Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On nestedness in ecological networks

Questions: Are interaction patterns in species interaction networks different from what one expects by chance alone? In particular, are these networks nested – a pattern where resources taken by more specialized consumers form a proper subset of those taken by more generalized consumers? Organisms: Fifty-nine and 42 networks of mutualistic and host–parasitoid interactions, respectively. Analytical methods: For each network, the observed degree of nestedness is compared with the distribution of nestedness values derived from a collection of 1000 random networks. Those networks with nestedness values lower than 95% of all random values are considered ‘unusually nested’. The analysis considers two different metrics of nestedness and five different network randomization algorithms, each of which differs in the ecological assumptions imposed. Results: Most ecological networks are unusually nested when compared with loosely constrained random networks. Comparisons with highly constrained networks temper these findings, but we still report a significant preponderance of nested networks (typically those with the most species). Conclusions: Bascompte et al. (2003) previously showed most observed mutualistic networks to be unusually nested. Later work using more ecologically realistic randomization algorithms cast doubt on those results. Across the largest set of species interactions considered to date, we conclude that an unexpectedly large number of interaction networks are patterned in a
Understanding contemporary marketing: Development of a classification scheme

The term Relationship Marketing has been used in a multitude of ways to describe and define marketing in the contemporary environment. This has led to the term being loosely defined and applied in the literature, resulting in frustration for both researchers and practitioners. Therefore, a classification scheme is developed from analysis of the extant literature, and used to systematically examine the meaning of marketing across twelve dimensions which reflect issues related to marketing practice. From this scheme, the authors identify two ‘perspectives’ of marketing, which encompass four distinguishable ‘types’ of marketing. Implications for future research in the area are discussed.
Does Employee Age Moderate the Association Between HR Practices and Organizational Commitment? An Application of SOC Theory to Organizational Behavior

ABSTRACT Drawing hypotheses from Selective Optimization with Compensation theory (SOC), we explored the degree to which employee age moderates the relationship between employees’ satisfaction with high-commitment human resource practices (HCHRPs; e.g., providing training, work–life balance) and organizational commitment. Customer-facing employees (N = 6,360) from an international transportation company completed the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) and rated their satisfaction with various HCHRPs offered by their organization. Results show that although there was a strong overall correlation between organizational commitment and satisfaction with various HCHRPs (r = .66), employee age was a significant moderator of only the relationships between organizational commitment and maintenance-related HCHRPs (e.g., work–life balance) and not of development-related HCHRPs (e.g., training opportunities). Furthermore, moderation effects had small effect sizes, suggesting that employee age is not a characteristic organizations need to consider when making strategic decisions about HCHRPs.
Enhancing multiple object tracking performance with noninvasive brain stimulation: a causal role for the anterior intraparietal sulcus

Multiple object tracking (MOT) is a complex task recruiting a distributed network of brain regions. There are also marked individual differences in MOT performance. A positive causal relationship between the anterior intraparietal sulcus (AIPS), an integral region in the MOT attention network and inter-individual variation in MOT performance has not been previously established. The present study used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a form of non-invasive brain stimulation, in order to examine such a causal link. Active anodal stimulation was applied to the right AIPS and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (and sham stimulation), an area associated with working memory (but not MOT) while participants completed a MOT task. Stimulation to the right AIPS significantly improved MOT accuracy more than the other two conditions. The results confirm a causal role of the AIPS in the MOT task and illustrate that tDCS has the ability to improve MOT performance.
Towards nurturing the entrepreneurial intentions of neglected female business students of Pakistan through proactive personality, self-efficacy and university support factors

Purpose Nowadays in the competitive economy, the field of entrepreneurship and particularly female entrepreneurship is rapidly advancing, and its contribution to the economy is imperative. Consequently, the female business students’ factors and university support factors are imperative to nurture the entrepreneurial intentions, but the literature does not address them at large. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of proactive personality, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and perceived university support factors on female student’s entrepreneurial intentions. Design/methodology/approach The data from a total of 306 female students from the business schools of universities of Pakistan is collected through the personal physical-survey questionnaires. The data were then analyzed through Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique for results. Findings The results indicate that the proactive personality, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and university support factors are the significant predictors of entrepreneurial intentions of female students. Moreover, the results also support that entrepreneurial self-efficacy partially mediates the relationship between proactive personality and entrepreneurial intentions of female students. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, the study originality lies in the testing of university support factors and individual personality factors (entrepreneurial self-efficacy and proactive personality) as the predictors of entrepreneurial intentions. Moreover, the present study provides the useful insight for the policymakers in formulating, delivering and evaluating educational policies into the universities for female students.
Polarization, Fractionalization and Conflict

This article provides a theoretical framework that distinguishes between the occurrence of conflict and its severity, and clarifies the role of polarization and fractionalization in each of these cases. The analysis helps in ordering the various definitions, and in providing explanations for the empirical observations on the relationship between conflict, on the one hand, and polarization or fractionalization, on the other. The behaviour of players in conflict is described as a game, and equilibrium payoffs to all players are computed. The status quo is characterized by a set of political institutions that channel the different opposing interests and turn them into a collective decision, with a second set of payoffs. Groups rebel against the status quo political institution whenever the latter set of payoffs is dominated by the former. When society is highly polarized, the potential cost of rebellion is extremely high, and this cost may serve as the guarantor of peace. So, in highly polarized societies, the occurrence of open conflict should be rare but its intensity very severe, whenever it happens. On the other hand, highly fractionalized societies are prone to the occurrence of conflict, but its intensity will be moderate. It matters, therefore, whether one studies the intensity of conflict, conditional on conflict breaking out, or the likelihood that conflict actually occurs. Specifically, it is shown that: (i) measures of fractionalization and polarization tend to run in opposite directions, (ii) the onset of conflict critically depends on the political system in place, (iii) the occurrence of conflict and the intensity of conflict also tend to move in opposite directions, (iv) the relationship between polarization or fractionalization and conflict is non-monotonic and (v) the intensity of conflict depends positively on the degree of polarization.
The helicoidal modulated nematic phases in a model system of V-shaped molecules

The phase behavior of the melt of the symmetric V-shaped molecules has been inspected within the Landau–de Gennes approach. The arms of V-shaped molecule are modeled by rod-like segments connected at an external angle [Formula: see text]; these segments are assumed to be composed of monomer units. The phase diagram of the system contains regions of stability of the isotropic, homogeneous nematic, and modulated nematic phases: nematic twist bend (N[Formula: see text]) phase that is characterized by the three directors which move on a helix and one of these directors forms a fixed nonzero cone angle with the helix axis, and the N0 modulated phase in which one director is parallel to the helix axis while two others are orthogonal to the helix axis. The characteristic periods of modulated structures were found to be of order a few molecular lengths.
Research on the occurrence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens in the circulating immune complexes, isolated from serum of patients with tuberculosis

Background Tuberculosis is one of the most dangerous infectious diseases and has among the highest mortality rates of all infectious diseases. There are 9 million cases of active tuberculosis reported annually; however, an estimated one-third of the world’s population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and remains asymptomatic. Despite the great progress in its diagnosis and treatment, tuberculosis is still a serious health and social problem. The contact between the immune system and Mycobacterium tuberculosis initiates cell-specific (Th1) and humoral-specific (Th2) responses. Many studies about the presence of antituberculotic antibodies in the serum have produced inconsistent results because of a high proportion of false-positive or false-negative results. The purpose of this study was to confirm whether circulating immune complexes (CIC) isolated from the serum of patients with tuberculosis are accompanied by antigenic proteins typical of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Material/Methods We assayed serum samples from 42 patients with tuberculosis. The control group consisted of the sera samples taken from 45 healthy subjects. The immunochemical analysis of dissociated immune complexes using the dot blot method demonstrated positive reaction on the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens in all patients with tuberculosis. Results All patients with tuberculosis demonstrated a high serum concentration of CIC protein. The mean serum concentration of CIC protein was significantly higher in patients than in controls: 0.081 g/l in the control group and 0.211 g/l in the tuberculosis patients. Conclusions The analysis of CIC suggests that it may be a helpful test for patients with tuberculosis because of its quickness, simplicity of the idea, and limited invasiveness.
Interactive multilingual text generation for a monolingual user

In this paper we describe an approach to machine translation which involves multilingual text generation via interaction with the user, who is monolingual: the system will work in a specific and fairly restricted domain. Key techniques used include the use of examples rather than linguistic rules to give the equivalents between the languages, and the encoding of contextual knowledge in the form of a model of possible texts
Investigation of social support perceptions and hopelessness levels of refugee women in Turkey

This study aimed to investigate the perceived social support and hopelessness levels experienced by 416 Syrian refugee women coming to Konya city since 2011 and compare refugee women’s perceived social support and hopelessness levels with the duration of stay in a new country. The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and the Beck Hopelessness Scale were used to collect the data. The mean scores of the scales were determined as 31.9 ± 11.5 and 9.1 ± 4.3, respectively. Refugee women or their husbands/partners with high school or higher education who had a profession and higher family income, those with many children, and those having social security and coming from extended families were found to have lower hopelessness and higher perceived social support levels. As the perceived social support level increased, the hopelessness level experienced by refugee women was observed to decrease. Refugee women having to live in another country for long periods were concluded to have higher hopelessness and lower social support levels due to factors such as lower educational status, unemployment, lack of social security, lower economic status, loneliness, not belonging to a nuclear family, and having no higher living standards.
Laminar-Specific Maturation of GABAergic Transmission and Susceptibility to Visual Deprivation Are Related to Endocannabinoid Sensitivity in Mouse Visual Cortex

The developmental period when neuronal responses are modified by visual experience is reported to start and end earlier in layer 4 than in layer 2/3 of the visual cortex, and the maturation of GABAergic inhibitory circuits is suggested to determine the timing of this period. Here, we examine whether the laminar difference in such timing corresponds to a difference in the time course of the functional maturation of GABAergic synaptic transmission to star pyramidal and pyramidal cells in layers 4 and 2/3, respectively, of the mouse visual cortex and whether the development of the strength of GABAergic transmission is affected by visual deprivation in a laminar-specific manner. Our analysis of developmental changes in inhibitory postsynaptic currents of star pyramidal and pyramidal cells evoked by electrical stimulation of afferents or action potentials of fast-spiking GABAergic neurons revealed that there was a sequential maturation of GABAergic function from layers 4 to 2/3. The maturation of inhibition in layer 4 occurred at postnatal week 3, which preceded by 1 week that of layer 2/3. Visual deprivation by dark rearing arrested the functional development of GABAergic transmission in layer 2/3, whereas dark rearing was not so effective in layer 4. GABAergic synapses in layer 2/3 were sensitive to an agonist for cannabinoid type 1 receptors and not normally matured in receptor knock-out mice, whereas those in layer 4 were not so. These results suggest laminar-specific maturation of inhibition and susceptibility to visual deprivation, which may be related to the laminar difference in sensitivity to endocannabinoids.
Brine shrimp cytotoxic activity of methanolic extracts of Juniperus communis L. berries

Methanolic extracts from Juniperus communis L. berries collected from five different localities in the Republic of Macedonia were evaluated for their cytotoxicity by Brine shrimp lethality assay. The obtained cytotoxic activity is descending as follows: Pelister (128 μg/ mL) > Jakupica (221 μg/mL) > Prilep (662 μg/mL) > Demir Hisar (863 μg/mL) > Makedonski Brod (969 μg/mL). Berries collected from mountain areas (Pelister and Jakupica) demonstrated prominent cytotoxic effects, while berries collected from localities near urban areas exhibited lower cytotoxicity. Variations in their bioactivity are probably due to their complex phytochemical composition, which may vary with different ecological and geographical conditions.
WAIT: Selective Loss Recovery for Multimedia Multicast.

Recentlythe Internet has beenincreasinglyusedfor multi-party applicationslike video-conferencing, video-on-demandandsharedwhite-boards.Multicastextensionsto IP to supportmulti-partyapplicationsarebesteffort, oftenresultingin packet losswithin thenetwork. Sincesomemulticastapplicationscannot toleratepacket loss,mostof the existing reliablemulticastschemesrecover eachandevery lost packet. However, multimediaapplicationscantoleratea certainamountof packet lossandaresensiti ve to long recovery delays.We proposea new lossrecovery techniquethat selecti vely repairslost packets basedupon the amountof packet lossand delayexpectedfor the repair. Our techniquesendsa specialWAIT messagedown the multicasttreein the event a loss is detectedin orderto reducethe numberof retransmissionrequests.We alsoproposean efficient senderinitiated multicasttrace-routemechanismfor determiningthe multicast topologyanda mechanismto deliver the topology informationto the multicastsession participants. We evaluateour proposedtechniqueusingan event driven network simulator, comparingit with two popularreliablemulticastprotocols,SRM andPGM. We concludethatourproposedWAIT protocolcanreducetheoverheadonamulticastsession aswell asimprovetheaverageend-to-endlatency of thesession. I dedicatethis thesisto my wonderfulfamily without whoseloveandsupportI would nothavebeenwho I amtoday. Thefamily I lovethemost. theMANE family. “ The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka! ” (“I found it! ”) but rather “hmm.that’s funny. ” –Isaac Asimov. “ If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties. ” -Francis Bacon (1561-1626) “ May every young scientist remember and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery. ” Patrick Blackett (British physicist, 1897-1974) “ Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you’re working on. ” Thomas Edison (1847-1931). “ Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work. ” Thomas Edison (1847-1931).
Multiple regional 1H-MR spectroscopy in multiple system atrophy: NAA/Cr reduction in pontine base as a valuable diagnostic marker.

OBJECTIVE We performed (1)H-MR spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS) on multiple brain regions to determine the metabolite pattern and diagnostic utility of (1)H-MRS in multiple system atrophy (MSA). METHODS Examining single voxels at 3.0 T, we studied metabolic findings of the putamen, pontine base, and cerebral white matter in 24 MSA patients (predominant cerebellar ataxia (MSA-C), n = 13), parkinsonism (MSA-P), n = 11), in 11 age and duration matched Parkinson's disease patients (PD) and in 18 age matched control subjects. RESULTS The N-acetylaspartate to creatine ratio (NAA/Cr) in MSA patients showed a significant reduction in the pontine base (p<0.0001) and putamen (p = 0.02) compared with controls. NAA/Cr in cerebral white matter also tended to decline in long standing cases. NAA/Cr reduction in the pontine base was prominent in both MSA-P (p<0.0001) and MSA-C (p<0.0001), and putaminal NAA/Cr reduction was significant in MSA-P (p = 0.009). It was also significant in patients who were in an early phase of their disease, and in those who showed no ataxic symptoms or parkinsonism, or did not show any MRI abnormality of the "hot cross bun" sign or hyperintense putaminal rims. NAA/Cr in MSA-P patients was significantly reduced in the pontine base (p = 0.001) and putamen (p = 0.002) compared with PD patients. The combined (1)H-MRS in the putamen and pontine base served to distinguish patients with MSA-P from PD more clearly. CONCLUSIONS (1)H-MRS showed widespread neuronal and axonal involvement in MSA. The NAA/Cr reduction in the pontine base proved highly informative in the early diagnosis of MSA prior to MRI changes and even before any clinical manifestation of symptoms.
Thue-like Sequences and Rainbow Arithmetic Progressions

A sequence $u=u_{1}u_{2}. u_{n}$ is said to be nonrepetitive if no two adjacent blocks of $u$ are exactly the same. For instance, the sequence $a{\bf bcbc}ba$ contains a repetition $bcbc$, while $abcacbabcbac$ is nonrepetitive. A well known theorem of Thue asserts that there are arbitrarily long nonrepetitive sequences over the set $\{a,b,c\}$. This fact implies, via Konig's Infinity Lemma, the existence of an infinite ternary sequence without repetitions of any length. In this paper we consider a stronger property defined as follows. Let $k\geq 2$ be a fixed integer and let $C$ denote a set of colors (or symbols). A coloring $f:{\bf N}\rightarrow C$ of positive integers is said to be $k$ -nonrepetitive if for every $r\geq 1$ each segment of $kr$ consecutive numbers contains a $k$-term rainbow arithmetic progression of difference $r$. In particular, among any $k$ consecutive blocks of the sequence $f=f(1)f(2)f(3). $ no two are identical. By an application of the Lovasz Local Lemma we show that the minimum number of colors in a $k$-nonrepetitive coloring is at most $2^{-1}e^{k(2k-1)/(k-1)^{2}}k^{2}(k-1)+1$. Clearly at least $k+1$ colors are needed but whether $O(k)$ suffices remains open. This and other types of nonrepetitiveness can be studied on other structures like graphs, lattices, Euclidean spaces, etc., as well. Unlike for the classical Thue sequences, in most of these situations non-constructive arguments seem to be unavoidable. A few of a range of open problems appearing in this area are presented at the end of the paper.
Short-term and long-term repeatability of the morning blood pressure in older patients with isolated systolic hypertension

Objective Using 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, we studied the repeatability of the morning blood pressure in older (≥60 years) patients with isolated systolic hypertension. Methods The sleep-through morning surge was the morning blood pressure minus the lowest nighttime blood pressure. The preawake morning surge was the morning blood pressure minus the preawake blood pressure. In addition, we determined the cusum plot height of blood pressure from 04:00 to 10:00 h from a plot of cumulative sums. Results In 173 patients with repeat recordings within 33 days (median), the short-term repeatability coefficients, expressed as percentages of maximal variation, ranged from 35 to 41% for the daytime and nighttime blood pressures and from 50 to 56% for the night-to-day blood pressure ratios. Short-term repeatability ranged from 52 to 75% for the sleep-through and the preawake morning surge, and from 51 to 62% for the cusum plot height. In 219 patients with repeat recordings within 10 months (median), the corresponding long-term estimates ranged from 45 to 64%, from 69 to 71%, from 76 to 83%, and from 50 to 78%, respectively. In categorical analyses of the short-term repeatability of the sleep-through morning surge and the preawake morning surge, using the 75th percentile as arbitrary cut-off, surging status changed in 28.0 and 26.8% of patients (κ-statistic ≤0.33). In the long-term interval, these proportions were 32.0 and 32.0%, respectively (κ-statistic ≤0.20). The κ-statistic threshold for moderate reproducibility is 0.4. Conclusion The morning surge of blood pressure is poorly reproducible, irrespective of whether it is analysed as continuous or categorical variable.