Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of Transformational Leaders as Change Agents: Leveraging Effects on Organizational Climate

The present study examines the transformational role of leaders that impacts organizational climate with a view to draw on the deeper influences it carries on the culture of the organization. One hundred and thirty-nine participants took part in the study, answering Transformational Leadership Style and Organizational Climate Questionnaires. Leadership Style data earlier subjected to Principal Axis Factoring Technique with varimax rotation procedure yielding 6 factors were related to 5 organizational climate factors obtained in the present study. The findings revealed unequivocal influence of transformational leadership styles over organizational climate dimensions suggesting theoretically a manoeuvring capability of organizational climate with its backward influence over transformational leadership behaviour. Perhaps a more sophisticated design of research is needed to confirm latter's backward influence over organizational leaders' transformational role.
Asymptotic Power and Efficiency of Lepage-Type Tests for the Treatment of Combined Location-Scale Alternatives

For the two-sample location and scale problem Lepage (1971) constructed a test that is based on a combination of the Wilcoxon test statistic and the Ansari-Bradley test statistic. We replace both components by arbitrary linear rank tests and obtain so-called Lepage-type tests that were introduced by Buning and Thadewald (2000). In the present paper we compute their asymptotic efficacies. The results of these calculations give rise to an idea how to construct adaptive tests based on the concept of Hogg (1974). We also include asymmetric densities in our study. It turns out that, for moderately skew densities, a combination of linear rank test statistics designed for symmetric densities is sufficient. Therefore, in our proposed adaptive test occur only tests designed for symmetric densities. For extremely skew densities the application of the combination of Savage-scores tests is suggested. A Monte Carlo study confirms the asymptotic results. Moreover, it shows that the adaptive test proposed is a serious competitor also for moderate sample sizes.
Inter-labeler Agreement for Anger Detection in Interactive Voice Response Systems

Anger detection in speech-based automated telephone applications is a growing field of research. In this work we report on inter-labeler agreement in a “real-life” anger detection task for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. The presented study is based on a corpus of 1.911 calls containing 22.711 utterances and describes considerations prior to the rating process. We point out difficulties we faced when annotating the corpus and present statistics and agreement values obtained after rating. The 3 raters that were asked to annotate angry user utterances agreed on the nature of “non-angry” utterances, but had difficulties to find an agreement on how an angry user utterance should sound.
High PSA anxiety and low health literacy skills: drivers of early use of salvage ADT among men with biochemically recurrent prostate cancer after radiotherapy?

BACKGROUND Although commonly used, early initiation of salvage androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) has not been proven to enhance survival. We evaluated whether prostate-specific antigen (PSA) anxiety or health literacy are associated with use of early salvage ADT among men with recurrent prostate cancer after radiotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS The prospective Comprehensive, Observational, Multicenter, Prostate Adenocarcinoma Registry was used to study 375 men with biochemically recurrent prostate cancer after external beam radiation or brachytherapy. Multivariable logistic regression was used to determine whether PSA anxiety and health literacy are associated with salvage ADT as initial management after biochemical recurrence. RESULTS Sixty-eight men (18.1%) received salvage ADT as initial management for PSA recurrence. Men with high PSA anxiety were twice as likely to receive salvage ADT compared with men who did not have high PSA anxiety on both univariable [28.8% versus 13.1%; odds ratio (OR) 2.15; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.16-4.00; P = 0.015] and multivariable analysis [adjusted OR (AOR) 2.36; 95% CI 1.21-4.62; P = 0.012]. Furthermore, men who had higher levels of health literacy were nearly half as likely to undergo salvage ADT compared with men who had lower levels of health literacy on univariable analysis (15.2% versus 26.3%; OR 0.50; 95% CI 0.29-0.88; P = 0.016), with a trend toward this association on multivariable analysis (AOR 0.58; 95% CI 0.32-1.05; P = 0.07). CONCLUSIONS Among men with PSA recurrence after radiotherapy, odds of use of salvage ADT were nearly twice as great among men with high PSA anxiety or low health literacy, suggesting that these men are receiving higher rates of unproven treatment. Given that early salvage ADT is costly, worsens quality of life, and has not been shown to improve survival, quality improvement strategies are needed for these individuals.
Improving Neural Translation Models with Linguistic Factors

This paper presents an extension of neural machine translation (NMT) model to incorporate additional word-level linguistic factors. Adding such linguistic factors may be of great beneﬁts to learning of NMT models, potentially reducing language ambiguity or alleviating data sparseness problem (Koehn and Hoang, 2007). We explore different linguistic annotations at the word level, including: lemmatization, word clusters, Part-of-Speech tags, and labeled dependency relations. We then propose different neural attention architectures to integrate these additional factors into the NMT framework. Evaluating on translating between English and German in two directions with a low resource setting in the domain of TED talks, we obtain promising re-sults in terms of both perplexity reductions and improved BLEU scores over baseline methods.
Role of Single Group Studies in Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Comparative Effectiveness Reviews

The findings and conclusions in this document are those of the authors, who are responsible for its contents; the findings and conclusions do not necessarily represent the views of AHRQ. Therefore, no statement in this report should be construed as an official position of AHRQ or of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The information in this report is intended to help health care decisionmakers—patients and clinicians, health system leaders, and policymakers, among others—make well-informed decisions and thereby improve the quality of health care services. This report is not intended to be a substitute for the application of clinical judgment. Anyone who makes decisions concerning the provision of clinical care should consider this report in the same way as any medical reference and in conjunction with all other pertinent information, i.e., in the context of available resources and circumstances presented by individual patients. This report may be used, in whole or in part, as the basis for development of clinical practice guidelines and other quality enhancement tools, or as a basis for reimbursement and coverage policies. AHRQ or U.S. Department of Health and Human Services endorsement of such derivative products may not be stated or implied. This document is in the public domain and may be used and reprinted without permission except those copyrighted materials that are clearly noted in the document. Further reproduction of those copyrighted materials is prohibited without the specific permission of copyright holders. Persons using assistive technology may not be able to fully access information in this report. For assistance contact EffectiveHealthCare@ahrq.hhs. gov. None of the investigators have any affiliation or financial involvement that conflicts with the material presented in this report. Preface The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), through its Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs), sponsors the development of evidence reports and technology assessments to assist public-and private-sector organizations in their efforts to improve the quality of health care in the United States. The reports and assessments provide organizations with comprehensive, science-based information on common, costly medical conditions and new health care technologies and strategies. The EPCs systematically review the relevant scientific literature on topics assigned to them by AHRQ and conduct additional analyses when appropriate prior to developing their reports and assessments. To improve the scientific rigor of these evidence reports, AHRQ supports empiric research by the EPCs to help understand or improve complex methodologic issues in systematic reviews. These methods research …
Techniques for Allocation of Sensors in Shared Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) hosting multiple applications are gaining popularity over wireless sensor networks dedicated to a single application. The applications hosted by the WSN may have different characteristics. This research investigates the importance of using information about the characteristics of the applications and the state of the network while allocating the sensor nodes to requests for applications. A number of static and dynamic allocation algorithms are investigated. Results of simulation experiments demonstrate that the lifetime of a WSN can be effectively increased by using information about the applications and the state of the WSN. Insights into the relationship between system performance and various system and workload characteristics gained from the simulation experiments are presented.
UNVEILING THE NATURE OF M94's (NGC4736) OUTER REGION: A PANCHROMATIC PERSPECTIVE

We have conducted a deep multiwavelength analysis (0.15–160 μm) to study the outer region of the nearby galaxy M94. We show that the non-optical data support the idea that the outskirts of this galaxy are not formed by a closed stellar ring (as traditionally claimed in the literature) but by a spiral arm structure. In this sense, M94 is a good example of a Type III (anti-truncated) disk galaxy having a very bright outer disk. The outer disk of this galaxy contains ∼23% of the total stellar mass budget of the galaxy and contributes ∼10% of the new stars created showing that this region of the galaxy is active. In fact, the specific star formation rate (SFR) of the outer disk (∼0.012 Gyr−1) is a factor of ∼2 larger (i.e., the star formation is more efficient per unit stellar mass) than in the inner disk. We have explored different scenarios to explain the enhanced star formation in the outer disk. We find that the inner disk (if considered as an oval distortion) can dynamically create a spiral arm structure in the outer disk which triggers the observed relatively high SFR as well as an inner ring similar to what is found in this galaxy.
The Antidiabetic Effect of Low Doses of Moringa oleifera Lam. Seeds on Streptozotocin Induced Diabetes and Diabetic Nephropathy in Male Rats

The antidiabetic activity of two low doses of Moringa seed powder (50 and 100 mg/kg body weight, in the diet) on streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetes male rats was investigated. Forty rats were divided into four groups. The diabetic positive control (STZ treated) group showed increased lipid peroxide, increased IL-6, and decreased antioxidant enzyme in the serum and kidney tissue homogenate compared with that of the negative control group. Immunoglobulins (IgA, IgG), fasting blood sugar, and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) were also increased as a result of diabetes in G2 rats. Moreover albumin was decreased, and liver enzymes and α-amylase were not affected. In addition, the renal functions and potassium and sodium levels in G2 were increased as a sign of diabetic nephropathy. Urine analysis showed also glucosuria and increased potassium, sodium, creatinine, uric acid, and albumin levels. Kidney and pancreas tissues showed also pathological alteration compared to the negative control group. Treating the diabetic rats with 50 or 100 mg Moringa seeds powder/kg body weight in G3 and G4, respectively, ameliorated the levels of all these parameters approaching the negative control values and restored the normal histology of both kidney and pancreas compared with that of the diabetic positive control group.
Local-threshold 2D-tophat Cell Segmentation for the Two-photon Confocal Microscope Image

The Two-photon Confocal Microscopy (TCM) is a new technology which is useful in nondestructive analysis of tissue. However its cell experiment images are excessive and difficult for machine processing since the low resolution and lots of noise. Thus nowadays such a work is mainly done manually and costs a lot of time and effort. This paper proposes a cell segmentation algorithm for this situation by the local-threshold 2D-tophat which is based on the tophat combined with the OTSU and Mathematic Morphology. The proposed method uses the cell region gradient information to do the cell segmentation which uses a local-dynamic threshold instead of a static one and uses the 2D information only to minimize the influences caused by the background and also the algorithm complexity. This method has been applied to experiment and is proved that the true-positive ratio (TPR) can be kept above 85% and false-positive ratio (FPR)+miss-positive ratio(MPR) can be kept under 20% when compared with the original tophat method that the TPR is about 80% and FPR+MPR above 20%.
Web-Based Music Study: The Effects of Listening Repetition, Song Likeability, and Song Understandability on EFL Learning Perceptions and Outcomes

This study adds to the body of empirical knowledge regarding the use of music in the EFL classroom. This original investigation centered around the following question: Does listening repetition, song likeability, and/or song understandability influence learning environment perceptions, learning perceptions, and/or learning outcomes in Taiwanese EFL learners engaged in web-based music study? The subjects in this study consisted of 196 Taiwanese students. Correlation and regression analyses were performed to determine if any statistically significant relationships existed between the study's variables of interest. The results suggest that both song likeability and song understandability significantly and positively influence web-based learning environment enjoyment, which in turn significantly and positively influences learning perceptions. Implications for practice are offered, including criteria for selecting appropriate songs for use in the EFL process.
Evaluating and Enhancing the Performance of IP-based Streaming Media Services and Applications

This thesis deals with multimedia communication over unreliable and resource-constrained IP-based packet-switched networks. The focus is on estimating, evaluating and enhancing the quality of streaming media services, and streaming video services in particular.The work can be divided into three parts. Part A covers issues related to predicting the perceived quality of streaming media applications. First, it presents a low-complexity method for estimating the amount of block-edge impairments in compressed video. The corresponding no-reference metric can be applied on the receiver side during a streaming session so as to enable automated objective video quality assessment, but is mostly relevant for MPEG-2 and early MPEG-4 (Part 2) systems.Thereafter, part B presents an experimental multimedia testbed for measuring the performance, characteristics and error robustness of streaming media applications. An integral part of the test bed is the packet flow regenerator, which enables repeatable performance measurements of network components and streaming media clients. A performance study of this component is included. Further, using the real-time IP-network emulation capabilities of the testbed, the error robustness of a high-definition H.264/MPEG-4 AVC broadcast application is evaluated.Finally, part C considers an adaptive streaming video-on-demand system where features of the upcoming H.264/MPEG-4 scalable video coding standard are combined with the use of an accumulation-based congestion control scheme in order to enable efficient video distribution over IEEE 802.16 wireless broadband networks.
The Long and Large Decline in U.S. Output Volatility

The last two U.S. expansions have been unusually long. One view is that this is the result of luck, of an absence of major adverse shocks over the last twenty years. We argue that more is at work, namely a large underlying decline in output volatility. This decline is not a recent development, but rather a steady one, visible already in the 1950s and the 1960s, interrupted in the 1970s and early 1980s, with a return to trend in the late 1980s and the 1990s. The standard deviation of quarterly output growth has declined by a factor of 3 over the period. This is more than enough to account for the increased length of expansions. We reach two other conclusions. First, the trend decrease can be traced to a number of proximate causes, from a decrease in the volatility in government spending early on, to a decrease in consumption and investment volatility throughout the period, to a change in the sign of the correlation between inventory investment and sales in the last decade. Second, there is a strong relation between movements in output volatility and inflation volatility. This association accounts for the interruption of the trend decline in output volatility in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Evaluating the visual quality of web pages using a computational aesthetic approach

Current Web mining explores useful and valuable information (content) online for users. However, there is scant research on the overall visual aspect of Web pages, even though visual elements such as aesthetics significantly influence user experience. A beautiful and well-laid out Web page greatly facilitates users' accessing and enhances browsing experiences.We use "visual quality (VisQ)" to denote the aesthetics of Web pages. In this paper, a computational aesthetics approach is proposed to learn the evaluation model for the visual quality of Web pages. First, a Web page layout extraction algorithm (V-LBE) is introduced to partition a Web page into major layout blocks. Then, regarding a Web page as a semi-structured image, features (e.g., layout,visual complexity, colorfulness) known to significantly affect the visual quality of a Web page are extracted to construct a feature vector. We present a multi-cost-sensitive learning for visual quality classification and a multi-value regression for visual quality score assignment. Our experiments compare the extracted features and conclude that the Web page's layout visual features (LV) and text visual features (TV) are the primary affecting factors toward Web page's visual quality. The performance of the learned visual quality classifier is close to some persons'. The learned regression function also achieves promising results.
Execution Models for the IEC 61499 elements Composite Function Block and Subapplication

The semantic loopholes of the standard IEC 61499 have been pointed out in different recent publications with focus on some details. This paper investigates especially on the execution models for composite function blocks and subapplications. Of course this is closely related to the execution of basic function blocks and function block networks. Therefore, this work is based on general assumptions about these parts. The different possibilities concerning composite function blocks are described in detail and explained in a case study of a very simple example function block. For the sake of describing the relation to current runtime environments, three current implementations are used in the case study.
Two‐phase westward encroachment of Basin and Range extension into the northern Sierra Nevada

Structural, geophysical, and thermochronological data from the transition zone between the Sierra Nevada and the Basin and Range province at latitude ∼39°N suggest ∼100 km westward encroachment of Basin and Range extensional deformation since the middle Miocene. Extension, accommodated primarily by east dipping normal faults that bound west tilted, range‐forming fault blocks, varies in magnitude from <2% in the interior of the Sierra Nevada crustal block to >150% in the Wassuk and Singatse Ranges to the east. Geological and apatite fission track data from exhumed upper crustal sections in the Wassuk and Singatse Ranges point to rapid footwall cooling related to large magnitude extension starting at ∼14–15 Ma. Farther to the west, geological and thermochronological data indicate a younger period of extension in the previously unextended Pine Nut Mountains, the Carson Range, and the Tahoe‐Truckee depression initiated between 10 Ma and 3 Ma, and incipient post‐0.5 Ma faulting to the west of the Tahoe‐Truckee area. These data imply the presence of an extensional breakaway zone between the Singatse Range and the Pine Nut Mountains at ∼14–15 Ma, forming the boundary between the Sierra Nevada and Basin and Range at that time. In addition, fission track data imply a Miocene preextensional geothermal gradient of 27 ± 5°C km−1 in the central Wassuk Range and 20 ± 5°C km−1 in the Singatse Range, much higher than the estimated early Tertiary gradient of 10 ± 5°C km−1 for the Sierra Nevada batholith. This might point to a significant increase in geothermal gradients coupled with a likely decrease in crustal strength enabling the initiation of extensional faulting. Apatite fission track, geophysical, and geological constraints across the Sierra Nevada‐Basin and Range transition zone indicate a two‐stage, coupled structural and thermal westward encroachment of the Basin and Range province into the Sierra Nevada since the middle Miocene.
Trade Unions, Collective Bargaining and Macroeconomic Performance: A Review

Coordination through collective bargaining is recognised as an influential determinant of labour market outcomes and macroeconomic performance. This article provides a systematic review of the empirical literature on the subject. What emerges from the review is that it is different types and coverage of bargaining coordination, rather than cross-country variation in trade union density, that matter for economic performance. High levels of bargaining coverage tend to be associated with relatively poor economic performance, but this adverse relationship can be at least mitigated by high levels of bargaining coordination. In the absence of formal bargaining arrangements, economies often develop informal bargaining mechanisms whose effects are similar to those arising from formal bargaining provided they both operate at similar levels of coordination. The consequences of labour market coordination or absence thereof depend on the monetary policy regime as non-accommodating monetary policy can eliminate some of the adverse unemployment consequences otherwise associated with industry-level collective bargaining. Finally, bargaining coordination seems to matter most in times of rapid economic change rather than under more stable conditions. Overall, we conclude that it is the total ‘package’ of (formal and informal) labour market institutions that matters for the performance of the economy rather than unionisation as such or individual aspects of unionism.