutions to a number of different recurrence equations for sequence comparison and for RNA secondary structure prediction are considered. These recurrences are defined over a number of points that is quadratic in the input size; however only a sparse set matters for the result. Efficient algorithms for these problems are given, when the weight functions used in the recurrences are taken to be linear. The time complexity of the algorithms depends almost linearly on the number of points that need to be considered; when the problems are sparse this results in a substantial speed-up over known algorithms.
Alteration in the Expression of Proteins in Unexplained Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Compared with in the Normal Placenta

The placenta is a unique pregnancy-related tissue and plays a key role in occurrence of unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss (URPL). Abnormal placentation might play a key role in occurrence of URPL. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the human placental proteome between URPL placentas and normal placental matched for gestational week. Total placental proteins were extracted, and the two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) technique was used for separation of the placental proteomes. Protein spots differentially expressed between URPL and normal placentas were selected and identified by the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI TOF/TOF) technique after being digested in the gel. Moreover, quantitative real-time PCR and Western blot techniques were used to confirm the differential expression mass results for some differentially expressed proteins. The results indicated that at least 19 protein spots were differentially expressed between URPL and normal placentas (P < 0.05), and twelve of them were successfully identified. While only two proteins were downregulated (calumenin and enolase 1), the remaining ten spots (actin gamma 1 propeptide, cathepsin D prepropeptide, heat shock protein gp96, tubulin beta, tubulin alpha 1, glutathione S-transferase, vitamin D binding protein, prohibitin, actin beta, apolipoprotein A-I) showed increased expression in URPL cases in comparison with normal placentas. Real-time PCR also confirmed the downregulation of calumenin and upregulation of prohibitin and apolipoprotein A-I at the mRNA levels. In conclusion, the results of the present study showed that alteration in the expression of proteins involved in proliferation and migration of endothelial cells as well as control of coagulation by these cells might play an important role in the pathogenesis of URPL.
Why do Individuals Use e-Portfolios?

As the use of Information Technology (IT) applications has become more widespread, focus has turned toward applying IT to the learning domain, with policy initiatives aimed at integrating IT with teaching. E-Portfolios have assumed growing importance in higher education as institutions seek new teaching–learning–assessment tools to increase learner autonomy in virtual learning environments. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Information System Success Model (ISSM), this research investigates and analyzes the attitudes, degree of satisfaction and acceptance of e-Portfolio system users. The results indicate that, among prospective users, attitude appears to have the strongest and most significant direct effect on usage intentions, while satisfaction serves as a preliminary condition to mediate the effect of the users’ attitude on intention to use. In addition, the utility users perceive in the e-portfolio system influences their attitude and intention more than it does their perceived ease of use. Moreover, service quality utility has a greater influence on user satisfaction and intention than does system quality and information quality. This model provides a systematic understanding of prospective users’ perceptions of the e-Portfolio system, and such an understanding could help in the development and promotion of e-Portfolio systems in educational contexts.