Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Entrepreneurial Intention among Advanced Level Students in Colombo District, Sri Lanka: The Mediation Effect of Role Models

Entrepreneurship is not pursued as an attractive career choice by the Sri Lankans as they more attracted to jobs. Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) of younger generation of the country is more crucial in this condition where they are the essence of the active citizen pool of the country. The main objective of this study is to find out the factors that affect EI of Advanced Level (A/L) students in Colombo District, Sri Lanka. The study includes three constructs discuss under the Theory of planned Behaviour (TPB), which affect the EI of individuals. Further, the study efforts to identify the mediation effect of role models (RM) on the above factors when determining EI. A total of 376 students from schools in Colombo District, Sri Lanka participated in this study by responding to the structural questionnaire. Data analysis was done by correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, and factor analysis. Findings of the study shown that attitudes towards Entrepreneurship (ATE), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioural control (PBC) as well as role models are Original Research Article Senarath and Perera; AJEBA, 7(4): 1-12, 2018; Article no.AJEBA. 42762 2 positively and significantly related with EI. The study also exposed that role models significantly mediate the relationships between ATE, SN and PBC with EI. Further, the study reflects that there is a positive effect on EI in terms of ATE, SN and PBC. Since Sri Lanka is having a critical issue with rising unemployment rates, self-employment is a respectable solution for the younger generation. This study adds value to the literature in the means of application of TPB in the context of Sri Lanka.
STOCK MARKET TRENDS PREDICTION USING NEURAL NETWORK BASED HYBRID MODEL

It is difficult to find out which is more effective and accurate method for stock rate prediction so that a buy or sell signal can be generated for given stocks. This paper presents a number of technical indicators and Back Propagation Neural Network to predict the stock price of the day. Stock rate prediction accuracy of different technical indicators and backpropagation neural network has been compared. The results showed that the backpropagation neural network predict stock price more accurately as compared to other techniques.
Structure-dependent Impairment of Intracellular Apolipoprotein E4 Trafficking and Its Detrimental Effects Are Rescued by Small-molecule Structure Correctors*

Apolipoprotein (apo) E4 is the major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer disease (AD) and likely contributes to neuropathology through various pathways. Here we report that the intracellular trafficking of apoE4 is impaired in Neuro-2a cells and primary neurons, as shown by measuring fluorescence recovery after photobleaching. In Neuro-2a cells, more apoE4 than apoE3 molecules remained immobilized in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and the Golgi apparatus, and the lateral motility of apoE4 was significantly lower in the Golgi apparatus (but not in the ER) than that of apoE3. Likewise, the immobile fraction was larger, and the lateral motility was lower for apoE4 than apoE3 in mouse primary hippocampal neurons. ApoE4 with the R61T mutation, which abolishes apoE4 domain interaction, was less immobilized, and its lateral motility was comparable with that of apoE3. The trafficking impairment of apoE4 was also rescued by disrupting domain interaction with the small-molecule structure correctors GIND25 and PH002. PH002 also rescued apoE4-induced impairments of neurite outgrowth in Neuro-2a cells and dendritic spine development in primary neurons. ApoE4 did not affect trafficking of amyloid precursor protein, another AD-related protein, through the secretory pathway. Thus, domain interaction renders more newly synthesized apoE4 molecules immobile and slows their trafficking along the secretory pathway. Correcting the pathological structure of apoE4 by disrupting domain interaction is a potential therapeutic approach to treat or prevent AD related to apoE4.
Racial Disparities in Severity of Cerebrovascular Events

This study was conducted to determine if blacks hospitalized for cerebrovascular events had more severe cerebrovascular events than whites similarly hospitalized. Methods Data from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission were used to determine incidence of coma, death rates, age at death of those who died, and length of stay for acute hemorrhagic and occlusive stroke in hospitalized blacks and whites after adjusting for sex and, if appropriate, age. Results With a single exception (number of patients with hemorrhagic stroke who died during short-term hospitalization), all indices indicated that blacks incurred more severe cerebrovascular events than whites (P<.05 or less). Conclusions Maryland state data from hospitalized patients indicate that blacks had more severe strokes than whites.
Inequality, Discrimination, and the Power of the Status Quo: Direct Evidence for a Motivation to See the Way Things Are as the Way They Should Be

How powerful is the status quo in determining people's social ideals? The authors propose (a) that people engage in injunctification, that is, a motivated tendency to construe the current status quo as the most desirable and reasonable state of affairs (i.e., as the most representative of how things should be); (b) that this tendency is driven, at least in part, by people's desire to justify their sociopolitical systems; and (c) that injunctification has profound implications for the maintenance of inequality and societal change. Four studies, across a variety of domains, provided supportive evidence. When the motivation to justify the sociopolitical system was experimentally heightened, participants injunctified extant (a) political power (Study 1), (b) public funding policies (Study 2), and (c) unequal gender demographics in the political and business spheres (Studies 3 and 4, respectively). It was also demonstrated that this motivated phenomenon increased derogation of those who act counter to the status quo (Study 4). Theoretical implications for system justification theory, stereotype formation, affirmative action, and the maintenance of inequality are discussed. Consider the following: In 2003, women represented 15.7% of the corporate officers in the United States' 500 largest companies and 1.1% of the Fortune 1000 chief executive officers (CEOs; Catalyst 2001 Census of Woman Board Directors of Fortune 1000 Companies). In Canada, the situation is only marginally better, with women significantly underrepresented in the highest paid positions of the corporate sector and upper management (Statistics Canada, 2006). These demographic factors—that is, the way things are— clearly present women with many objective obstacles to advancement , such as a lack of sufficient role models, a sense of exclusion from senior colleagues, and exclusion from informal networks. What may be equally troublesome, however, are the consequences these types of underrepresentations may have on perceptions of what the ideal social structure should look like. Work on anticipatory rationalizations has demonstrated that as potential changes to the system are thought to be more likely, they are judged as more desirable and system justification theory explicitly argues that people are motivated to perceive existing social arrangements as just and legitimate It is reasonable to predict, then, that people may be motivated to view the status quo, even if unfair, as the most desirable state of affairs— that is, as most fair, reasonable, and generally representative of the way things should be. We term such a tendency injunctification. If such a bias exists—and applies …
Dissociating Valence of Outcome from Behavioral Control in Human Orbital and Ventral Prefrontal Cortices

The precise role of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in affective processing is still debated. One view suggests OFC represents stimulus reward value and supports learning and relearning of stimulus-reward associations. An alternate view implicates OFC in behavioral control after rewarding or punishing feedback. To discriminate between these possibilities, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging in subjects performing a reversal task in which, on each trial, selection of the correct stimulus led to a 70% probability of receiving a monetary reward and a 30% probability of obtaining a monetary punishment. The incorrect stimulus had the reverse contingency. In one condition (choice), subjects had to choose which stimulus to select and switch their response to the other stimulus once contingencies had changed. In another condition (imperative), subjects had simply to track the currently rewarded stimulus. In some regions of OFC and medial prefrontal cortex, activity was related to valence of outcome, whereas in adjacent areas activity was associated with behavioral choice, signaling maintenance of the current response strategy on a subsequent trial. Caudolateral OFC-anterior insula was activated by punishing feedback preceding a switch in stimulus in both the choice and imperative conditions, indicating a possible role for this region in signaling a change in reward contingencies. These results suggest functional heterogeneity within the OFC, with a role for this region in representing stimulus-reward values, signaling changes in reinforcement contingencies and in behavioral control.
Determination of Asteroid Masses from Mutual Close Approaches

We present a new determination of the value of the mass of the largest asteroid (1) Ceres, based on the analysis of the perturbations produced on the orbits of nine asteroids during close encounters. The weighted average, computed from the most favorable cases, amounts to (4:71 0:05) 10 ? 10 solar masses. We show how it is possible to compute the sensitivity of the mass determination both with respect to observations actually used in the t and with respect to possible additional astrometric measurements which could become available, and how this information can be used to select the objects deserving particular attention by the observers. Numerical simulations connrm that, in many cases, a devoted astrometric campaign of limited extent can lead to a substantial improvement of the precision of the mass determination. Since the rst attempts by Schubart (1970), the analysis of orbital perturbations produced by mutual close approaches is the most direct and precise method for the estimation of the masses of minor planets; in recent times the subject has received an increasing interest due to the improvements in the accuracy of available stellar catalogues and astrometric measurements, the exponential growth of the observation database and the better eeciency of the procedure for searching for favorable asteroid close encounters (Kuzmanoski and Kne zevi c 1993). We have made an attempt to determine the mass of the largest asteroid (1) Ceres by analyzing variations due to close approaches to it in the orbits of a total of 9 minor planets. The list of our objects includes all the asteroids used in previous attempts, as well as some additional ones for which potentially favorable close encounters were found by Kuzmanoski and Kne zevi c (1994). The method we used consists in the simultaneous determination of the corrections to the orbital elements of the perturbed asteroid and of the mass of Ceres by employing a standard least square t. The dynamical model included the 1
Efficient kernel descriptor for image categorization via pivots selection

Patch-level features are essential for achieving good performance in compute vision tasks. Besides well-known predefined patch-level descriptors such as SIFT and HOG, the kernel descriptor (KD) method [1] offers a new way to `grow up' features from a match kernel defined over image patch pairs using kernel principal component analysis (KPCA). However, under this technical construction, all joint basis vectors are involved in the kernel descriptor computation, which is both expensive and not necessary. To address this problem, we present efficient kernel descriptor (EKD), which is built upon incomplete Cholesky decomposition. EKD automatically selects a small number of pivot features to achieve better computational efficiency. Perhaps due to parsimony, we find surprisingly that despite efficiency, the EKD approach achieved superior image/scene categorization performance than the original kernel descriptor approach.
Classification and segmentation of brain tumor using texture analysis

Brain tumor diagnosis is a very crucial task. This system provides an efficient and fast way for diagnosis of the brain tumor. Proposed system consists of multiple phases. First phase consists of texture feature extraction from brain MR images. Second phase classify brain images on the bases of these texture feature using ensemble base classifier. After classification tumor region is extracted from those images which are classified as malignant using two-stage segmentation process. Segmentation consists of skull removal and tumor extraction phases. Quantitative results show that our proposed system performed very efficiently and accurately. We achieved accuracy of classification beyond 99%. Segmentation results also show that brain tumor region is extracted quite accurately.
Sibutramine as an adjuvant therapy in adolescents suffering from morbid obesity.

BACKGROUND The prevalence of morbid obesity is increasing rapidly. Weight reduction is very difficult using diet restriction and physical activity alone. Sibutramine has been shown to be effective and safe as an adjuvant therapy to diet restrictions. OBJECTIVES To describe our experience using sibutramine in weight reduction treatment of adolescents suffering from morbid obesity. METHODS The study group comprised 20 young persons (13 females, mean age 15 years 4 months, range 13-18 years) with morbid obesity (body mass index above the 95th percentile for age and/or > or =30 kg/m2) who were treated with sibutramine 10 mg once a day for 1 year. RESULTS Mean BMI was 40 +/- 5.6 kg/m2 (range 30.1 - 49.5 kg/m2) at the beginning of treatment. Most patients showed an early weight reduction to mean BMI 39.3 +/- 4.9 and 35.9 +/- 5.7 at 3 and 6 months respectively, but stopped losing weight over the next 6 months. During the follow-up period 17 patients discontinued the treatment. The main reason for dropout was the slow rate of weight reduction after 6 months. Patients suffering from concomitant disorders (severe asthma, hypertension, sleep obstructive apnea) showed improvement after weight reduction. Adverse reactions from the treatment were transient, mild and well tolerated. CONCLUSIONS Sibutramine may help in achieving weight reduction for a short period and in improving concomitant health problems, however its long-term effect is limited.
Neuropathology of Experimental 3-nitro-4-hydroxyphenylarsonic Acid Toxicosis in Pigs

Twenty pigs were fed a diet containing 187.5 mg kg−1 of 3-nitro-4-hydroxyphenylarsonic acid (3-nitro). Ten pigs were euthanized at intervals up to 29 days, 3-nitro was withdrawn from the diet of the remaining pigs on day 30, and these animals were subsequently euthanized at intervals up to 49 days after commencement of the experiment. A nervous syndrome characterized by clonic convulsive episodes inducible by exercise, developed at day 11. Paraparesis was apparent at day 22 progressing to paraplegia by day 33 (3 days after cessation of 3-nitro feeding). Histopathologic examination revealed myelin and axonal degeneration in the white matter of the spinal cord coincident with the onset of nervous signs. Marchi-positive degeneration was present in the dorsal funiculus at cervical level at day 22. Lesions intensified with increasing duration of toxicosis and while degenerate fibers were seen in all funiculi, there was preferential involvement of the fasciculi gracilis and cuneatus, the peripheral regions of the ventral and lateral funiculi, and a discrete area of the dorsal region of the lateral funiculus. Peripheral and optic neuropathies were evident from day 32 but were always mild and focal. The experiment establishes 3-nitro as a central-peripheral neurotoxicant of pigs.
The Mediterranean Diet as a Factor in Environmental Education

The Mediterranean diet is an excellent nutritional model. Another feature of the Mediterranean diet is that it is a cultural model with common features for all peoples of the Mediterranean. But apart from health and culture, the Mediterranean diet, according to studies, also helps to protect the natural environment. As an environmental asset, therefore, the Mediterranean diet can be a teaching approach to environmental education. This study aims to raise awareness of the issue of the Mediterranean diet in the training and implementation of an environmental project at all levels of education.
Studying Prevalence and Pattern of Taking Narcotic and Ecstasy Drugs by Patients Admitted to Special Care Centers of Shahid Bahonar Hospital, Kerman, Iran

Background Addiction is the repeated use of a chemical substance which affects the biological function of the brain and endangers physical health of the addicted person. Prevalence and pattern of taking drugs were assessed in the current study in a Special Cares Trauma Center. So the specialized physician could manage the medical procedure more easily through identification of addicted patients and type of their narcotics. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted on 545 patients admitted to the Special Cares Center of Shahid Bahonar Hospital, Kerman, Iran, during 2010-2012. The data were collected by special information collection forms and then analyzed using SPSS software. Findings Among the total studied samples, around 55% of admitted patients were addicts. Opium was the most frequently used narcotic among the addicted patients with a percentage of 62%. Smoking was the most common method of taking the narcotics. 90% of addicted persons were male and 95% of them held diploma and under-diploma educational degrees. Among the reasons for admission of addicted patients to the Special Cares Clinic of Trauma Center, head trauma was the dominant cause (51%). Conclusion Addiction is considerably more prevalent among the population admitted to the Special Cares Center compared to the society, indicating greater vulnerability of addicted individuals in the society. Addiction to traditional and indigenous drugs are still the most prevalent, and fortunately, these drugs are easier to substitute and medicate compared to the new industrial narcotics.
On the fundamental system of cycles in the bipartite graphs of LDPC code ensembles

This work introduces an information-theoretic lower bound on the number of fundamental cycles for bipartite graphs of low-density parity-check (LDPC) code ensembles. This information-theoretic bound is expressed in terms of the achievable gap to capacity when the transmission of the code ensemble takes place over a memoryless binary-input output-symmetric (MBIOS) channel. The bound shows quantitatively the necessity of cycles in bipartite graphs which represent good LDPC code ensembles. More explicitly, it shows that the number of fundamental cycles should grow at least like log 1/ε where ε designates the gap in rate to capacity, hence, it is unbounded as the gap to capacity vanishes. For the derivation of this bound, a new information-theoretic lower bound on the average right degree, which also behaves like log 1/ε, is derived. The interested reader is referred to the full paper version [9].
Modulatory Actions of Dopamine on NMDA Receptor-Mediated Responses Are Reduced in D1A-Deficient Mutant Mice

The role of D1 dopamine (DA) receptors in mediating the ability of DA to modulate responses attributable to activation of NMDA receptors was examined in mice lacking D1A dopamine receptors. Specifically, experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the ability of DA to potentiate responses mediated by activation of NMDA receptors was attributable to activation of D1 receptors. Based on this hypothesis, we would predict that in the D1A mutant mouse, either DA would not induce enhancement of NMDA-mediated responses, or the enhancement would be severely attenuated. The results provided evidence to support the hypothesis. In mutant mice, DA and D1 receptor agonists did not potentiate responses mediated by activation of NMDA receptors. In contrast, in control mice, both DA and D1 receptor agonists markedly potentiated responses mediated by activation of NMDA receptors. The effects of DA in attenuating responses mediated by activation of non-NMDA receptors also were altered in the mutant, suggesting that this action of DA may require coupling or interactions between D1 and D2 receptors. The present studies also provided an opportunity to assess some of the basic electrophysiological and morphological properties of neostriatal neurons in mice lacking D1A DA receptors. Resting membrane potential, action potential parameters, input resistance, excitability, somatic size, dendritic extent, and estimates of spine density in mutants and controls were similar, suggesting that these basic neurophysiological and structural properties have not been changed by the loss of the D1A DA receptor.
CTAG-Containing Cleavage Site Profiling to Delineate Salmonella into Natural Clusters

Background The bacterial genus Salmonella contains thousands of serotypes that infect humans or other hosts, causing mild gastroenteritis to potentially fatal systemic infections in humans. Pathogenically distinct Salmonella serotypes have been classified as individual species or as serological variants of merely one or two species, causing considerable confusion in both research and clinical settings. This situation reflects a long unanswered question regarding whether the Salmonella serotypes exist as discrete genetic clusters (natural species) of organisms or as phenotypic (e.g. pathogenic) variants of a single (or two) natural species with a continuous spectrum of genetic divergence among them. Our recent work, based on genomic sequence divergence analysis, has demonstrated that genetic boundaries exist among Salmonella serotypes, circumscribing them into clear-cut genetic clusters of bacteria. Methodologies/Principal Findings To further test the genetic boundary concept for delineating Salmonella into clearly defined natural lineages (e.g., species), we sampled a small subset of conserved genomic DNA sequences, i.e., the endonuclease cleavage sites that contain the highly conserved CTAG sequence such as TCTAGA for XbaI. We found that the CTAG-containing cleavage sequence profiles could be used to resolve the genetic boundaries as reliably and efficiently as whole genome sequence comparisons but with enormously reduced requirements for time and resources. Conclusions Profiling of CTAG sequence subsets reflects genetic boundaries among Salmonella lineages and can delineate these bacteria into discrete natural clusters.