Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Bacillus subtilis Strains Isolated from Fermented Soybean Foods in Southeast Asia: Comparison with B. subtilis (natto) Starter Strains

We compared the production of poly-γ-glutamate (y-PGA), protease and amylase, the phage type, and inheritance of the insertion sequence (IS) IS4Bsu1among 90 Bacillus subtilis strains isolated from fermented soybean foods from Southeast to East Asia with those of a B. subtilis (natto) starter strain. All the isolates produced high levels of protease but various levels of amylase. None of them belonged to the standard phage type of B. subtilis, but 11 strains appeared to belong to the same phage type as B. subtilis (natto). Sixty-three isolates produced γ-PGA, while 28 isolates carried the IS element, the copy number of which ranged from 1 to 17. The IS appeared to be widely distributed among B. subtilis strains from non-salted types of fermented soybeans, such as "Tua Nao" of Thailand (90%) and "Kinema" of Nepal (56%), while a relatively small fraction (15%) of B. subtilis strains from salted types of fermented soybeans, e.g. Chinese "Douchi", harbored the IS. No relationship was apparent between the IS element and γ-PGA production. Nucleotide sequencing demonstrated that the IS elements of the randomly selected 9 isolates had a sequence identical with that of B. subtilis (natto) and those of another 4 strains showed only one to three mutations. These results together imply that IS4Bsu1 was recently distributed among B. subtilis strains that predominantly occur in cooked soybeans.
CURRENT STATE OF E-SERVICES IN SAUDI ARABIA: THE CASE OF INTERMEDIARIES IN FACILITATING GOVERNMENT SERVICES IN MADINAH CITY

The government of Madinah has launched ‘Khdamatec’ electronic Offices (e-Offices) concept under their national electronic Government (e-Government) modernisation agenda to facilitate service delivery to citizens and seamless interaction to communicate their needs. By offering e-Offices around the government departments, Madinah government hopes to increase accessibility of e-Government services and make steps forward to electronic age, encourage Medina' citizens to participate and use e-Services and bridging digital divide. However, the empirical findings illustrate that the adoption and diffusion of the e-Office concept and e-Government in the wider context at a lethargic pace. This paper highlights some of the challenges faced by the Madinah city in implementing the e-Office concept and eGovernment.
Bidirectional Dynamics of Materialism and Loneliness: Not Just a Vicious Cycle

This research is the first to test the hypothesis that consumers face a “material trap” in which materialism fosters social isolation which in turn reinforces materialism. It provides evidence that materialism and loneliness are engaged in bidirectional relationships over time. Importantly, it finds that loneliness contributes more to materialism than the other way around. Moreover, it finds that materialism's contribution to loneliness is not uniformly vicious but critically differs between specific subtypes of materialism. That is, valuing possessions as a happiness medicine or as a success measure increased loneliness, and these subtypes also increased most due to loneliness. Yet seeking possessions for material mirth decreased loneliness and was unaffected by it. These findings are based on longitudinal data from over 2,500 consumers across 6 years and a new latent growth model. They reveal how materialism and loneliness form a self-perpetuating vicious and virtuous cycle depending on the materialism subtype.
Smaller hippocampal volumes in patients with bipolar disorder are masked by exposure to lithium: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Smaller hippocampal volumes relative to controls are among the most replicated neuroimaging findings in individuals with unipolar but not bipolar depression. Preserved hippocampal volumes in most studies of participants with bipolar disorder may reflect potential neuroprotective effects of lithium (Li). METHODS To investigate hippocampal volumes in patients with bipolar disorder while controlling for Li exposure, we performed a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies that subdivided patients based on the presence or absence of current Li treatment. To achieve the best coverage of literature, we categorized studies based on whether all or a majority, or whether no or a minority of patients were treated with Li. Hippocampal volumes were compared by combining standardized differences between means (Cohen d) from individual studies using random-effects models. RESULTS Overall, we analyzed data from 101 patients with bipolar disorder in the Li group, 245 patients in the non-Li group and 456 control participants from 16 studies. Both the left and right hippocampal volumes were significantly larger in the Li group than in controls (Cohen d = 0.53, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.18 to 0.88; Cohen d = 0.51, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.81, respectively) or the non-Li group (Cohen d = 0.93, 95% CI 0.56 to 1.31; Cohen d = 1.07, 95% CI 0.70 to 1.45, respectively), which had smaller left and right hippocampal volumes than the control group (Cohen d = -0.36, 95% CI -0.55 to -0.17; Cohen d = -0.38, 95% CI -0.63 to -0.13, respectively). There was no evidence of publication bias. LIMITATIONS Missing information about the illness burden or lifetime exposure to Li and polypharmacy in some studies may have contributed to statistical heterogeneity in some analyses. CONCLUSION When exposure to Li was minimized, patients with bipolar disorder showed smaller hippocampal volumes than controls or Li-treated patients. Our findings provide indirect support for the negative effects of bipolar disorder on hippocampal volumes and are consistent with the putative neuroprotective effects of Li. The preserved hippocampal volumes among patients with bipolar disorder in most individual studies and all previous meta-analyses may have been related to the inclusion of Li-treated participants.
SSRC Applications and Policy Working Paper A 03 / 08 Child Loss and Fertility Behaviour in Ghana

Evidence shows a strong relationship between child mortality and fertility at the aggregate level but the relationship at the individual level is less clear. Data from the 1993 Ghana DHS are used to examine the impact of infant death on a woman’s subseque nt fertility behaviour. Birth interval analysis, parity progression ratios, and multilevel discrete-time hazard models are used. Child replacement after infant death is found to be taking place in Ghana. On average, birth intervals are shortened by about 15 months if a child dies in the neonatal stage, and by about 11 months for postneonatal death. Progression to the next parity is higher if an infant dies than if it survives; the probability of progression is about 32% higher if a male child dies than if a female dies. A sustained decline in child mortality in Ghana is likely to result in further reduction in
A New Probabilistic Relaxation Scheme

Let a vector of probabilities be associated with every node of a graph. These probabilities define a random variable representing the possible labels of the node. Probabilities at neighboring nodes are used iteratively to update the probabilities at a given node based on statistical relations among node labels. The results are compared with previous work on probabilistic relaxation labeling, and examples are given from the image segmentation domain. References are also given to applications of the new scheme in text processing.
Dual Language Education

Section I Social and theoretical context of dual langauge education: language education, populations and programmes theoretical and conceptual foundations for dual language education programmes critical features of successful language education programmes design and implementation issues. Section II Classroom, administrative and familial contexts in dual language education: the dual language education school characteristics teacher background and perceptions of support programme planning instructional practices and efficacy teacher talk in dual language education classroon parent involvement, attitudes and satisfaction in dual language education programmes. Section III Student outcomes in dual language education programmes: student outcomes - introduction and data collection student outcomes - oral language proficiency student outcomes - academic language proficiency student outcomes in reading and literacy student outcomes - content area achievement in mathematics, science and social studies student outcomes - attitudes. Section IV Conclusions and implications for language education programmes summary and conclusions implications.
Remittances and Growth in Latin America: A Panel Unit Root and Panel Cointegration Analysis

Using recently developed panel unit root and panel cointegration tests and the Fully-Modified OLS (FMOLS) methodology, this paper estimates the impact of remittances on the economic growth of selected upper and lower income Latin American & Caribbean countries. Despite a large flow of remittances to the region, there have been relatively few empirical studies assessing the impact of remittances on growth in Latin American and the Caribbean. Panel unit root tests suggests that several of the macro variables included in the model exhibit unit roots, yet, at the same time, Pedroni’s panel cointegration methodology determined that there is a cointegrating relationship among the variables in the estimated model. Moreover, FMOLS estimates suggest that remittances have a positive and significant effect on economic growth in both groups of countries. The interaction of remittances with a financial development variable revealed that these two variables act as substitutes and, moreover, that the impact of remittances is more pronounced in the presence of the financial development variable.
THE ECONOMIC OF LAND ACQUISITION - USING KOTAKA'S MODEL IN LAND ACQUISITION TO PROVIDE LAND FOR INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT IN MALAYSIA

Land acquisition is a way to make land available in the market for development purposes. An adequate compensation in land acquisition is always been referred to the open market value of the land taken plus its consequences including severance, injurious affection and disturbances. It is always been referred to the value of land to the affected landowners. Kotaka (2000, 2002) models the elements of adequate compensation in land acquisition. Therefore the paper seeks to redefine the adequate amount of compensation from landowners, valuers and administrators viewpoints using Kotaka’s Model with special application in Malaysia. In doing so, data is gathered from landowners, administrators and valuers from selected cases of land acquisitions. Data gathered is analysed using qualitative descriptive analysis to identify elements of dissatisfactions by landowners upon compensation and proposed solutions by the selected respondents. In the end, findings show that there are elements of dissatisfactions of the landowners and ways out are to be more professional in dealing with them. In line with Kotaka’s Model (2000, 2002), amendments to the elements of adequate compensation had been made to further explain it for implementation.
Authors' Address

Negativity is the main cause of reaction-time delay in an emotional Stroop study with picture/word stimuli. Title: Negativity is the main cause of reaction-time delay in an emotional Stroop study with picture/word stimuli. Project: DRIFE (drive, regulate and influence feelings and emotions) Abstract: The aim of this study was to find out if the emotion triggered by viewing a picture can be determined by measuring reaction times. We investigated this by using the emotional Stroop task. Emotional Stroop entails presenting two stimuli, in our case pictures and superimposed words, with different emotional charge to the subjects. Literature suggests that when the emotional content of picture and word differ (incongruence), there will be a delay in the reaction-times of a lexical-decision task (participants had to decide if the emotional word was a verb or a noun). As a result, we would expect a main effect of emotional congruence on reaction time. However, recent advances the field of affective priming (how human cognition deals with conflict) suggest a different outcome. These suggest no differences between affective congruent and affective incongru-ent trials because stimulus features are independent of the response. In the results of our user-testing at Utrecht University (n=41), no overall congruency effect was found. This is in favor of the recent affective-prime literature. Our results are in line with Taylor (1991), stating that a cognitive task right after the exposure to a negative event will take longer. Also, our results confirm the assumption that pictures have a greater impact than words because pictures are ecologically valid Unclassified PR-TN 2008/00359 iv To summarize, when other possible causes of differences in reaction-time latency were ruled out, negativity is the main cause of interference that we observed. Our findings demonstrate that negativity is the main cause of the differences in reaction-time latency and that negativity of pictures produced more differences in reaction time than the negativity of words. All in all, the present findings suggest that in previous research on the emotional-Stroop task and the affective-prime task many of the results are based on other causes than the initial processing of the stimulus features. These findings introduce a new field of research in search of interference that can be ascribed solely to the unconscious processing of affective pictures and words. These findings could be exploited in emotions research to detect negative emotions in an objective way. Our results also suggest that our original research …
Survival of the Fittest in Cities: Agglomeration, Polarization, and Income Inequality

Using a large sample of US urban areas, we provide systematic evidence that mean household income rises with city ('agglomeration'), that this effect is stronger for the top of the income distribution ('polarization'), and that household income inequality increases at a decreasing rate in city size ('inequality'). To account simultaneously for these facts, we develop a microfounded model of endogenous city formation in which urban centres select the most productive agents. Income inequality is driven by both the 'poverty' and the 'superstar' margins: whereas the least productive agents fail in a tougher urban environment, which increases 'poverty', the most productive agents become 'superstars' who reap the benefits from a larger urban market. At equilibrium, the returns to skills are increasing in city size, thereby dilating the income distribution. Our model is both rich and tractable enough to allow for a detailed investigation of when cities emerge, what determines their size, how they interact through the channels of trade, and how inter-city trade influences intra-city income inequality.
Implementation of Gaussian ProcessesMark GibbsCavendish LaboratoryCambridge CB 3 0 HEUnited Kingdom

Neural networks and Bayesian inference provide a useful framework within which to solve regression problems. However their parameterization means that the Bayesian analysis of neural networks can be diicult. In this paper, we investigate a method for regression using Gaussian process priors which allows exact Bayesian analysis using matrix manipulations. We discuss the workings of the method in detail. We will also detail a range of mathematical and numerical techniques that are useful in applying Gaussian processes to general problems including eecient approximate matrix inversion methods developed by Skilling.
Explaining Recommendations Based on Feature Sentiments in Product Reviews

The explanation interface has been recognized important in recommender systems as it can help users evaluate recommendations in a more informed way for deciding which ones are relevant to their interests. In different decision environments, the specific aim of explanation can be different. In high-investment product domains (e.g., digital cameras, laptops) for which users usually attempt to avoid financial risk, how to support users to construct stable preferences and make better decisions is particularly crucial. In this paper, we propose a novel explanation interface that emphasizes explaining the tradeoff properties within a set of recommendations in terms of both their static specifications and feature sentiments extracted from product reviews. The objective is to assist users in more effectively exploring and understanding product space, and being able to better formulate their preferences for products by learning from other customers' experiences. Through two user studies (in form of both before-after and within-subjects experiments), we empirically identify the practical role of feature sentiments in combination with static specifications in producing tradeoff-oriented explanations. Specifically, we find that our explanation interface can be more effective to increase users' product knowledge, preference certainty, perceived information usefulness, recommendation transparency and quality, and purchase intention.
Resource Control for the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access ( EDCA ) Mechanism in IEEE 802 . 11 e

We investigate the problem of efficient resource control for elastic traffic in IEEE 802.11e’s Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) mechanism. Our approach considers an economic modelling framework based on congestion pricing that captures how various factors, such as the probability of attempting to transmit a frame, the use of the basic CSMA/CA or the RTS/CTS procedure, and the physical layer transmission rate, contribute to the congestion in an IEEE 802.11e network using the EDCA mechanism. We discuss the application of the framework for achieving class-based proportional throughput differentiation, for performing explicit congestion notification (ECN) marking based on the level of congestion in the wireless channel, and for modelling the performance of TCP congestion control over EDCA. In the aforementioned application scenarios we discuss how to estimate the optimal minimum contention window and the congestion prices based on the 802.11e parameters and actual measurements, in order to efficiently utilize the wireless channel. Experiments demonstrate the application of the proposed framework, compare simulation and analytical results, and identify the gains in using the optimal minimum contention window.
Architectural solutions of conformal network-centric staring-sensor systems with spherical field of view

The article presents the concept of network-centric conformal electro-optical systems construction with spherical field of view. It discusses abstract passive distributed electro-optical systems with focal array detectors based on a group of moving objects distributed in space. The system performs conformal processing of information from sensor matrix in a single event coordinate-time field. Unequivocally the construction of the systems which satisfy the different criteria of optimality is very complicated and requires special approaches to their development and design. The paper briefly touches upon key questions (in the authors' opinion) in the synthesis of such systems that meet different criteria of optimality. The synthesis of such systems is discussed by authors with the systematic and synergy approaches.
Deriving Synthetic Validity Models : Is R = . 80 Large Enough ?

Many view the . 50-. 80 Rs typically seen for job-component validation (JCV) models as adequate to justify inferences of validity/utility. This study derived JCV models predicting DOT Strength from O*NET dimensions; although a R = . 82 was achieved, errors of prediction were too large to justify its applied use. O*NET has received considerable recent attention in the context of developing methods of " synthetic " test validation such as the job-component validation (JCV) technique (e. have advanced optimistic conclusions regarding the quality and utility of O*NET data, including its suitability as a data source for quantifying the job activities and demands that are used as predictors when deriving JCV models that predict worker attribute requirements. For example, LaPolice et al. (2008) showed that when predicting the criterion of occupational literacy levels, JCV models based on O*NET data produced multiple Rs ranging from . 80 to . 83. Although other JCV studies (e.g., Jeanneret & Strong, 2003) have reported derivation-sample Rs that are much lower in magnitude than those found by LaPolice et al. (ranging as low as the .30's, .40's and .50's), JCV proponents remain highly upbeat in their assessments of the potential of JCV to revolutionize the test validation process. For example, Johnson, Steel, Scherbaum, Hoffman, Jeanneret, and Foster (2010) asserted that although " there are still several details to hammer out, especially the number of job components to be used [as predictors] and possibly modifying the O*NET to include aspects gleaned from PAQ-based synthetic validity successes . there are no theoretical obstacles left " (p. 325, emphasis added), and that JCV " has great potential to advance the science and practice of industrial and organizational psychology " (p. 305, emphasis added). LaPolice et al. (2008) concluded that " these multiple Rs are all very close to the maximum correlation for each dependent variable, suggesting that our models are approaching the best possible prediction " (p. 435, emphasis added). They went on to conclude that " the fact that the multiple Rs are all close to the maximum possible provides evidence for the construct validity of O*NET " (p. 435, emphasis added), and that " in summary, this study suggests that O*NET descriptor data predict literacy scores with a high degree of accuracy, providing evidence for the construct validity of O*NET " (p. 437, emphasis added). Jeanneret and Strong (2003) were similarly optimistic regarding the suitability of O*NET and JCV for mission-critical …
Deliberation, Consensus, and Stakeholder Satisfaction

Abstract The purpose of this study is to contribute to development of collaborative governance theory by investigating whether and under what conditions a deliberative, consensus-oriented decision process among diverse stakeholders with conflicting interests can lead to decisions that are satisfactory to most of the stakeholders. Using computational simulation, we found that the benefits of collaborative governance are contingent on such conditions as the type of alternative that initiates the deliberation, the level of conflict among stakeholders and whether and how stakeholders modify their preferences over time. Based on these results, theoretical propositions for future theory building and empirical research are suggested.
Impact of Japanese and US FDI on Productivity Growth

This paper examines the impact of Japanese and US foreign direct investments (FDI) on total factor productivity growth of firms in the Indian automobile, electrical and chemical industries in the post-reforms period. The results show that Japanese affiliation has a significant positive impact on productivity growth in a firm while the impact of US affiliation is not found to be significant. The results also show that domestic firms have witnessed both efficiency growth as well as technological progress in the electrical and chemical industries in the post-reforms period.