Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A critical realist method for applied business research

ABSTRACT While the business research community has moved from describing critical realism as simply a compromise philosophy between positivists and interpretivists to its acceptance in its own right, it still lacks a choice of methods or processes for the business researcher to utilize. This paper presents a proposed method that can be used by business researchers who follow the critical realist paradigm. It explores the suitability of a critical realist approach to applied business and the importance of combining the ontological and epistemological elements described. The relevance of the search for causal mechanisms is shown and it is argued that this search benefits from the use of retroduction and retrodiction. A ‘causal framework’ is proposed as an optional artefact in the critical realist business researcher’s ‘toolkit’ and a three step process is described, which uses causal frameworks to guide analysis.
Abstract 632: Radiation-induced immunogenic modulation of tumor enhances antigen processing and calreticulin exposure, resulting in enhanced T-cell killing

Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA Radiation therapy (RT) is used for local tumor control through direct killing of tumor cells. Radiation-induced cell death can trigger tumor antigen-specific immune responses, but these are often noncurative. Radiation has been demonstrated to induce immunogenic modulation (IM) in various tumor types by altering the biology of surviving cells to render them more susceptible to T cell-mediated killing. Little is known about the mechanism(s) underlying IM elicited by sub-lethal radiation dosing. We have examined the molecular and immunogenic consequences of radiation exposure in breast, lung, and prostate human carcinoma cells. Radiation induced secretion of ATP and HMGB1 in both dying and surviving tumor cells. In vitro and in vivo tumor irradiation induced significant upregulation of multiple components of the antigen-processing machinery and calreticulin cell-surface expression. Augmented CTL lysis specific for several tumor-associated antigens was largely dictated by the presence of calreticulin on the surface of tumor cells and constituted an adaptive response to endoplasmic reticulum stress, mediated by activation of the unfolded protein response. This study provides evidence that radiation induces a continuum of immunogenic alterations in tumor biology, from immunogenic modulation to immunogenic cell death. We also expand the concept of immunogenic modulation, where surviving tumor cells recovering from radiation-induced endoplasmic reticulum stress become more sensitive to CTL killing. These observations offer a rationale for the combined use of radiation with immunotherapy, including for patients failing RT alone. Citation Format: Sofia R. Gameiro, Momodou L. Jammeh, Max M. Wattenberg, Kwong Y. Tsang, Soldano Ferrone, James W. Hodge. Radiation-induced immunogenic modulation of tumor enhances antigen processing and calreticulin exposure, resulting in enhanced T-cell killing. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 632. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-632
Quality practices and problems in free software projects

Free software and open source projects are often perceived to be of high quality. It has been suggested that the high level of quality found in some free software projects is related to the open development model which promotes peer review. While the quality of some free software projects is comparable to, if not better than, that of closed source software, not all free software projects are successful and of high quality. Even mature and successful projects face quality problems; some of these are related to the unique characteristics of free software and open source as a distributed development model led primarily by volunteers. In exploratory interviews performed with free software and open source developers, several common quality practices as well as actual quality problems have been identified. The results of these interviews are presented in this paper in order to take stock of the current status of quality in free software projects and to act as a starting point for the implementation of quality process improvement strategies.
Methods for large scale SVD with missing values

We compare recommenders based solely on low rank approximations of the rating matrix. The key difficulty lies in the sparseness of the known ratings within the matrix that cause expactation maximization algorithms converge very slow. Among the prior publicly known attempts for this problem a gradient boosting approach proved most successful in spite of the fact that the resulting vectors are nonorthogonal and prone to numeric errors. We systematically explore expectation maximization methods based both on the Lanczos algorithm and power iteration; novel in this paper is the efficient handling of the dense estimate matrix used as input to a next iteration. We also compare sequence transformation methods to speed up convergence.
Nearest Atom of Local Spatio-temporal Features for Action Recognition

Motivated by the success of dictionary learning based classification works, we propose a nearest neighbour like method to recognize an action. First, local spatio-temporal features are extracted. Then an overcompleted discriminative dictionary is learned by K-SVD for each class. The query video is labeled by counting the number of nearest atom of local features on a sub dictionary. Different from the SRC (sparse representation based classification) methods, we compute the angle between the atoms and a local feature to find the nearest atom so as to recognize an action instead of a sophisticated sparse coding stage. Experimental results on Facial and Weizmann public datasets demonstrate the validity of the proposed framework.
Belief and Feeling in Self-reports of Emotion: Evidence for Semantic Infusion Based on Self-esteem

When people make verbal reports of their emotional experience, they can rely on multiple sources of knowledge, including generalized beliefs about the self. To the extent that generalized beliefs about the self are used, we term the resultant consequence a semantic infusion effect. Across three studies, we demonstrate the predictable consequences of making emotion judgments more quickly versus more slowly, based on a recent model of the emotional self-report process (Robinson & Clore, 2002a). As predicted, when participants (Ns = 69, 37, and 44) made emotion judgments involving long time frames (e.g., last couple of months; Studies 1–3), faster judgments were associated with emotion ratings that were more consistent with global self-esteem. By contrast, when making emotion judgments involving a short time frame (right now; Study 3), the same pattern was not found. Results are interpreted in terms of semantic infusion effects, although other theoretical frameworks are also discussed. The results have implications for understanding global self-esteem and emotion self-reports.
Automatic Acquisition of Hyponyms from Large Text Corpora

We describe a method for the automatic acquisition of the hyponymy lexical relation from unrestricted text. Two goals motivate the approach: (i) avoidance of the need for pre-encoded knowledge and (ii) applicability across a wide range of text. We identify a set of lexico-syntactic patterns that are easily recognizable, that occur frequently and across text genre boundaries, and that indisputably indicate the lexical relation of interest. We describe a method for discovering these patterns and suggest that other lexical relations will also be acquirable in this way. A subset of the acquisition algorithm is implemented and the results are used to augment and critique the structure of a large hand-built thesaurus. Extensions and applications to areas such as information retrieval are suggested.
College Completion, the Texas Way: An Examination of the Development of College Completion Policy in a Distinctive Political Culture

Background College-completion policies dominate state higher education policy agendas. Yet we know little about how policy actors make decisions—and what sources of evidence they use—within this policy domain. Focus of Study This study explores the use of evidence in college-completion policymaking in depth, focusing on Texas. In addition to exploring policymakers’ use of different types of information, this study examines the role played by intermediaries. Research Design We employed a qualitative case study design drawing on interviews with 32 policy actors engaged in college-completion policy in Texas. Our analysis consisted of both deductive coding (based on our a priori coding scheme) and inductive coding (based on emerging themes) to arrive at our four major findings. Findings/Results The analysis revealed four primary findings. The first theme suggests an insular culture of college-completion policymaking: Policymakers at various levels preferred Texas-based data and rejected the notion that external groups contributed to setting the college completion agenda in Texas. Second, business groups and a business ethos permeated college-completion policymaking in Texas. Third, research evidence was seldom employed in this policy process, partly because policymakers prefer concise and timely information. Finally, the study uncovered a new tactic for supplying research employed by certain intermediaries: punchy messaging, which was effective at garnering attention but also yielded unintended consequences. Conclusions/Recommendations Overwhelmingly, higher education policy actors tended to prefer Texas-based data. Respondents cited three major reasons for this preference: the high quality of the state higher education coordinating board's data, Texas's unique demographics, and the accessibility of statewide data. These findings reflect the mediating role that is played not only by state structural characteristics, but also by culture. Perceptions of Texas's distinctive inward-looking nature permeated our interviews and set the stage for the role that intermediaries played in the state and the preferences for information. Intermediaries wishing to inform college-completion policy activity at the state level should consider the uniqueness of the state context in supplying information. For states that are more insular, like Texas, working through internal (in-state) intermediaries may be an effective strategy. In light of our findings of preferred types of information, those intending to influence policymaking should consider making information—especially research evidence—concise and easily accessible and establish relationships with policymakers and their staff members.
An Ultrasonographic Study of Ovarian Antral Follicular Dynamics in Prepubertal Gilts During the Expected Activation of the Hypothalamo-pituitary-ovarian Axis

Abstract Daily transrectal ultrasonography was carried out in eight 4–5-month-old Polish Large White × Polish Landrace gilts for 42 days to monitor the growth of individual ovarian antral follicles ≥2 mm in diameter. In total, 52.4 ± 16.2 and 123.0 ± 6.7 follicles per gilt (mean ± SD) that grew to ≥4 mm were identified during the first and second 21-day study periods, respectively (P<0.01). Four follicular waves (defined as the synchronous growth of a group of follicles from 2–3 mm to ≥4 mm) emerged during the first period, and five waves emerged during the second period. The maximum diameters attained by the largest follicles of waves were 5.7 ± 0.6 and 7.0 ± 0.5 mm (first and second periods, respectively; P<0.01). The present results provide direct evidence for the rhythmic, wave-like pattern of antral follicle recruitment in prepubertal gilts. The number of follicles and maximum diameter they attain increase significantly during the expected activation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-ovarian axis in prepubescent gilts.
The use of prosody in a combined system for punctuation generation and speech recognition

In this paper, we discuss a combined system for punctuation generation and speech recognition. This system incorporates prosodic information with acoustic and language model information. Experiments are conducted for both the reference transcriptions and speech recogniser outputs. For the reference transcription case, prosodic information is shown to be more useful than language model information. When these information sources are combined, we can obtain an F-measure of up to 0.7830 for punctuation recognition. A few straightforward modi(cid:12)cations of a conventional speech recogniser allow the system to produce punctuation and speech recognition hypotheses simultaneously. The multiple hypotheses are produced by the automatic speech recogniser and are re-scored by prosodic information. When prosodic information is incorporated, the F-measure can be improved by 19% relative. At the same time, small reductions in word error rate are obtained.
Transport activity–dependent intracellular sorting of the yeast general amino acid permease

Intracellular trafficking of the general amino acid permease, Gap1p, is regulated by amino acid abundance. Through the use of mutants that alter the set of amino acids that can be transported by Gap1p, we show that only those amino acids that can be transported by Gap1p can act as a signal to affect Gap1p sorting.
Prognostic significance of MGMT promoter methylation in diffuse glioma patients

Abstract Current treatment options for diffuse glioma patients include maximum safe resection followed by a combination of radiation therapy and chemotherapy with alkylating agents. The DNA-repair enzyme O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) counteracts the cytotoxic effect of alkylating agents and mediates chemoresistance. Disruption of the DNA methylation mechanism in diffuse glioma cells results in epigenetic silencing of MGMT through methylation of cytidine-phosphate-guanosine dinucleotides (CpG) in the promoter region. The methylation status of MGMT is widely accepted to be a strong prognostic factor in diffuse glioma patients. This study was designed to screen Serbian diffuse glioma patients for hypermethylation of the MGMT promoter and to estimate its impact on overall survival. The results obtained in our study on 33 samples of diffuse glioma detected a positive methylation status in 17 patients (51.5%) by methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction. The positive methylation status of the MGMT promoter did not correlate with overall survival. In this study group, the patients older than 50 years had significantly lower overall survival in comparison with younger patients (7 months–19 months median survival). Extent of tumour resection also had influence on overall survival of patients. The relevance of the MGMT promoter methylation status should be further evaluated in a larger study and in association with other markers.
Using Information from Trading In Trading and Portfolio Management: Ten Years Later

The centerpiece of this paper is a comprehensive analysis of all of the trading by a large US pension fund in 1991. The first version was published in the Summer 1995 issue of the Journal of Investing and later incorporated in the AIMR’s CFA reading. This updated version, requested by the AIMR, reflects the technological and market structure changes of the last ten years, and adds a new empirical analysis of all the 2001 trading by a $7 billion US equity manager. Trading technology has changed in many ways, yet many of the same characteristics of institutional trading are seen just as strongly as they were before. The attention given to large difficult orders still shows in lower than expected trading costs. Small “no-brainer” orders still represent the largest component of overall trading costs. These are precisely the type of costs that modern electronic trading systems are designed to reduce. The idea that trading costs were a substantial drag on performance was a relatively novel in 1991. Today, it is a central concern for many managers, including those profiled here.
The Highly Similar Arabidopsis Homologs of Trithorax ATX1 and ATX2 Encode Proteins with Divergent Biochemical Functions[W]

Gene duplication followed by functional specialization is a potent force in the evolution of biological diversity. A comparative study of two highly conserved duplicated genes, ARABIDOPSIS TRITHORAX-LIKE PROTEIN1 (ATX1) and ATX2, revealed features of both partial redundancy and of functional divergence. Although structurally similar, their regulatory sequences have diverged, resulting in distinct temporal and spatial patterns of expression of the ATX1 and ATX2 genes. We found that ATX2 methylates only a limited fraction of nucleosomes and that ATX1 and ATX2 influence the expression of largely nonoverlapping gene sets. Even when coregulating shared targets, ATX1 and ATX2 may employ different mechanisms. Most remarkable is the divergence of their biochemical activities: both proteins methylate K4 of histone H3, but while ATX1 trimethylates it, ATX2 dimethylates it. ATX2 and ATX1 provide an example of separated K4 di from K4 trimethyltransferase activity.
The (Bad?) Timing of Mutual Fund Investors

This paper provides a new look at the timing of mutual fund investors. We re-examine the relationship between investors' aggregate net flows into and out of the funds and the returns of the funds in subsequent periods. The negative relationship that we find (using monthly data of aggregate US equity mutual funds in the years 1984-2003 and a statistical test based on bootstrapping of returns) causes mutual fund investors, as a group, to realize a lower long-term accumulated return than the long-term accumulated return on a 'buy and hold' position in these funds. The 'bad' performance of mutual fund investors can be explained either by 'behavioural explanations' such as investor sentiment or by 'rational market explanations' that are based on time-varying risk premiums. We present a simple overlapping-generation model which predicts a negative relationship between flows and subsequent returns. It is assumed that flows into and out of funds are not related to information about future cash flows (dividends), but are caused by changes in other factors affecting the demand for stocks. Hence, a positive (negative) net flow in a given month implies a positive (negative) price change in the same month, but also lower (higher) expected future returns. We show that in each month the change in the expected future returns may be small (relative to the return variance), but the accumulated effect of these changes may be significant. This result may explain why previous studies, using monthly data of flows and returns in either simple regression models or VAR, could not have significantly detected the monthly change in the expected future returns even in a 15-year sample.
Frovatriptan 2.5 mg plus dexketoprofen (25 mg or 37.5 mg) in menstrually related migraine. Subanalysis from a double-blind, randomized trial

Purpose The purpose of this article is to investigate the efficacy and safety of frovatriptan plus dexketoprofen 25 or 37.5 mg (FroDex25 or FroDex37.5, respectively) compared to that of frovatriptan 2.5 mg (Frova) in menstrually related migraine (MRM). Aim The aim of this article is to analyze a subgroup of 76 women who treated an MRM attack in this multicenter, randomized, double-blind, parallel-group study. Methods The primary end-point was the proportion of patients who were pain free (PF) at two hours. Secondary end-points included pain-relief (PR) at two hours and 48 hours sustained pain free (SPF). Results PF rates at two hours were 29% under Frova, 48% under FroDex25 and 64% under FroDex37.5 (p < 0.05). PR at two hours was Frova 52%, FroDex25 81% and FroDex37.5 88%, while 48 hours SPF was 18% under Frova, 30% under FroDex25 and 44% under FroDex37.5. Conclusion Combining frovatriptan+dexketoprofen produced higher PF rates at two hours compared to Frova while maintaining efficacy at 48 hours. Tolerability profiles were comparable.
Ultrastructural Damage of Loligo vulgaris and Illex coindetii statocysts after Low Frequency Sound Exposure

There is a considerable lack of information concerning marine invertebrate sensitivity to sound exposure. However, recent findings on cuttlefish and octopi showed that exposure to artificial noise had a direct consequence on the functionality and physiology of the statocysts, sensory organs, which are responsible for their equilibrium and movements in the water column. Owing to a lack of available data on deep diving cephalopod species, we conducted a noise exposure comparative experiment on one Mediterranean squid, Illex coindetii, and on the European squid Loligo vulgaris. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed similar injuries in the inner structure of the statocysts, as those found in cuttlefish and octopi. In addition to the ultrastructural description of the lesions, we publish here the first images of the crista-cupula system and inner statocyst cavity of I. coindetii.
Assessment of physico-chemical properties and metal contents of water and sediments of Bodo Creek, Niger Delta, Nigeria

Some physico-chemical properties and the concentrations of the metals Fe, Mn, Ni, Cd, Cr, Co, Cu, Pb, and Zn in water and sediments were examined from September 2011 to January 2012 in Bodo Creek, where oil spills have been recurrent. Temperature, pH, total dissolved solid, conductivity, salinity, dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total hardness, sulfate, nitrate, and phosphate were determined in surface water. Particle size, total organic matter (TOM), and pH were also determined in the sediments. The parameters were within permissible limits except the mean values of BOD, COD, total hardness, and sulfate that exceeded levels permissible for domestic use. The sediments consisted mainly of sand, with TOM ranging from 0.2% to 5.5%. With the exception of cadmium that was below detection limit, metal levels (mg kg−1) in the sediments were 12 (Mn), 1070 (Fe), 10 (Cu), 10 (Zn), 5.3 (Cr), 1.1 (Pb), 1.0 (Ni), and 0.5 (Co) while in water they were 24, 98, 21, 6.9, 4.0, 0.6, 0.18, and 0.16, respectively. The latter were higher than World Health Organization recommended permissible levels for both surface and drinking water.
An Empirical Assessment of Meta-Analytic Practice

In the three decades after the publication of the first meta-analyses in the behavioral sciences, hundreds of articles and a number of technical guides have emerged concerning meta-analytic practice and reporting standards. The purpose of the present study is to review the practice and reporting standards of a random sample of published meta-analyses (n = 100) in psychology and related disciplines in the decade from 1994 through 2004. We focus on practice and reporting at each stage of the meta-analytic process and explore differences between psychological subdisciplines. These findings suggest that the practice of meta-analysis in the last decade has not yet converged on a set of common standards, though some expert recommendations are beginning to be heeded. Authors should be attentive to proper procedure and reporting in light of the numerous threats to the validity of a meta-analysis. Ironically, even though meta-analysts often struggle with incomplete or inconsistent reporting in primary research they are themselves not entirely consistent in reporting their methods and results.